Parks and recreation organizations work hard to improve the quality of life for all of their community members. They manage public parks, provide programs to engage with the community, create opportunities for physical exercise, and so much more.
Due to the breadth of their work, parks and recreation organizations require software that helps them be more efficient and effective in their tasks, projects, and operations. To accomplish this, we packed our recreation management software with features that help you provide the best experience for both your staff and your guests. Here are five cool things you didn’t know your rec software could do.
1. Lighting Integration for Facilities
Being eco-friendly is a key point for parks and recreation organizations. By automating lighting for your facilities, you can help save electricity and effectively reduce your carbon footprint. Xplor Recreation’s integration with Musco Sports Lighting and SkyLogix lets the platform automatically calculate sunset times for your location, allowing you to automate in sync with the sun. You can also customize lights in sync with your event schedule. For example, you could set facility lights to automate 10 minutes before an event starts and switch off 10 minutes after the event has ended.
2. Create Facility Maps
Help your guests navigate through your campgrounds, park areas, rec centers, and more, by creating facility maps for your guests to use. One of the prime examples of using this feature is how it works with online reservations. Guests can create facility bookings with a full view of the facility’s location, as well as accessibility and parking for their guests. As parks and recreation organizations are committed to improving the well-being for all, the real-time mobility options help include everyone.
3. Create Automated Workflows
Automation is a must for parks and rec organizations looking to make a significant impact. By automating time-consuming tasks, employees have more time to focus on the essential functions of their business. For example, an automated email workflow can alert front desk staff when a spot has opened up, allowing them to contact waitlist members to add them to the program. Maintenance workers can get instant email alerts with specific instructions when a facility is booked, so they can set up the space for usage. Automation can also help boost your organization’s customer service, by emailing members on their birthday or sending an invoice email before payment is due.
4. Flexible Payment Scheduling
Your visitors can choose whether they pay when they book your services or pay on the actual day of their booking. Multiple options to pay for your services can provide both improved convenience and better customer service. The software can also separate membership due from other fees, such as equipment rentals, meaning someone can pay for their membership first and for the rental later on. Payment patterns can be set up as daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, and more, to better fit the needs of each customer.
5. GIS Integration
Due to the nature of parks and recreation funding, sometimes it’s necessary to have different fee structures that depend on whether the member is a resident or a non-resident. With Esri ArcGIS, you can specify and check for residential boundaries for your contacts. Even without GIS integration, you can manually add resident cities and postal codes to the Residency Setup, so that Xplor Recreation will forgo the residential verification with Esri for the contacts within your manual specifications. This gives your organization more flexibility and control over your pricing, while contributing to data collection and helping you better define your community.
To see how Xplor Recreation can enhance your organization, view the case study on Xplor Recreation's impact on the City of Medicine Hat, Alberta. They use the recreation management software to run their 57 facilities, manage members, and streamline marketing communications.