Hi all!
Hope everyone is doing well (or as well as we all can be) in this new semester! I was wondering if any of your Box Offices are cashless? If so, how was that transition? Recently we had to go through a several month process to get one customer who paid with cash a refund--so much red tape! There are also always going to be issues with reconciliation with so many people in/out of the cash drawer. Cash also doesn't make up a large percentage of our sales. The only concern I have is that it would make inaccessible to certain patrons and I do not want to alienate anyone who wants to attend our performances! I would appreciate anyone's advice/thoughts/opinions!
Best,
Olivia A.
Our new ED wants us to go cashless. I am very much against it. He says it is to protect the students but then he wants there to be much more supervision of them. I am against it for the exact reason you stated. It could make our performances inaccessible to under-resourced individuals. I would never want to turn someone away because of it. It is such a small part of our sales too!! We have maybe brought in $50 this year in cash. Even pre-pandemic it was such a small amount. However, we have run into the same problem with refunds. Cash and check refunds have to go through at least three campus departments which does cause quite the delay. Even though I have explained the process to patrons they still call once a week to ask where their refund is. Cash is even harder because, before the pandemic, we may not have attached a name to the order if they walked up the night of the show. That isn't a problem now since we have to get contact info for contact tracing.
I'll also add, I'm not sure we could ever go checkless. We have put subscriptions on hold for now, but I would say at least 50% of our subscriptions are paid with a check. I think our patrons would mutiny if we stopped taking checks!! Our demographics are very attached to their checkbooks.