Level Up Your Registration System with These 5 Advanced Features (Part 3)

20 min · Olivier Rousseau & William Rochford · Apr 28, 2026

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About this episode

Choosing the right registration software matters for any sports and leisure organization. In Part 3, the last episode of the series, Olivier Rousseau and William Rochford cover five advanced features a registration platform should have to make daily operations easier. They walk through waivers parents can sign without creating an account, ticketing for events, a point of sale at the front desk, gift certificates, and automated space and court rentals.

What we discuss

Waivers parents can sign quickly, without creating an account Ticketing and registration for events, like end-of-year shows A point of sale at the front desk that's connected to your registrations Selling gift certificates without extra admin work Automating space and court rentals Final advice for comparing registration platforms Resources mentioned Best Class Management Software? 6 Must-Have Features Before You Buy (Part 1) 5 More Must-Have Features Your Registration Software Should Have (Part 2) Activity Messenger digital waivers Activity Messenger online ticketing Activity Messenger point of sale Activity Messenger gift cards Activity Messenger contracts and rentals Book a free demo of Activity Messenger Follow Olivier on LinkedIn About the hosts Olivier Rousseau co-founded Activity Messenger after spending 13 years running a kids' sports program that served 4,000 families. William Rochford is Activity Messenger's product expert. Want to share your story or ask a question? Email olivier@activitymessenger.com.

