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TIMIFY Course Planner Series: 1/3

Course Planning Headaches? A Smart Course Scheduling Software Can Help

A photo of Boyan Tanchev
By Boyan Tanchev
01 April, 2025

This article explores the hidden operational costs of traditional course planning, the knock-on effects for staff and clients, and why automation is no longer optional. We’ll also introduce how we’re tackling these challenges with a smarter solution, built specifically for businesses running complex, multi-session courses and classes.

A young woman holding an ipad, surrounded by course management icons and a weekly course planning software
Back
A photo of Boyan Tanchev

Boyan Tanchev

Founder and Chief Product Officer TIMIFY

Content

Planning a single course may sound simple. However, for teams managing multiple instructors, venues, equipment, and participant needs across dozens of sessions, the reality is far more complex, necessitating the use of course management software. As course calendars grow, so does the operational chaos. Add in the growing pressure to scale, improve customer experience, and reduce overhead, and the cracks in manual planning become painfully clear.

The Real Problem: Planning Isn’t Just Picking a Date

To show how complex course planning can really be, here are some scenarios we learned from our clients where a smart training management software can make your life a lot easier.

1. Aligning Instructors, Rooms, and Resources

Take a technical training centre running in-person classes. Each session needs an available instructor and a free training room, making resource management crucial. Room availability for scheduling is often crucial. That sounds manageable until you realise:

  • The instructor teaches three different courses per week.
  • Each course has a specific room layout requirement.
  • Public holidays, sick leave, and other blockers disrupt planning.

Planners must mentally juggle these factors for every single course, often across branches or locations. This creates unnecessary friction and a risk of error.

Training manager struggling with resource management and scheduling conflicts while planning training sessions involving instructors and rooms.

2. Equipment Allocation for Participants

Now layer in equipment needs for your training courses. A course on AutoCAD, for example, might require one virtual machine per participant, preloaded with the right software.

Real-life scenario: You plan a 3-day AutoCAD course for 12 participants. That means 12 virtual machines need to be reserved, configured, and unavailable for other bookings during the course. If one session overlaps with another course needing the same equipment, someone will be left without a resource. Without automated tracking and assignment, these conflicts are easy to miss — until they happen.

Trainer addressing students during a course session affected by equipment shortages.

3. Multi-Session Course Shapes

Courses don’t always happen in a single day. Many span multiple sessions with varying durations:

  • Session 1: Monday, 5 hours
  • Session 2: Wednesday, 4 hours
  • Session 3: The following Tuesday, 6 hours

Now, imagine you’re planning this exact course shape. Everything looks good — until you notice that Wednesday falls on a public holiday. That single conflict means the second session can’t be placed that week. Manually adjusting the schedule risks breaking the course flow or creating conflicts with resources and instructor availability.

Wouldn’t it be smarter if the system flagged the issue during planning and adjusted the schedule on its own? What if it shifted the second session to Thursday, pushed the third forward, and realigned everything — instructors, rooms, equipment — in one seamless flow?

This is the kind of intelligent, flexible course-shaping organisations need for effective training management. Without it, a simple holiday can derail your plans and drain hours of time.

Trainers reviewing calendar conflicts in course scheduling software due to public holidays.

4. Human Support Dependencies

Some courses require mentors or assistants on standby to help participants, especially in instructor led training scenarios. For example, a software onboarding course might need:

  • 1 support staff on Day 1
  • 2 support staff on exam day (Day 3)

Planners must schedule and block these people across the entire course timeline, checking availability, avoiding conflicts, and ensuring coverage. Doing this manually? A logistical nightmare.

Training provider assisting a participant during instructor led training while managing support staff scheduling issues.

5. Follow-Up Time for Equipment Recovery

After the course ends, used equipment often needs follow-up time for training administration tasks such as:

  • Cleaning or maintenance
  • Software resets
  • Physical reorganisation

Let’s say 15 laptops were used. If they appear as “available” in the calendar the next day, someone could mistakenly schedule them again. Without automated follow-up blockers, this risk becomes very real.


Staff member performing training administration tasks by cleaning and organising laptops after a completed training course.


The Hidden Cost of Manual Course Management

Planning the course is just the beginning. Once it's scheduled, the manual effort doesn't stop — it just changes shape. Behind every scheduled class lies a stack of admin tasks that often slip through the cracks, creating inefficiencies, errors, and burnout.

Communication Chaos

One common friction point is communications. For instance, virtual courses often require unique video links. Without automation, these are manually created, saved in spreadsheets, and shared with participants one by one. It's far too easy to send the wrong link, or forget to send it entirely — something clients frequently report leads to missed sessions and support headaches.

Training administrator overwhelmed by manual tasks, juggling scheduling software, emails, and class management tools.

Time-Consuming Admin Tasks

The same story applies to participant notifications and materials. Admin teams manually:

  • Send booking confirmations and reminders
  • Distribute course materials
  • Manage time or date changes

Each task, while small, adds up quickly across dozens of sessions, increasing the risk of errors and putting unnecessary strain on staff. According to a report by Smartsheet, over 40% of workers dedicate at least a quarter of their workweek to manual, repetitive tasks — roughly 10 hours in a standard 40-hour week. That’s time that could be better spent on more strategic and high-value activities.

Admin overwhelmed with repetitive manual tasks like sending course materials and managing training schedules.

Forgotten Follow-Ups

Then there’s the post-course follow-up — an area ripe with opportunity but often forgotten. Participants expect:

  • A thank-you message
  • A certificate of completion
  • A feedback survey
  • Recommendations for future courses

These are critical for customer experience and revenue growth, yet they’re frequently missed due to workload.

