How to Save Time Managing Your Birthday Parties & Group Events

Last week, the CenterEdge team met with clients from all over North America to share best practices, challenges and ideas with each other during our first-ever user conference, Edge 2020.

Our team is busy digesting all the feedback and key takeaways from the event, which we will use to help us develop, deliver and communicate with you for the rest of 2020 and beyond, so be sure to subscribe to the blog so you never miss an update.

One of the most popular sessions was Event Management Tips & Tricks, during which Ashley Sapp, CenterEdge Associate Product Owner, shared a few lesser-known tips to help you maximize your event processes to save time, labor and headaches. Here are a few that stood out the most.

#1. Keep track of key tasks for any event with event milestones.

Project management is no easy feat, but Advantage Groups offers users the ability to set task milestones for an event. This can help your operations team manage those key tasks leading up to, on the day of, or after an event so that you build a consistent party process without forgetting anything.

You can set milestones within Advantage Groups by event type, in relation to the event date. This means that for every new event of that type booked, relevant tasks are automatically assigned in preparation, such as ordering specialty linens, making follow up calls, confirming food and beverage selections, and so on.

In addition to automatic milestones, you can also create them manually in a specific event for those individual tasks you’re only doing for one event. All milestones can be checked off in the individual event booking, and the Outstanding Event Milestones report is a great report that lists all upcoming event tasks due by a certain date. This is an excellent report to set that automatically sends to party staff on a weekly basis to help save you more time.

#2. Communicate important reminders to party planners with automated messages.

Your event sales team is busy, so you can save time while managing communication details by setting up consistent, targeted email messages to send to an event customer leading up to an event.

You can create different email templates depending on event type and set messages with upselling ideas, confirmations, frequently asked questions, thank you’s, referral requests or anything else you routinely communicate before or after an event.

#3. Manage waivers and guest lists with email invitations.

Email invitations are a great way to manage event guest lists and check-ins, and to communicate processes in advance. And, if your facility requires liability waivers, you can include links to online waivers in invitations sent to party guests, saving time at party check-in and setting expectations beforehand.

Guests can RSVP to confirm their attendance, complete any necessary waivers or learn any important information through email. Then, party staff can easily check in guests on a mobile POS tablet at the event. This also makes it easy to add on guests, extra food and beverage needs, and to manage final invoices and payment at the close of the party. And, you can now offer guests nine new invitation templates (for new Advantage webstore users) so that they can send a unique email invitation to their event guests. Your facility can even create custom invitation templates if you choose.

#4. Push value onto cards while in-use.

While your guests are in your facility playing, why not offer them the chance to “fuel up the fun?” Guests can add value or entitlements to player cards or wristbands (may depend on your cashless system provider) – even while guests are using them in the facility. Using Bulk Issue, you’re able to easily add value onto multiple sequential player cards, and then push additional value anytime to one or more cards, without the cards or media being swiped or scanned again. This gives you another chance to boost guest experience as well as party revenue.

Events are a big part of any family entertainment facility, so save time and hassle by trying a few of these tricks.

Interested in the new email templates? Be sure you’ve got the latest webstore version, Advantage Web, so you have access to this and any other cloud-based features as they’re developed. Contact support@centeredgesoftware.com to discuss upgrading if you haven’t already.