Full episode transcript

Read the full transcript

Intro[0:00] If you're listening to this, you may be in the market for a new registration platform. Either you're switching to a new one or you're looking for your first ever registration platform to help you run your sports and rec business. And in this third and final episode, we want to dive even deeper in things. And the whole point here is we always want to sort of project as far as we can so that we can ask the real good questions um and not be disappointed with our final choice in our registration. So stay tuned. Welcome back everybody. So, I hope you[0:42] have your notepads ready to go for another uh five pointers, things to think about on for your sales calls when you are shopping for a new registration platform. I'm here with Oli. How you doing, Oli? Pretty good. Well, amazing. And uh yeah, so let's just jump right on in. First thing we're going to talkWaivers: Quick & Account-Free Signing[1:03] about today is waivers. What do you want to talk to us about waivers? Yeah, I think waivers is one thing that when you kind of you go and shop for registration software, you're like, "Oh, you're signing up for camp, people are signing waivers, medical forms, signing up for gymnastics, sign a waiver, right?" So, it's very standard and you're like, "Oh, that's cool. You got, you know, the waivers are included in the registration process. Makes sense now. Once you start operating, you realize, oh, but I need to sign waivers for all the children coming to this[1:33] birthday party or for this, you know, camp uh outing that we're doing or for this free trial, but then free drop in class. Exactly. But then a lot of your of those software be like, well, you need to create an account and it's super long process just to sign a waiver. So again, it's something that you're not going to think about when you're shopping for a software, but these are small frustrations that will happen um you know, down the line where you need to sign a waiver. So what do you do? You go back to paper forms, you you go add a[2:00] smart waiver app that you don't really need, just needed for certain context. Um so how do we do that? Does your software have that? Does it have the ability to sign a waiver without creating an account like you would again in a software like Smart Waiver? Um that's that's a really important question to ask cuz you want to streamline that. You want to put a QR code at the front desk when people are coming in for a birthday party. They can just scan, scan, scan, sign the waiver. You know you're good. And by making it easier, it not only[2:27] it's going to assure you that people sign it. If you have to wait in line and do it by paper, maybe somebody skips the line, just walks in or if you have to create an account, they forget. So, you want to be able to make it so easy that people will sign it and you know you're covered in every way, but they don't have to create an account. They just fill out the waiver, sign it, and it's done. And then after the free trial, they want to sign up, then it's okay to have an account. It's not the end of the world. But if you're, you know, you're running an event, you're running[2:52] something, you want people to kind of walk in as as quickly as possible, get the best experience and not start with a frustration. H I got to create another account just to sign a a waiver really like that doesn't start the experience really well, right? So I think it's important to ask that question.Ticketing & Event Registration[3:08] Absolutely. All right. The next topic is a really exciting one and I think most people when they're thinking about registration platform are like ah yeah well you know for those end-of-year concerts you know you have like dance organizations uh a whole bunch of um different sports programs will have some sort of you know performance event at the end of of the season or a competition something like that and then you're finding yourself having to do a ticketed event and so people are like okay we'll go to Eventbrite la But[3:39] there's actually great advantage to being able to do that right in your registration software. You know, one example of that that just comes to mind is, you know, you want to invite the parents of your students first. Yeah. So, you want to automate that email, invite them to the ticketed event, whether it's paid or free, doesn't matter. Um, and you're tracking attendance for that event. So what are some other things we can Yeah, I think the first two top of mind[4:06] are another tool. You mentioned that Eventbrite. Do I really have to learn another tool now? Your staff has so you want it in the same tool. And then when it comes to ticketing sales, whether it be Eventbrite or any other ticket sale uh software, a lot of times there's no monthly fees, but the ticket fee is extremely high. Sure, you can pass it on to clients, but you want a software the registration software usually that the transaction fees are much lower than events. So you can save on that even if you and you can still push it to the clients but you can[4:32] save a big chunk there. So those are two things another software higher fees why would I want to get into that right? So can my software do that? Again you don't want to have to an account creation. You want grandma to be able to easily sign up and purchase a ticket without having to go through this whole gymnastics of creating an account. So that's important. And then also okay when you buy a ticket you want the features that you would find in Eventbrite. Do you want a ticket to be I can purchase multiple tickets for my whole family. I get an individual ticket that I can scan[5:00] at the front desk very easily, right? Maybe seat assignments if you are in a in a place where you have different seats where people can pick and choose their seat, right? Different pricing for seniors and for kids than for adults, right? So, being able to have all those things, asking those questions and and a lot of times people be like, "Yeah, but it's one event a year." Yeah, but you know how much planning goes behind that event? You know, I'm not I don't have to tell you it it's months of planning. So, why also learn another software? Why[5:28] do it, you know, cash at the front door when it you know, many people won't show up or you know, just long lines at the front desk? Well, how can you streamline that event to make sure you know the the kids and the competition, they have the best experience possible and the parents coming in can do it really easily. So, I think that's it's really important to consider having it in your as well as an option in your registration software. Absolutely. And that's also, you know, the people coming into that event. That's that's a list that you're[5:54] building. And so, you know, maybe there's maybe there's somebody who brought their friend who's going to come and now you can tell their friend, "Hey, next session starts at this time." And there's a whole bunch of things you can do. Everything just kind of chains, right? When when it's all integrated into one place.POS at the Front Desk[6:10] Speaking of integration, often times these kinds of ticketed events will, you know, you can have a front desk, you can sell chips, you can sell drinks, you can sell all kinds of things. And well, why not then have a built-in POS system, uh, you know, so point of sale where you can scan your items, point of sale, or you can just click within the software to add them to an invoice and then just create invoices right on the spot. Yeah, this is like a superpower. Yeah. And I think point of sale is is super important. Um I think it's, you know, we're we're selling services that[6:46] are mostly registered online, right? So we're not a store that absolutely needs a point of sale. Exactly. So a lot of times dance studios, swim schools, you know, a gymnastics club won't have a point of sale. And the simple reason behind that is just there's not enough going on, right? But there is enough in a sense, right? So, if you have a little coffee shop, if you have you want to sell water bottles, you want to sell um you know merchandise. Yeah. Or just equipment, you know, I remember um[7:12] what's it called? Yeah. Yeah. Swim swim swim swim gear. Yeah. Then we I needed something and I had to buy it and it was only cash and there was no, you know, POS. There was it was just like one of those things I was walking into a pool. I was like, I forgot it. Let me purchase it. So, everybody has a bit of it, but sometimes not enough to purchase this whole system, right? So again, can your registration software have that option? The features where you can have an iPad at the front, a little printer, a little, you know, just opens up the cash[7:38] and it's super easy to do where you can do that on the