Romain Guery-OdelinNon-profit · Volleyball club · 2026 · Board member
Bar and meal apps for volunteers
Bar and meals tracked on spreadsheets, cash discrepancies after every match. I designed and deployed three mobile apps — till, stock, admin — tested in the field with the volunteers.
Context
Le Crès Volley-Ball: 122 volunteers, 52 home matches a season, a bar and meals at every match. Many different hands on the same till.
The problem
Tracking was done on spreadsheets filled in afterwards. The result: cash discrepancies nobody could explain, rough stock figures, and volunteers spending their evening counting instead of serving.
What I did
- Observed a match day alongside the volunteers: what they actually do, in what order, under what constraints (hands full, noise, shift changes).
- Designed three mobile apps: a simple till to serve fast, stock management, and an admin app for the board.
- Built and deployed on Firebase: database and hosting in place, no server to maintain.
- Tested in real conditions, fixed things in direct contact with users, as close to the field as it gets.
- Prepared the full roll-out for next season, with volunteers as relays.
The result
A working demonstrator: till, stock and admin run on mobile, with centralised data. On the ground: fewer till and billing errors, and stock tracked automatically instead of recounted afterwards. Roll-out to all volunteers is planned for next season. It is the Forward Deployed Engineer posture applied to volunteering: understand a need on site, build the tool, then make it stick.
Fewer till and billing errors, automated stock tracking, for 122 volunteers and 52 home matches; a working demonstrator, full roll-out planned for next season.