For many Children’s activity franchise networks it is a challenge for franchisees to collect, manage and track payments from parents for their children’s attendance.
Some pay by cheque, some by cash, maybe for a number of weeks, some for just a week at a time.
This makes it difficult for franchisees to track exactly which children owe money and how much do they owe. This has an impact on their cash flow and it follows that it affects your revenue too.
Having an online booking system will help structure how and when parents pay for the classes. They can be flexible if you wish to offer that, but in all circumstances they will only allow parents the payment options you wish to provide. The payments are tracked through the payment gateway and this can be used then to update the franchisee’s register, so they do know who has paid and who hasn’t without having to keep them up to date themselves.
An online booking system should also allow parents to manage their own details (so you know their contact details are correct) and see current and historic bookings which will help lighten the administration load.
Once you have a system managing the bookings for the current term, you can then start to look at term renewals, because the booking system should help manage the renewal process for you, reminding parents and directing them to the classes they need to renew. Again this helps improve your customer retention whilst reducing your administration load.
In summary if you do not already utilise an Online Booking system, you need to look at the benefits one can bring, both in terms of improved bookings and reduced administration.
However you need to check that whatever online booking system you select, it is properly set up to handle a franchise network and the additional complexities that involves.
For more information on Azura’s excellent franchise management system click here.
