Running a recreation facility is a lot of work, as any parks and recreation employee can tell you. There are so many tasks to complete, in order to effectively boost the well-being of your surrounding communities, while optimizing operations so everything runs smoothly. Having an effective parks and recreation management software solution is the first step towards being able to efficiently manage your organization, but we wanted to explore a very important function that good management software can do for you: automation.

Well-executed automation can free up a lot of time for your employees to work on tasks that need human input and can’t be automated. Here we show you how automation can help you and your organization, by exploring four automated workflows that you can put to use at your recreation facility.

1. Send an Email for a Member’s Birthday

Celebrating your members’ birthdays is a great little detail that helps boost your organization’s customer service. Manually emailing every member on his or her birthday would be a tedious and gargantuan time commitment, but you can automate this little task so that it’s done without any labor input, after the initial setup.

This can be achieved by creating an email workflow that checks a member’s date of birth and triggers the platform to send a template email to the recipient email address on file. The email would contain merge fields – such as first name – for the personalized touch. If you want to get fancy, you can even create different email templates for children, adults and seniors that are selected based on an age range that is calculated by the system.

2. Send an Invoice Email Before a Payment is Due

This is a simple but essential workflow that will save your staff from having to remember when to invoice members. You can create an email workflow, to check when a recurring payment is due and send an email with the invoice as an attachment. Your members will always receive the payment reminder on time and front desk staff can spend time on more productive operational tasks. This can help alleviate the frustrations of delinquent payments, make invoices more efficient overall, and put members on a regular schedule where they always know when to expect and invoice.

3. Create a Waitlist Auto Email Workflow

If your rec facility has a waitlist to join a popular rec volleyball program, for example, you can create a workflow that emails front desk staff, once a spot has opened up. This instant alert will prevent them from having to manually check for open spots, each and every time a prospective registrant drops in or calls on the phone. For recreation teams large and small, this can save a large amount of time for both front desk staff and members alike.

For an example of how to do this in Xplor Recreation, view this help file. You can take the workflow a step further and have the system automatically email waitlisted registrants, when a spot has opened up. This allows them to confirm and/or complete their registration online, without requiring a staff member to help them through the process.

4. Email Maintenance Workers when a Facility Is Booked

One of the gyms in your world-class rec facility has just been booked for basketball, through your online booking and registration portal. The maintenance staff will have to ensure that the lights are on, the doors are unlocked, the basketballs are accessible, the hoop is set at regulation height and there is no other equipment in the playing area. Wouldn’t it be nice to automatically email or SMS them, 30 minutes before the booking, with the exact preparation instructions? This can be achieved, by creating an email or SMS workflow that activates after a booking has been completed.

Not only does this make your team more effective, in greatly reduces the chances of things not being set up on time for the booking. Use this to your advantage and increase the efficiency of your workflow and overall client and member satisfaction.

As you can see, automation can alleviate a lot of the unnecessary workload, while aiding in the effectiveness of your team and facilities. To learn more about how you can optimize your parks and rec operations, check out the specialized functionality of our parks and recreation management software.