How to use the parking app

Boy Scout Troop 151 · https://parking.johnvgodwin.com

Text the troop to clock in and out
+12055238289
Text here when you arrive and done when you leave. Same number for questions — anything that is not a clock-in reaches a leader.
Sign in: https://parking.johnvgodwin.com · Sign up for texts: https://parking.johnvgodwin.com/signup · Questions: john@johnvgodwin.com

Three kinds of people use this app. Read the part that applies to you — each section stands on its own.

If you work shifts

You do not need a password. You were emailed a personal link that looks like https://parking.johnvgodwin.com/my-shifts/…. Keep it — it is yours, it does not expire, and it always shows what is open.

Signing up for a shift

Open your link. Shifts that still need people are listed under "Shifts that still need someone". Tap I'll take this one.
A shift closes once it has the people it needs. Extra places open up only after every shift for that game is covered — that stops the early shifts filling while the afternoon goes empty.
Sunday cleanup is limited to three per person per season, so the shifts are shared around.
Cleanup counts for at least two hours towards your target, however long it actually takes. If it runs longer, you get the longer time.

You will get a reminder

The afternoon before your shift we text you a reminder saying where and when, from +12055238289. You do not need to reply — but if something has come up, replying to that text reaches a leader and we will look for cover.

If you cannot make it

Open your link and tap I can no longer do this one. The shift goes back on the board for someone else. Please do this as early as you can.

Clocking in and out — three ways

Any of these records the same thing. Use whichever suits you.

Tap your link
Open your personal link and press I'm here when you arrive, I'm finished when you leave. No texting needed.
Text us
Text here or done to +12055238289 — quickest if your hands are full.
Ask a leader
Anybody running the lot can mark you in and out from the crew sheet on their phone. Do this if you have no phone, no signal, or you forgot.

Clocking in and out by text

Text +12055238289 when you arrive and when you leave. Your hours are counted automatically. Save the number in your phone as "Troop 151 Parking".

Arriving
"here", "arrived", "on site", "here and ready to work"
Leaving
"done", "leaving", "heading home", "done for the day"

Write it however you like — short messages that start with one of those are understood. Anything longer, or a question, goes to a leader instead, so ask away.

We text you back

You do not have to wonder whether it worked. Clocking in gets:

Clocked in at 6:48 AM. Text "done" when you leave.

And clocking out tells you where you stand for the season:

Clocked out at 10:02 AM. 3.2 hours today, 12.4 this season towards 40.

If you get no reply within a minute or two, the text did not reach us — check you sent it to +12055238289, and tell a leader so they can clock you in by hand.

Scouts too young for a phone

A scout with no phone of their own can be attached to a parent: whenever the parent texts here or done, the scout is clocked in and out at the same moment, and the reply names them both. Set it on Setup → People & volunteers with Clocks in with.

Their entries are marked as estimates, because the text only proves the parent was there. If the scout did not come that day, remove the entry on Adjust Time — it is one click.

If you turn up without signing up for a shift

Still get your hours. Tell whoever is running the lot and they will clock you in — and put you on a shift if there is room, so you appear on the roster too. Texting "here" works as well, though your hours will not be attached to a particular shift until somebody adds you.

If you clock in and never clock out, the app closes it for you — at the end of your shift, or six hours after you arrived if you were not on one. That is a guess and it is flagged as one, so ask for it to be corrected if you were there longer.

Texts from us

You only receive texts if you signed up at https://parking.johnvgodwin.com/signup. Roughly 2–6 messages per game week during the season. Reply STOP at any time to stop them, START to begin again.

If you work the gate on game day

Sign in at https://parking.johnvgodwin.com. You stay signed in on that device for the season, so do it before game day, not at the gate.

Checking cars in

Scan — point the camera at the customer's QR code. Green means they are in. Red means that pass has already been used, and tells you when and by whom.
Search — if a scan will not work, look them up by name or the last four digits of their phone and tap Check in. Use this for anyone who turns up without a pass.

