Conch House Marina Resort

Nestled along Salt Run off the Matanzas River in St. Augustine, Florida, The Conch House Marina Resort is a family-owned waterfront destination with a close-knit culture that keeps both staff and boaters coming back. Ideally positioned along the Intracoastal Waterway, the marina draws a steady stream of transients running up and down the coast alongside a loyal community of monthly and annual slipholders.

With large boats moving in and out daily, the marina team manages a dynamic operation that spans transient reservations, long-term leases, and owner-leased slips. The variety of arrangements - and the volume of activity - demands a system that is organized, flexible, and easy for multiple staff members to work from at once.

Manual Entry and a Shared System That Didn't Scale

Before fully adopting Dockwa, The Conch House Marina ran its operations out of a large handwritten reservation book — one page for every day of the year. When a boater called to reserve a slip, staff would manually record the boat name, captain, phone number, and vessel size by hand. With multiple team members working from the same book, keeping information accurate and up to date was a constant challenge.

Beyond reservations, contracts for monthly and annual tenants were handled manually, credit card transactions had to be entered individually at the end of each month, and owner-leased slips required their own layer of tracking. The result was a process that was time-consuming, difficult to coordinate across staff, and — as Casey put it — "a nightmare."

By implementing Dockwa across reservations, contracts, and payments, The Conch House Marina transformed how the team manages daily operations - replacing a tangle of paper books and spreadsheets with a single, connected system.

Transient boaters now submit reservations directly through Dockwa, allowing staff to quickly confirm bookings and assign slips. Monthly and annual agreements are sent digitally for signature and payment setup, with recurring billing handled automatically.

"I don't have an accounts receivable basically. Everything hits, and it makes it so nice." - Mike Waters, Marina Manager

Owner-leased slips, once one of the trickier parts of the operation to track, are now managed through Dockwa's placeholder feature - color-coded on the marina map so the team always knows which slips are occupied, by whom, and for how long.

Reporting has become another standout for the team. Staff can pull detailed reports showing slip usage, payments collected, and any discounts applied - giving the marina a clear, accurate picture of what they're owed without manual reconciliation at month's end.

Conch House Marina Resort operates with a mix of marina-managed and owner-controlled slips, where individual owners can choose to rent their slip when they're not using it - directly to a boater or through the marina. It's a valuable revenue stream, but without the right tools, tracking occupancy, duration, and payment distribution across those arrangements can get complicated fast.

Dockwa gives the team the visibility to mange it cleanly. Using the marina map's color-coded placeholder system, staff can mark exactly when an owner has rented their slip, to whom, and for how long - keeping the full picture accurate without relying on separate spreadsheets or memory.

"It's made my life a lot easier, especially with the owner slips - being able to track them and do the reporting as well." - Mike Waters, Marina Manager

When it comes time to pay owners out, the work is already done. Dockwa's reporting tools generate detailed summaries showing slip usage, amounts collected, and any discounts applied - so owners get a clear, accurate accounting of what they're owed without marina staff having to spend days on manual reconciliation.

With Dockwa fully integrated into daily operations, The Conch House Marina has left behind the handwritten reservation books, manual credit card entry, and end-of-month reconciliation that once consumed days of staff time. Contracts, reservations, and payments now run through a single system - and the difference is felt across the business.

Billing for monthly and annual tenants run automatically. Transient reservations come in through Dockwa without requiring staff to manually log every detail. Owner slip tracking and reporting, once a layered and time-consuming process, is now a matter of a few clicks. And mistakes - once an inevitable byproduct of a busy, multi-staff manual system - have nearly disappeared entirely.

For Mike, The Conch House Marina Manager, the shift has been tangible: "It leaves me more time to work on dredging, work on some grants...it's made my life a lot easier."

That's the real measure of a system working the way it should - not just fewer errors or faster billing, but a team freed up to focus on the work that moves the marina forward. For a family-owned operation like The Conch House, that means investing in the infrastructure, the community, and the experience that keeps boaters coming back to St. Augustine season after season.