Client Success Story

Rural City of Wangaratta

How a council of 30,000 runs an enterprise-grade booking operation on OptimoGov

Executive summary

There is a long-standing assumption in local government technology: that enterprise-grade platforms are built for big metropolitan councils, and that smaller rural councils should settle for something lighter, cheaper and less capable. The Rural City of Wangaratta puts that assumption to rest.

Serving a population of roughly 30,000 people across Northeast Victoria, Wangaratta is, by national standards, a small council, yet it runs a booking operation any council many times its size would recognise as mature and well run. Since going live with OptimoGov in June 2023, the council has built a thriving community of regular hirers, grown its booking volumes every year, and steadily shifted more of its activity to convenient online self-service, all while managing 52 facilities across 24 venues and four distinct business areas on a single platform.

This story shows what becomes possible when the platform fits the ambition rather than the headcount. Wangaratta runs the full booking lifecycle online, discovery, request, payment and confirmation, integrated with its finance system and council identity, the kind of enterprise set-up usually reserved for far larger organisations. The headline is simple: size does not determine capability. With the right system behind it, a council of 30,000 can deliver the same professional, digitally enabled booking experience as a capital city.

A small council with a big remit

Wangaratta manages an unusually diverse portfolio of community assets for a council of its size. Its responsibilities stretch well beyond a few halls and sports grounds, spanning four separate business areas:

• Community & Recreation, community centres, pavilions, meeting rooms, and recreation spaces at the heart of local life.
• Open Space, parks, reserves, and open recreation land made available to residents, clubs, and event organisers.
• Sporting Grounds, ovals, courts and a velodrome supporting organised sport and community fitness.
• Aviation, the council aerodrome, a specialised asset most councils never have to manage at all.

That variety is exactly the kind of complexity supposedly reserved for large organisations. Before a unified system, coordinating bookings across such different assets usually means a patchwork of spreadsheets, paper forms, email threads, and disconnected diaries, with all the double-bookings, lost revenue and administrative friction that brings. Wangaratta wanted one trusted system that could handle this breadth without compromising on professionalism or control. It chose OptimoGov.

A genuine cross-section of the community

A booking platform is only as valuable as the community that uses it. What stands out at Wangaratta is not just how many people book, but who they are. The council’s regular hirers form a true cross-section of local life; no single group dominates.

Community groups, not-for-profits, and sporting clubs together make up more than half of the active client base. That is precisely the outcome a council hopes for: facilities that are genuinely accessible to the whole community, not just to commercial operators. OptimoGov gives Wangaratta the visibility to see this balance at a glance and to manage it deliberately, keeping community access front and centre while still supporting business and event hirers.

Bookings that grow year on year

A booking system only earns its place if usage grows and embeds into everyday operations. Wangaratta’s trajectory shows exactly that, booking volumes have climbed by around 10% every year, compounding steadily as OptimoGov became the council’s single source of truth for bookings.

Year-on-year growth of roughly 10% is a strong, healthy signal: it means staff and the community actively choose the platform rather than work around it, and that more of the council’s booking activity is being captured in one trusted system every year. For a rural council, sustaining that kind of momentum across thousands of bookings is a genuine achievement, and it speaks to how naturally OptimoGov fits into day-to-day council operations.

Two ways to book, and more of them online every year.

OptimoGov supports two complementary ways to make a booking, and Wangaratta uses both to great effect:

• Staff-assisted bookings, created by council officers on behalf of a customer, ideal for more complex, high-value or sensitive hires that benefit from a human touch.
• Internet bookings, made directly by the customer through the council’s online portal, at any hour, with no staff involvement required.

The most encouraging pattern is the rise of self-service. Today, almost one in four bookings is made directly online by customers through the portal, they check availability, book and pay without ever needing to call the council. For a smaller council, which is a genuinely favourable result, and the online share keeps growing year on year as the portal is promoted more actively to the community.

Importantly, OptimoGov never forces a council to choose between online convenience and hands-on service. Both channels run through one platform, so an online booking and a staff-made booking land in the same calendar, follow the same rules and draw on the same availability. As more residents and community groups serve themselves online, council staff are freed to focus on the bookings where their expertise adds the most value, with no parallel systems to reconcile and no risk of the two channels colliding.

Every stage of the booking lifecycle

Wangaratta’s deployment covers the full operational span of a booking, from public discovery right through to payment and confirmation. Three modules work together to make that possible:

Module	What it does
Casual Booking Portal	Public-facing portal for one-off venue and facility hire requests
Regular Booking Portal	Dedicated portal for recurring hirers and seasonal allocations
Payment Portal	Integrated online payment collection and automated receipting

Together these modules mean a local sporting club can submit a seasonal allocation request online, a community group can book a room at the library and pay instantly, and a private event hirer can check availability at Merriwa Park and submit a request, all without ever needing to call the council. Staff time is focused on managing exceptions, not processing routine intake.

Plugged into Wangaratta’s technology stack

A booking platform delivers the most value when it works as part of a council’s wider systems rather than as an island. OptimoGov was configured with a suite of integrations that align with Wangaratta’s existing infrastructure:

Integration	Type	Detail
BPOINT	Payment Gateway	Secure online payment processing for public hirers
TechOne	Finance System	Daily export for automated financial reconciliation
Azure SSO	Identity / Authentication	Single Sign-On for all council staff, no separate OptimoGov credentials required

The TechOne integration is particularly significant for a council of Wangaratta’s size. Automated nightly financial exports eliminate manual data entry between the booking platform and the finance system, reducing reconciliation effort and the risk of discrepancy. And because Azure Single Sign-On ties access to staff’s existing council credentials, adoption is frictionless, there is no additional login to manage. These are the kinds of enterprise integrations usually associated with large organisations, working quietly behind the scenes for a council of 30,000.

Breadth without complexity, why size does not matter.

Behind this activity sits a genuinely broad estate spanning four distinct business areas, configured into bookable spaces, services, pricing, and packages tailored to each use case. Open spaces and reserves make up the largest share of the estate, followed by sporting grounds, with meeting rooms, community centres, pavilions, a velodrome, and specialised aviation assets making up the rest, all coexisting in the one system.

This is where the value of capability over scale becomes clear. OptimoGov is built to be as sophisticated or as simple as a council needs it to be. A small team can run a large, varied estate because the platform scales to fit, not the other way around.

• Highly configurable. Every venue, facility, item, price, and package can be set up to match how the council actually works, its own availability rules, approval steps, pricing tiers and booking conditions.
• Start simple, grow over time. A council can launch with a handful of straightforward spaces and add complexity, new asset types, online self-service, packages, advanced pricing, as its confidence and needs grow.
• Scales with ambition, not headcount. The same platform that runs a metropolitan council’s leisure network runs Wangaratta’s estate. The capability is identical; only the configuration differs.

The result is an operation that punches well above its weight. Wangaratta delivers the kind of booking experience residents would expect from a major metropolitan council, and it does so as a council of 30,000.