As the leader of a Parks and Recreation Board, your duties are varied and ever-changing. Along with planning and evaluating goals and projects for your department, you’re tasked with developing more efficient, engaging and profitable recreational and community services programs. With so many moving pieces and goals to hit, it’s tough to meet the needs of target segments of your community across facilities. And that’s where the right recreation management software can help.
Learn how to empower your department to build stronger communities, deliver better customer service and make facility transactions simple with point of sale software and other technology tools for Parks and Recreation Departments.
Organize & Streamline Your Facility Transactions
Today’s customers expect fast, secure and friction-free transactions when purchasing or renting goods. This standard for convenience extends to gyms, swimming pools, entertainment and athletic facilities as well. Whether facility visitors are looking to book a room, rent pool workout equipment or simply buy an energy drink from the snack bar, it’s essential to make these transactions as easy and flexible as possible.
With standard recreational facilities, customers make payments for goods or services directly from the front desk via a dedicated cash drawer. While this system can work, it’s also subject to a few key problems:
Cash Handling Errors
Conventional transitions with manual methods and cash registers are prone to human error, both on the part of customers and facility staff. Mishandled exchanges of money (especially in large sums) create inefficiencies and errors that are difficult to trace and correct.
Limited Tracking Capabilities
When transactions are handled with paper bills and books are kept in Excel docs, it can be more difficult to accurately track purchases, inventory and vendors. This limitation deprives your department of valuable data and insights, which can support better customer service and inventory management
Inflexibility & Inconvenience
Not all visitors have the time (or patience) for transactions at the cash register, especially when they need to make multiple payments at different points in your facility. Manual transactions limit where, when and how customers pay for the goods and services they need, creating an inflexible process that discourages repeat business.
The demand for more versatile transactions is even more important with current social distancing and capacity restrictions. To keep visitors and staff comfortable and safe, it’s crucial to support fluid, contact-free sales anywhere in your recreation facilities. And that’s a perfect job for recreation management software with a point of sale (POS) system.
How Point of Sale Software Elevates Your Rec Facilities
Point of sale systems make every aspect of facility transactions easier. At a basic level, these solutions keep track of sales: adding up purchases, subtracting returns and recording sales tax to support accurate, dependable bookkeeping. However, the industry’s best park and recreation software offer specialized POS systems that do much more:
Sales Tracking
Dedicated POS systems let you track invaluable details across purchases, including which items, merchandise, services or rentals sell the most and least. These sales numbers can be recorded and contrasted over time or between locations, so your team can understand exactly how different facilities and goods are performing at all times.
Inventory Management
Parks and Recreation POS systems can track a variety of SKU numbers, which makes it easy for staff to ring up customers both quickly and reliably. Some solutions even come with specialized inventory management features that allow you to track the physical location of items. In either case, POS software for Parks and Recreation management gives you deep visibility into how your inventory is being used between locations, allowing for more strategic decision-making and inventory planning.
Customer Management
Most POS systems include built-in customer relationship management features. These tools allow you to quickly enter in visitor information, set up new accounts on demand and track the purchases of individual customers. More advanced POS systems allow you to break down this information down further to see which demographics purchase which products or services! All said, customer management allows you to better understand your audience—and hone in your marketing campaigns to attract more business.
Advantages of POS Systems for Parks and Recreation Management
By managing and organizing all of your department’s transactions, point of sale software empowers your staff to prepare registrations, set more flexible pricing, sell any kind of merchandise and make transactions easier for all parties involved. You can deploy this powerful technology to gain the following benefits:
- Make payments anywhere at your facility
- Combine payments into a single transaction for visitors
- Track purchases & buying behaviors to improve customer service
- Eliminate cash handling errors
- Track and optimize inventory, vendors and gift cards
Make POS Transactions Simple with ACTIVE Network
ACTIVE’s industry-leading recreation management software is the perfect solution to support your Parks and Recreation Department by streamlining facility transactions. We offer a versatile, scalable POS system that’s fully customizable—so you can tweak every detail to match your POS interface needs.
We offer peerless payment processing and data management capabilities with our state-of-the-art Tier 5 data center. Keep your department and visitor data safe, secure and actionable with ACTIVE’s fully compliant software solutions.
Along with taking your POS system to the next level, ACTIVE’s Recreation Management Software brings additional features to help your department streamline operations, maximize participation and engage your community in new and exciting ways, including:
- Program & Activity Registration
- Facility Booking, Operations and Lending/Rental Software
- Membership Management Tools for Rec Centers
- Marketing & Communications Software
- API Integrations
- Reporting & Analytics Features
Connect with our Parks and Recreation Management specialists to learn more about ACTIVE’s selection of recreation management software—and how you can deploy these solutions to reach your department goals, support your staff and better serve your community. Our team will work with you every step of the way to find or build the right technology for your needs.
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