Someone here at Jackrabbit asked me the other day what I believe the key ingredient to increasing productivity in a youth activity center is. Well, ‘the times, they are a changin’ and it seems like everything we knew to be true is a little different these days. 

But, even with a lot up in the air, one element of successful small businesses that is here to stay is automation. When owners, directors and admin are not tied to the front desk performing daily tasks, the ability to take customer service to the next level or get back to teaching becomes a reality.

3 Ways Your Youth Activity Center Can Benefit from Automation

Spend more time with parents, students and staff building relationships

In a time of uncertainty, open communication  between your program and your parents builds trust, which is more important than ever.  Trust leads to enrollment and retention, retention leads to a full class schedule and a full class schedule leads to positive revenue. An owner or director with a strong bond with their staff and instructors typically experiences more loyalty and enjoys a team who has fun, works hard and shares a common goal of success.

Get more time back to focus on marketing and enrollment

As an office manager of a youth activity center, you are often fielding phone calls about trials, tours and class schedules. You’re on the front lines and have a ton of insight into what prospective families care most about. Take the time back to focus on your website, social media channels or even call scripts for incoming registrations.

Take the extra time to educate your community on the role youth activities and arts play in children’s lives

Community meetings, elementary school events and local pediatricians love to have guest contributors in to keep their audiences engaged and informed on the benefits of youth sports, activities and arts. If you were able to get an hour of your day back for community outreach, what kind of impact could that have on your program? 

Now, the question is, what exactly can I automate in my youth activity program? If you’re anything like me, there isn’t much you’re willing to give up control of. *Control freak alert* 

You’re worried that delegating or trusting an app to get the job done is going to mess things up worse than they are now. Take a deep breath and read this one a few extra times: there are tasks you can streamline in your program without giving up total control of the outcome. 

Automate Online Registration with Jackrabbit Class

Streamline operations at your youth activity center by handing over manual paper registration to Jackrabbit’s online class management. Utilize class listings on your website to inform prospective parents exactly which classes are available when and which programs are on a waiting list. 

Free up your front desk staff or office manager to focus more on students and instructor training and let go of those expensive paper registration packets. Online registration is available 24/7 and comes with a Jackrabbit integration specialist to help you build the registration experience you’ve always wanted. 

Automate Billing, Payments and Tuition Processing with Jackrabbit Class

Enable ePayments with Jackrabbit and allow your customers to pay their fees online or in the Parent Portal any time. With flexible discounting and prorating options, you can set up class fees to optimize your revenue and spend less time on check processing and collections. Email statements to families that include details on their multiple class schedules, discounts, and late fees so that your office manager can spend less time on the phone explaining weekly or monthly charges.

Learn More about Jackrabbit’s ePayment Partners

Automate Point of Sale and Inventory Management with Jackrabbit Class

Managing a pro-shop? Chances are you need a staff member or two to ensure inventory is accurate and your customers are having a good purchasing experience. Consider utilizing a Point of Sale system with a credit card reader, barcode scanner and built in inventory reporting to streamline the process and automate a lot of the work your front desk staff is doing during peak class hours. 

Allowing a Point of Sale Software like Jackrabbit Class to handle the sales for you let’s your staff get back to customer service and student engagement. 

Automate Skill, Milestone and Curriculum Development with Jackrabbit Class

These days in your gymnastics gym, swim school or dance studio, it’s not enough to have the best curriculum in your neighborhood, you have to go a little further to prove that your students are learning and building on the skills your instructors and coaches are teaching. Enter: Jackrabbit Skill Tracking. 

Monitor and record each student’s skills right in the Staff Portal, add achievements, notes and even media. Share these directly to each family’s Parent Portal and change the way you connect with your customers for the better.

Automate Staff Time Clock and Payroll with Jackrabbit Class

Some of the best front desk managers I know are still responsible for managing a staff schedule on a clipboard, staff time sheets in a binder and payroll via an excel spreadsheet. 

The amount of manhours this is costing you is one thing. But the sanity your office managers are losing is another all together. 

Ditch the binders of death and take advantage of the tools Jackrabbit Class offers. With staff scheduling, time clock access in the Staff Portal and an integration to Express Payroll, we’ve got you covered. Your staff will get paid while your front desk administrator finds a little more room for productivity in their day.

Learn More about the Express Payroll Integration

Implementation and Training in Jackrabbit Class

It’s scary to start a new project. It’s even scarier to count on a successful software roll out to automate some of your businesses most key processes. We get it. The failure of a software implementation is often directly linked to a poor choice of software or a weak software implementation team at the company you selected. 

Before you decide on a class management software, be sure you’ve identified a company with a dedicated team of Onboarding Representatives, ePayments Team, Online Integration Specialist, Import Support and fully functioning Online Training System. I’ll give you a hint. There’s only one who can offer a level of support guaranteed to get your team setup the right way. 

Yes, I said Guaranteed

Choose a partner in class management like Jackrabbit Class and you won’t look back. Your team will thank you when they connect with classes, students and families in the ways they’ve always wanted to.

Try Jackrabbit free today!