Plenty of people will have no QR code, and that is normal — we have no mobile number for some customers, and guests on a list (they show as "Regions — Jane Smith") never get one. Search finds everybody entitled to park at today's game. If a name is genuinely not there, take the details and tell a leader rather than turning anyone away.

A pass works once per game. Passes are forwardable on purpose — a parent can send theirs to a child — so it checks in under the original name, which is fine.

When the screen asks you to collect money

Most cars are season customers who have already paid, and you will see nothing extra. But some are one-game guests, and for those a coloured band appears under the name:

COLLECT $40.00 (red) — take the money before they park, and hand it in with the cash at the end.
PAID (green) — already settled. Wave them through.

The band shows even if the pass has already been used, because the money still has to be collected. If you are unsure, take the cash and tell a leader — never turn a guest away over it.

The dashboard

Checked in
Who has arrived.
Still expected
Everyone who has not arrived and has not said they are not coming.
Left in the lot
Spaces remaining in the near lot. Each lot is counted separately — when the near one fills, the screen says so.

Cash and reconciliation

Tap +1 walk-up for each car that pays cash at the gate.
Tap +1 car as you count cars in the lot.
The screen compares the two. "1 car not accounted for" means somebody parked without paying — worth a look.

Volunteer hours on game day

Open Who is working for the game. At the top, On the lot right now lists everybody currently clocked in.

Tap IN beside a name as they arrive, OUT as they leave. A dot marks anybody currently on the lot.
Somebody turned up who is not on the roster? Use Somebody turned up who is not on the roster — pick them, optionally drop them onto a shift, and they are clocked in. Their hours count either way.

Volunteers can also do it themselves by tapping their own link or texting +12055238289. However it is recorded, it lands in the same place.

Messages

Customers and Volunteers in the menu are two separate inboxes. Anything needing a human — a reply nobody could read, a text that failed to send — appears at the top under "Needs attention".

If you run the operation

Before the season

If you do not have somebody's phone number, leave the field blank. The app fills in a placeholder, shows — no number on the roster instead of a fake number, and never tries to text them. Add the real number whenever you get it. Someone with no number simply has no pass to scan — look them up by name at the gate and check them in that way.

A household buying more than one space gets one record per space, because each space needs its own pass. Name them so the gate can tell them apart.

Setup → Parking customers → Import from Excel. Paste your spreadsheet, check the preview, confirm. Re-pasting the same sheet updates rather than duplicating.
Setup → Games & kickoff times. Add each game. If the kickoff has not been announced, tick Kickoff is TBD — no shifts and no reminders are created from a placeholder time.
Setup → People & volunteers, then Invite volunteers to email everyone their personal link and the text sign-up link.

When a kickoff is announced

Set the time and untick TBD. Shifts are created automatically, and the 24-hour and 3-hour texts are timed from it.
If a game moves, just change the date. The shifts move with it and everybody keeps their place. Anyone whose shift no longer exists is named on screen so you can tell them.

Shifts

Who is working
The readable roster, by lot and again by person. Print it for the clipboard. Admins can add and remove people right on it.
Shift board
For editing times, crew sizes and cancelling.
Lots
Each lot has its own opening rule and crew size. Adding a third lot needs no changes to the app.
Adjust Time
Hours worked, and where you correct them. See below.

Adjusting someone's hours

Adjust Time (on the Shift board, or Volunteer hours in the Setup menu) shows everyone's hours against their target, and lets you put right anything the app got wrong. Hours decide who gets camp and registration fees covered, so nothing here is set in stone.

Somebody forgot to clock in or out

Pick the volunteer, type when they arrived and when they left, and press Record the hours.
Fill in only Arrived to put somebody on the lot now — useful if they are still working and you will close it later.
Tying it to a shift is optional. Leave it as no particular shift if they just turned up to help.

It refuses times that make no sense — leaving before arriving, or a date it cannot read — so a slip cannot invent hours for anybody.

Correcting a time

Recent clock entries lists everything the app recorded, however it arrived. Change a time and press Correct, or Delete an entry that should not be there. Corrections stay in the list, so you can adjust the same entry again later.