Course participant opens a post-course follow-up envelope with his class certificate

Equipment Chain Reactions

And finally, equipment issues often trigger unexpected chaos. Imagine you've already planned a course, assigned resources, and participants have booked their spots. Then, a piece of equipment gets damaged in a previous session. Now, the manager must manually trace where that equipment was booked next — searching through spreadsheets, identifying the affected participant, and scrambling to reassign another device that’s actually available. It’s time-consuming, highly manual, and dangerously prone to error.

Training operations manager stressed over broken equipment booked for upcoming courses, facing resource allocation issues.

In Summary:

  • Manual workflows introduce delays, errors, and inconsistent customer experiences.
  • Admin teams waste valuable time on repetitive tasks that should be automated.
  • Important post-course actions are skipped, missing moments to engage and upsell.
  • Equipment management becomes reactive and inefficient without centralised tracking.


Why These Problems Can’t Be Ignored

For organisations running multiple training sessions or educational programmes, these planning challenges go beyond inconvenience—they impact the bottom line. Missed communication, double bookings, and last-minute cancellations frustrate customers and damage trust. Meanwhile, teams bogged down by manual workflows lose valuable time and motivation. And scaling operations becomes a serious challenge when every course demands hours of coordination.

According to IDC International, human error costs businesses in the U.K. and U.S. an average of £315 per employee per year, totalling nearly £14 billion annually. These aren't isolated mistakes—they're the predictable outcome of inefficient manual processes.

This inefficiency creates ripple effects across the business:

  • Customer satisfaction suffers with late links, missing materials, or last-minute cancellations.
  • Employees burn out, doing tedious, error-prone work that could easily be automated. According to Rapid Acceleration Partners, manual, repetitive tasks significantly contribute to job dissatisfaction and employee turnover.
  • Scaling becomes cost-prohibitive, as every new course adds hours of manual planning. A study by 4C Research found that 47% of companies in the financial sector experienced financial losses due to non-automation—often linked to delays and human error.

These are signals that it’s time for change—and a smarter way to manage course planning.


Processing the irregular requests and individual requirements of our customers for the planning of our services is currently a very big effort. Our course and scheduling coordinator has to plan the simultaneous availability of our instructors with the technical equipment individually and manually against the background of their different software-related skills. This all currently takes a very long time and presents us with particular challenges in terms of organization, processes and money.
Dr. Christopher Kosel - Head of Consulting, auxalia GmbH

Introducing the TIMIFY Course Planner - Your Smart Training Scheduling Software

The TIMIFY Course Planner is a purpose-built solution designed to automate the most time-consuming and error-prone aspects of course scheduling. From aligning instructor and equipment availability to dynamically detecting conflicts and streamlining communication workflows, it gives teams the control and clarity they need to plan efficiently at scale.

An image showing the TIMIFY Course Planning Tool

It’s designed to eliminate the chaos of course scheduling by automating:

  • Resource assignment
  • Equipment allocation
  • Conflict detection
  • Communication workflows

In our next article, we’ll show you exactly how it works.

Frequently Asked Questions

What makes course scheduling so complex for training organisations, and how can a course management system help?
Scheduling courses involves juggling multiple dependencies—trainers, rooms, equipment, and support staff—across recurring sessions. Even small disruptions, like public holidays, staff sick days, or damaged equipment, can throw off an entire course plan. A course management system serves as a dedicated space for organising and managing these training sessions effectively, helping to streamline the process and reduce complexity.
Can the Course Planner handle multi-session courses with complex patterns?
Yes. You can define courses with structured session sequences (e.g. 3 sessions across 2 weeks), and the planner automatically adjusts based on constraints while maintaining the intended structure.
What kind of businesses benefit from the Course Planner?
The Course Planner is ideal for any business offering structured, resource-dependent group events. This includes tech training centres, coding bootcamps, language schools, fitness studios, universities, corporate academies, and medical training institutions.
Does it support private courses?
Absolutely. You can schedule private courses that are not listed publicly. These are shared via unique, invite-only booking links, allowing you to control who can view and join the session—ideal for internal trainings, closed groups, or premium offerings.
How does the TIMIFY Course Planner prevent scheduling conflicts?
It proactively detects calendar conflicts such as unavailable staff, resource overlaps, or public holidays—helping you resolve them during the planning phase before any disruptions happen.
What happens if assigned equipment gets damaged or becomes unavailable?
The Course Planner integrates with the TIMIFY Shift Planner. If you block an equipment resource due to repair, the Course Planner automatically flags all courses affected and prompts you to reassign available alternatives—saving hours of manual tracking.
Can I flexibly define per course what equipment and how many should be assigned to a customer who booked the course?
Yes. Using TIMIFY’s Group Service Attributes, you can define what type of equipment and how many units should be allocated per participant. This is easily configured when editing the Group Service in the WebApp or Branch Manager.
Is onboarding included?
Yes. The Course Planner features a guided in-app onboarding flow that walks you through the setup of services, resources, and scheduling logic. Additionally, clients with a dedicated Account Manager receive personalised onboarding sessions for a smooth rollout.
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About the author

Boyan Tanchev

Founder and Chief Product Officer of TIMIFY. Originally trained in architecture at TUM Munich, his true passion for IT began in his early teens—building websites and later founding several marketing and full-service agencies. Over the years, he has co-founded multiple startups in Germany, contributing as a UX/UI Designer and Product Owner. With over 25 years of experience in tech, Boyan now focuses on positioning TIMIFY as a pioneering SaaS solution for scheduling and resource planning.