Implementing cashless payment solutions in schools and out-of-school clubs is becoming the norm, and although there was a trend to move to a cashless service before the pandemic hit, post-COVID, the reduction in handling cash due to hygiene reasons, the added convenience of conducting activities online and many other benefits such as saving time, freeing up resources and improving the customer experience has exacerbated the use of automated payment systems.
Here's a summary of some of the reasons why out-of-school clubs and schools should push ahead with cashless payment systems to manage all their services.
Better customer (parent) satisfaction
Parents lead busy lives, are short of time and who has the spare cash nowadays to pay for ad-hoc school activities? Parents want a facility where they can pay on an electronic self-service system, 24/7, with different payment options to suit their needs.
Security
Managing cash means you are prone to losing it and theft is always a threat. An automated payment system means that there is a full audit trail of money coming in and going out. Payments reports are more likely to be up-to-date giving you a timely and accurate view of your financial position.
Additional services
Payment systems have services attached to them, such as reporting and often come with additional functionality such as booking and communication features.
Time savings
It’s time-consuming and creates a lot of admin to collect cash for different activities and manually process your payments, such as banking money, manually invoicing and reconciling payments. Taking payments online means that you can track payments easily in one place. Reports enable you to see all your current financial data such as your income projections and your payments in arrears.
Improve cash flow and reduce debt
With payment systems, there is no need to chase parents’ payments, as you can set up automated reminders, and parents can be prevented from going into debt with the use of an overdraft threshold on their account. Parents can make long-term bookings using instalments so you get an income commitment and a better understanding of your future income.
Please do get in touch if you would like to find out more, or you can book a demo to see how the magicbooking automated payment solutions could work for your after-school club, holiday club or school.