Streamlining Your Camp or Retreat Processes

Camp season might be winding down and retreat season heating up—but if you’ve been in the thick of registrations, you’ve probably hit a few bumps. Maybe it was cabin assignments, check-in chaos, or just juggling all the moving parts. Wherever things felt clunky, there’s likely room to smooth things out.

This blog walks through a sample process and highlights tools that can help smooth out the experience—for both your team and your attendees. From signups to logistics, a few small adjustments can go a long way in streamlining your next event.

Leveraged Rock Tools

• Registrations - Use Rock registrations to collect sign-ups for camps, retreats, or trips with customizable entry forms.
• Check-in - Ensure no one misses the bus by enabling check-in and printing labels with the assigned bus number.
• Workflows - Automate scholarship approvals and other processes using Rock workflows to save time and reduce manual follow-up.
• Rock RMS Manuals - Refer to the official Rock Manuals for guidance on built-in features and how to configure them for your needs.
• Signature Documents - Embed digital waivers and consent forms directly in your registration.

Overview of the Process

In the sections below, we’ll walk through a step-by-step strategy from announcing camp to getting everyone home safe. Each item is anchored for easy navigation—click to jump directly to the section you need:

1. Registration: Getting everyone signed up
2. Group Placement: Getting everyone on the Bus
3. Printable Reports: Keeping everyone Healthy

Step-by-Step

Once camp registrations open, one of the first questions families ask is how to manage the cost—and whether scholarships are available.

Scholarships

While we’ll only touch on that here, we cover it in depth in our blog: Optimizing Camp Discounts: A Streamlined Scholarship Process. If you’re considering offering scholarships, that article explains how to add customizations that automate the approval process and generate discount codes based on the awarded amount. It’s definitely worth reviewing as you plan your approach.

Signature Documents

Most activities like camps and retreats require signature documents for legal coverage. Fortunately, if you're using the Obsidian Registration Entry block, embedding signature documents directly into the registration is simple. Everything—from signing and emailing a copy to the registrant to tracking completed documents—is built right into Rock.

Payments & Tracking (Enhancement Option)

Another key decision with camp registrations is how to handle payments. Because camps often come with a higher price tag, it’s common to allow participants to make a minimum payment up front, with the remainder due later. As camp approaches, you can send Payment Reminders directly from the registration to prompt attendees to pay their remaining balance.

If you're using the Obsidian Registration Entry block, you also have access to the new Payment Plan feature, which offers added flexibility. Keep in mind that not all Financial Gateways support Payment Plans, and tracking who has paid what can still be tricky—especially when scholarships come into play.

To make this easier, we’ve built a few custom tools. One block, added to the registration instance page, provides visibility into total payments and scholarship usage.

Another block, placed on the registration home page, lets you click into a registration and quickly see which individuals still owe a balance.

These tools make it easier to manage finances while continuing to provide a great camp experience for everyone. You can find more details about these custom blocks in our blog called: Fee Tracking: Simplifying Outstanding Registration Amounts Due. 

If you have questions about some of our custom tools you can start the conversation by clicking "Contact Us" below.

Check-In

When the first day of your camp or retreat arrives, it’s usually a whirlwind—buses lining up, luggage piling high, last-minute forms being signed, and parents waving goodbye. In the middle of it all, how can you be sure everyone is accounted for before the buses roll out?

That’s where Check-In becomes your best friend.

By configuring your registration to auto-populate registrants into a Check-In Group, you can take the guesswork out of arrivals and ensure no one gets left behind.

To set this up:

• Create a group linkage between the registration and a Check-In Group
• Assign a URL slug to your registration instance

Once registrants are placed into groups, they’ll be automatically included in your Check-In Group—making that first day run a whole lot smoother.

With Check-In, you can:

• See who has arrived in real time
• Follow up quickly with no-shows before departure
• Print check-in labels with cabin or bus assignments (discussed below)

Bus's & Cabins

If you’re dividing registrants into cabins or assigning them to buses, you’ll want to set up Group Placement using the tools outlined in the Rock RMS Manuals.

This tool is especially helpful once the “Actually, can I stay with my friend in Cabin B?” requests start rolling in. It helps manage assignments with less headache—and more accuracy.

Once you arrive at camp, your well-organized digital registration might suddenly feel useless—especially when you’re trying to find a parent’s phone number or allergy information, and the stunning, remote location means you’ve only got one bar of Wi-Fi.

We get this question all the time:

That’s where printable reports save the day. Having key info in hand can make a huge difference when internet access is limited. The three reports we’re asked for most often are:

• Cabin Rosters – For leaders to know who’s in their group
• Registrant Info Sheets – With emergency contacts and basic details
• Nurse’s Report – Including allergies, medications, and health notes for each camper

Cabin Roster

Cabin rosters can be printed from your Group Placement groups using a basic Roster Merge template. Each roster includes the cabin name and a list of everyone assigned to it—making it easy for leaders to confirm who’s where and start learning names from day one.

Registrant Information (Enhancement Option)

Sometimes the person in charge needs quick access to a camper’s emergency contacts, activity restrictions, or other key details. A printed copy of each registrant’s information—formatted for a binder or folder—makes that easy. These printouts are organized alphabetically and end each registrant on a separate page, so details stay clear and easy to find.

Nurse's Report (Enhancement Option)

The last thing the camp nurse wants to do is wrestle with spotty Wi-Fi to track down critical info—or send someone searching for the one person who knows it. Instead, equip your nurse with a printed notebook that includes each camper’s emergency contacts, allergies, medications, and other medical details from the original registration. Everything they need, right at their fingertips.

For both the Registrant Information and Nurse’s Report, we can add a simple Print button that generates the PDFs with all the details collected during registration. These printouts pull directly from the data your registrants provided—no extra work required. 

Want to add this to your registrations? Contact us below—we’d love to help.

From check-in to cabin rosters to nurse-ready reports, streamlining your camp and retreat processes can make a huge difference for your team and your attendees.

Have a process that’s working well for your camps or retreats? We’d love to hear about it! Share your ideas with us on social media—they might just inspire someone else.

Not ready to share? No problem! Give us a follow to keep the ideas coming.

Looking Ahead

Next month’s blog will introduce two new tools we’re rolling out at the Rock RMS Conference. One helps you see things in a whole new way, and the other makes it easier to stay connected wherever you are. Curious? We’ll share all the details right after the conference.