The operating reality for councils and recreation
Councils and recreation providers operate aquatic centres, leisure facilities and community programs across many sites. There are bookings and memberships to manage, casual entry and point of sale at each venue, access control across buildings, a large base of plant and assets to maintain, and budgets to account for. Public operators also carry a duty to show that facilities are well run and well maintained.
When each of those lives in a separate system, the work piles up in the gaps. Facility activity is exported to finance, maintenance is tracked in spreadsheets, and asset values sit apart from the maintenance history. Building a view across sites is slow.
The Cohiva products that fit
Cohiva is an integrated operating platform of purpose-built products that share one identity and one data layer. For a council or recreation provider, three products do the core work.
- Complex manages facility bookings, memberships, casual entry, point of sale and access control across your venues. See it at complex.cohiva.app.
- Control manages assets, work orders and preventive maintenance schedules across facilities, and includes fixed-asset depreciation that posts to the ledger. See maintenance and asset management for councils.
- Crunch consolidates finance across entities and reports activity captured in Complex.
How the data layer changes the work
Because the products share one data layer, facility operations, maintenance and finance connect instead of living in separate systems.
A booking or casual entry taken in Complex becomes a transaction Crunch can see, so finance reports activity across facilities without a manual export. An asset tracked in Control carries its maintenance history and its depreciation in the same place, so the operations team and the finance team see one version of the asset. Preventive maintenance schedules in Control help facilities teams plan work across many sites rather than reacting to failures. One identity ties access and records together across the products.
Maintenance and assets in one place
For a public operator, the asset base is large and the obligation to look after it is real. Pumps, filtration, plant, HVAC and play equipment all need scheduled servicing, and they all carry a value that has to be accounted for. Run those two things in separate systems and the maintenance history sits apart from the asset register, so the team servicing a unit and the team depreciating it are looking at different records.
Control keeps them together. Each asset carries its work order history and its preventive maintenance schedule, and Control posts fixed-asset depreciation to the ledger. The operations team can see what has been serviced and what is due, and the finance team sees the same asset with its current value. Preventive schedules help facilities teams plan work across many sites rather than reacting when something fails.
Why the integration matters for public operators
Councils and recreation providers answer to budgets and to the community. Both are easier to serve when facility activity, maintenance and finance sit on one data layer. Activity across venues consolidates in Crunch without a manual close, asset condition and value live together in Control, and the front-of-house operation runs in Complex. Reporting on a facility, a program or the whole portfolio draws on one source rather than a stack of exports.
This is the integrated operating platform thesis for the public sector: one identity, one data layer, and operations, maintenance and finance connected.
Programs, access and the community
Public recreation is as much about programs as it is about facilities. Learn-to-swim, holiday programs, community classes and casual entry all need scheduling, booking and payment, often with concession and member pricing. Complex handles programs, bookings, memberships, casual entry, point of sale and access control together, so a resident can book a program place, pay the right price and enter the building on one record.
That single record matters for a public operator because it joins the front-of-house experience to the reporting behind it. Program participation, casual entry numbers and membership activity are captured where they happen and flow into the consolidated finance view in Crunch. When a council needs to report on usage of a facility or the reach of a program, the figures come from the activity recorded in Complex rather than a separate count assembled by hand.
Built for multiple sites
Cohiva suits councils and recreation providers running programs and facilities across many locations. As the portfolio grows, facility operations, maintenance and finance stay on one data layer rather than splintering into per-site tools.
If you run council or recreation facilities, start with the Complex overview, then see how maintenance and asset management fits your facilities. Operators focused on pools can also see the aquatic centres solution.