An estimate badge means the time was typed in or guessed by the app, rather than texted by the volunteer. The app guesses when somebody clocks in and never out: it closes them at the end of their shift, or six hours after arriving if they had no shift. Those are guesses worth checking — someone who stayed late is owed the extra time.

Somebody who never clocked in at all cannot be guessed at, because there is nothing to close. Use Somebody forgot to clock in or out above for them.

Texting

One person: their row on People, or the Volunteers inbox.
A group: the Volunteers inbox sends to everyone, everyone working a game, or one shift's crew.
Customers: the Customers inbox, or Broadcast for a group.

Only people who signed up on the public form can be texted. Setup → Consent records shows who can and, for anyone who cannot, why not.

The weekly summary

Setup → Weekly summary builds the game-week email from live data. Write the opening paragraph in your own words, read the preview, then send.
If it says no summary can be built, it is telling you the roster is not ready — usually a missing kickoff time. Fix that first; an email showing an empty roster tells everybody there is nothing to sign up for.

Money

Setup → Invoices & payments. Raise invoices for the roster in one click, then record each check as it arrives — number, date, and the amount actually received.
Download the CSV for the treasurer. Rates and payments are admin-only; leaders never see them.

A guest list for one game

When an organisation gets a block of passes for a single game — Regions send a list every week, and it is different people each time — use Guest list for one game on the Invoices page. You only need their names.

Choose the game.
Put the organisation in Whose list? — type Regions. Every name is then stored as "Regions — Jane Smith", so at the gate a scout can see at a glance why that person is on the list. You can leave it empty if the names speak for themselves.
Paste the names into the box, one per line. Straight out of the email is fine — blank lines are ignored.
Press Add the guest list. It tells you how many were added and how many were already on file.

Each name gets a pass for that game only, and nobody is added to the season roster — so next week's list starts clean and nobody is left expected at games they are not attending. No invoice is raised, because nobody owes anything.

They have no phone number, so they get no text and no QR code. That is fine: at the gate, look them up by name under Search and tap Check in. If you would rather they arrived holding a pass, open the customer and print the pass page. Adding the same list twice is safe — nobody is duplicated.

Selling one spot for one game

When somebody wants a single game rather than the season — a scoutmaster reserving a space for a visitor, say — use Sell a spot for one game on the same Invoices page.

Type their name and mobile. If they are new they are created for you; if the number is already on file it is matched instead of duplicated.
Pick the game and set the price (it starts at $40).
Choose Pays at the gate or Already prepaid. This is what the gate crew sees when they scan — red COLLECT or green PAID.
Leave Text them the pass ticked and they get their QR code by text straight away.

They get a pass for that game only and are not added to the season roster, so they are never invoiced again. If they come back for another game, sell them another spot — the two are tracked separately. Guests appear on the invoice list marked one game, where you record the cash exactly like a check.

If they have not signed up for texts the app will say so rather than texting them — send them https://parking.johnvgodwin.com/signup first, or give them the link some other way. Their name also works in gate Search, so a QR that will not scan is never a dead end.

Paper backups

Print the gate sheet and the crew sheet the night before every game. If the app, the internet or the phones fail at the lot, those two pages are enough to run the day by hand.

When something is wrong

Somebody cannot sign in
Check their row on People. It says either "can sign in" with their username, or "no password — cannot sign in". Their name and email work as a sign-in too, unless two people share it.
Somebody says their text did nothing
Check they sent it to +12055238289, and that they signed up at https://parking.johnvgodwin.com/signup. A message that is not a clock-in is not ignored — it goes to the Volunteers inbox for a person to read.
A text did not arrive
Look in the inbox under "Needs attention". Failed sends are listed with the reason. Somebody who replied STOP cannot be texted until they reply START.
A shift is on the wrong day
Change the game's date on Events; the shifts follow.
The daily email keeps nagging
It stops as soon as the thing it names is fixed — usually a kickoff time or unfilled shifts.