The operating reality for local councils
A local council is a public operator with a wide remit. It runs aquatic centres and leisure facilities with bookings, memberships, casual entry and point of sale. It delivers community programs across many sites. It carries a large fixed-asset base, from pool plant and buildings to play equipment, all of which has to be maintained and accounted for. And it governs through committees and a council that meet, decide and record those decisions. Each of those functions usually lives in its own system.
The cost of that fragmentation is steep for a public operator. Facility activity is exported to finance by hand. Maintenance is tracked in spreadsheets, separate from the asset register. Committee papers live in a shared drive. Building a view across facilities, programs and the asset base means pulling exports together, and councils carry a duty to show that public facilities are well run and well maintained.
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, four products carry the load.
- Complex runs 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, and posts fixed-asset depreciation to the ledger. See asset maintenance for councils.
- Crunch consolidates finance across facilities and program entities with multi-entity consolidation. See finance consolidation for councils.
- Quorum runs committee and board governance, meetings, minutes and resolutions. See it at quorum.cohiva.app.
How the shared data layer changes the work
Because the products share one identity and one data layer, a council operates across operations, maintenance, finance and governance on one platform rather than a set of separate systems.
A booking or casual entry taken in Complex becomes activity Crunch can consolidate, so finance reports usage and income 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. Committee and council decisions recorded in Quorum sit on the same data layer as the operation those decisions govern. One identity ties access and records together across the products.
A normal month across the council
Picture a month at a council running several facilities. At the aquatic centres, residents renew memberships, book lanes and programs, and pay at point of sale through Complex, with casual entry taken at the door. That activity is captured as it happens and consolidates into the finance view in Crunch across all facilities, rather than waiting for an end-of-month reconciliation.
Across the same month, the facilities team works through preventive maintenance in Control: pumps, filtration, HVAC and play equipment each carry a schedule and a work order history, and depreciation on those assets posts to the ledger so operations and finance read the same asset. When the relevant committee meets to consider a facility budget or a maintenance program, the agenda, minutes and resolutions are run and recorded in Quorum, on the same data layer as the activity and assets being discussed.
Why integration matters for public operators
Councils answer to budgets, to auditors and to their communities, and each of those is easier to serve when the underlying systems connect. A question such as how a facility or a program is performing, or whether an asset has been maintained, draws on activity, asset records and finance that, in most councils, sit apart. On one data layer, the consolidation in Crunch joins facility activity from Complex with asset cost from Control, and the governance record in Quorum captures the decisions behind them, so reporting on a facility, a program or the whole portfolio comes from one source.
That shared layer also scales with the council. Adding a facility or a program does not mean standing up another disconnected stack. The new entity joins the same identity and data layer, so operations, maintenance, finance and governance stay connected as the portfolio grows.
Built for multi-site public operators
Cohiva suits councils that want facility operations, maintenance, finance and governance connected across many sites. As the portfolio grows, those functions stay on one data layer rather than splintering into per-site tools.
If you run council facilities, start with the Complex overview, then see how asset maintenance and finance consolidation fit your sites. For a view centred on recreation, see the councils and recreation solution, and operators focused on pools can see the aquatic centres solution.