GymBC makes a significant, positive impact for members

Introduction

Flip City Gymnastics is a non-for-profit gymnastics club in British Columbia with over 800 members and 38 staff members. Every year, they host several provincial events such as the Artistic and Trampoline provincial championships.

Sherri and the Flip City team were looking to simplify event ticket sales and move everything online. They chose Activity Messenger to sell tickets online, alleviate lines at the admissions booth and mitigate risk of cash payments.

The Situation

Every year, Flip City gymnastics hosts two provincial championship events. Historically, tickets had always been sold using cash at the admissions booth. Sheri wanted to simplify the process by moving all ticket sales online.

With hundreds of spectators expected over the three day weekend, it was important to find a system that could:

• Sell tickets in advance 
• Help alleviate volunteers work 
• Allow for different types of ticket prices
• Simplify reconciliation

The Solution

A long time Activity Messenger customer, Flip City started using it for event ticket sales in March 2022.
 

This allowed them to

• Move 100% of their sales online (pre-sale & at the door)
   
• Use a QR code at the door so multiple people could buy tickets
• Make purchasing a ticket via mobile phone simple
• Simplify reconciliation
• Reduce administrative tasks, alleviate front desk congestion

Cost and time savings

The benefits of this solution have resulted in immediate cost & time savings. 

“The amount of admin time it would take to process the cash through a weekend, reconcile and then take it to the bank was huge. This platform easily has paid for itself. "

Of course, saving time is always an advantage but another aspect they wanted to help was the risk of managing 30K of cash payments over a weekend.

“You just don’t know. This money could go walking. You just don’t know what could happen. We’re putting the trust in our volunteers and this mitigates the risk of theft.”

Frictionless for the client

Moving to a new way of selling tickets, it was important that the process be frictionless for clients during the pre-sale and at the door. 

“I love how we were able to keep it as simple as possible for the person buying a ticket. With little information to fill in and a single step to complete the purchase”

Alleviating front desk congestion

On the operations side, Sheri was hoping that taking sales online would also help with lineups on the day of the event.

“Purchasing tickets using the phones and the QR code was a game changer. We have many people buying tickets at the same time instead of a lineup of people waiting for their turn”

Volunteers trained in minutes

The days before the event are always hectic. With so much going on and most of the people helping being volunteers, having a solution that volunteers could be trained on in no time made a big difference.

“I really think Activity Messenger is the only way to go. For the ease of use and the time saved. But also the fact that the staff & volunteer training requirements are so minimal”

Easier reporting

Reporting was always very difficult with cash payments. Activity Messenger helped save hours of work and many frustrations:

“The reporting was so easy after the event. Being able to export a spreadsheet and see exactly what ticket types we have sold took no time. It saved us hours of reconciling cash payments and bringing them to the bank”

The future

After using Activity Messenger for two events in 2022, Sherri can’t envision a world without it. 

“There is a small administrative cost to the solution but it ends up being such a cost saving when we look at time and energy we usually spend on manual tasks. Definitely recommend this to anyone selling tickets for sporting events ”