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.
We are now cashless and the cafe in our venue is cashless too. For PWYD events we would have option for customers to PWYD before they come when they book their ticket and then for any who are paying after, keep our boxoffice open to take card payments. We also have a mobile pdq terminal to add as extra. I would add though that our PWYD events are for fairly experimental stuff so we wouldnt run that kind of event if it were going to be for a sell out performance. So we are only looking at about 200 people max (if no one at all were to have paid online before) and in view of those to pay poss being split up into parties of 2 or 3, would result in about 100 card transactions maximum, which split over 3 terminals doesnt take that long if audience are coming out in dribs and drabs.
If we were to take cash now (post covid) anywhere on our venue, one of our team would now have to go down to the bank themselves to bank it. Which to be honest, probably costs more to send the member of the staff to the bank than the value of the money that they are taking down there! Our customers have got used to it, even the "cash generation" individuals - we rarely get any negative feedback. Had we done it prior to covid it might have been a different story.
Thank you Lianna! That is one of our thoughts as well--several places on campus are cashless. I appreciate your insight!