daily and then on the events when you're selling flowers, you're selling chips, you're selling, you know, coke and all that stuff. That one big event, you actually have a system in place that's really that you've used and if you have extra tickets available, 100% you can sell those on on location, too. And then you can sell more, right? And then you can have actually increase your revenue because you have a good system that's efficient, right? It's not just a[8:00] long line of people. You can actually go through it really efficiently. So I think there's there's a lot of advantages of kind of having those things built into your to your software. And then just an idea that I heard of a of a client I thought it was so good. So they had a competition, right? Uh they were selling tickets for the competition. So we had sold them the software and then they were like, "Well, you know what? At these competitions, we sell flowers where parents or grandparents can purchase flowers to give to the artist or the the, you know,[8:28] the athlete at the end of the competition. And she's like, "What if I pre-sold them? What if as you're purchasing tickets, you can also buy flowers because you have a system in place, right?" And what they found out is they were able to a collect the money up front. So, it was nice to have the money to purchase the flowers instead of just, you know, fronting that money shot in the dark. Yeah. And then they knew exactly or they knew a lot more how many to purchase, right? Because they knew they had 200 flowers already[8:53] pre-sold. So they're like, "Okay, I'm not going to purchase." You know, I can say, "Okay, that many people are going to want to purchase the day of, but I know already how many people have pre- purchased." Right? So these little things go a long way for the experience from A to Z from that parent. And they're just like, "Wow, this was so seamless. I bought tickets for grandma. I got flowers. I showed up, tapped my card, got a bag of chip, got a Coke, and watched my child perform." And it's just the the entrance wasn't overflowed of people waiting is just super seamless.[9:20] Like it just makes you look the part, you know, makes you really at a next level for for your experience and your in your events. Yeah. And then you have everyone in the same system, all your contacts. You send an email post-event. Maybe you add a few pictures of the event, say, "Thank you so much for coming." You uh attach a survey form to that. Say, you know, how did you enjoy the event? And boom, you have testimonials. You have all the stuff we talked about last episode. Um, so there's a lot there's a[9:47] lot you can do with these integrations here. This episode is sponsored by Activity Messenger, an online registration software I helped build after spending more than a decade managing kids sports programs and dealing with outdated, disconnected tools that slow everything down. I know the frustration of using a bunch of old tools that don't sync, don't scale, and definitely don't make life easier. Activity Messenger is built to fix that. Our goal is to be your all-in-one operating system, modern, mobile first, and to simplify your[10:18] entire workflow. Want to check it out? Visit activitymessenger.com to book your free demo. Now, let's get back to the show. All right. And um so we'reGift Certificates Made Easy[10:28] going to sort of go into a topic that I absolutely cannot segue into, and that's gift certificates. Um, so yeah, having uh really flexible gift certificates and one thing that's really cool too is off is the gift certificates that allow your clients to send that gift certificate to someone else. Yes. So, how does that work? Yeah. Well, first off, I would say one thing like, have you ever gone to a shop to buy, you know, a t-shirt or anything like that that doesn't offer gift[11:02] certificates? Like it almost always has it. It's extremely rare nowadays. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's like Yeah. You want to be able to sell or a restaurant that doesn't have offered gift certificates. It's like it's a place where people are expecting it. But in the sports and leisure in the service business, it's very rare. It's actually rare where you can purchase a gift certificate. And I think there's a huge advantage there. There's a huge opportunity there where people kids have a lot of toys. So a lot of more and more people are like, I want[11:26] to give that child an experience. It could be a sports, a dance, a music class, right? Let's let's have grandparents that are like, I want to be involved and offer an experience instead of a toy. They have a million toys, right? So, why not promote gift cards? Offer gift cards at your at your place and tell parents you should ask this from grandparents for your child, right? Um, and I think it's a great opportunity before the holidays to kind of get some cash up front,[11:50] right? Because people are buying gift cards and then that gift card is used much later on. So, you're actually doing a lot of cash flow, which is really good. And it's just a nice opportunity to buy a gift card for a friend, for a family member, and things like that. But as you were saying at the beginning, find a software that does it so you don't have to find another software for gift cards. I've seen people have a specific software for gift cards. It's like or still doing it on paper, right? Cuz you know, it's not you're not selling enough. But if your software has[12:16] it has it in place, it's really cool that you can sell it. But then one thing I really like about it is if you're going to buy it online. So I buy you a gift card, Will, and I say, "I want to buy you a $100 gift card for, you know, this type of program. I want you to come do jiu-jitsu with me." Right? So I purchase it, but your birthday's in two weeks. Right? When I purchase it, I can actually go in and say, "I want this to be sent to Will. Put your email in. Put a note. Hey, Will. Happy birthday. Come do." Right? That's a should I should have found should have[12:47] said something else. But um and then have that the ability as I'm purchasing the gift card to schedule it out on your birthday, right? Yeah. So what a beautiful thing, right? You're you know, you know, especially for now where I'm asking you to come to a class with me, may not be the same thing, but if you have a friend that's living, you know, 7 hours away, you don't see them a lot, you don't have the ability to get go in person, so cool to send them a gift card on their birthday in that way. Um so yeah, I think those[13:13] are little things that people should implement. I'm not saying you're going to sell that many, but whatever you sell is just such a such a such a nice add-on to your business, right? And like it's also something that you can promote, you know, so you can promote that gift card and tell people that, hey, you can do this. You can like schedule that gift card because your clients won't know to do that uh by default, you know, you have to tell them, but that that could also help sell a bit more gift cards. And I think it's such a great gift, too, you[13:41] know, like from a grandparents perspective, from a parents perspective. I think I've said this before on another episode, but man, my kids, they just get so many toys and like my house is just full of plastic. Just yesterday morning, I stepped on a piece of Lego. It's like, oh, I'm so tired of it. But an experience, get them out of the house, get them to spend their energy. And you know, these these activities are they're expensive. We'll just, you know, often times so, um, to have that extra financial help is is also really really[14:08] cool from a parents perspective. So, I will say that. Um, cool. Hey, we're just breezing rightSpace & Court Rentals Automation[14:15] through this. So, this is our final point. And, you know, we're getting more and more nitpicky here towards the end, you know, so this might not apply to everyone, but something interesting to think about when you, you know, own a space. Maybe sometimes some people rent a space, but if you own a space, um, you know, uh, rentals are very very very interesting, uh, for just padding the revenue on a business. Some some businesses have a lot of rentals. So, um, what are things to think about here? Uh, yeah, I think so. We have a lot of[14:48] clients, you know, when I get on sales calls, sometimes people are like, "Rentals are a big thing." And they'll talk about it during the call. So, they want to automate it. They want it to be super simple for clients or citizens to go book a specific space, a court, uh, a uh, a gym, a community center. So, it's important to have those those features in. You want to ask the the the platform, but there's a few things, right? A lot of times it's not super user-friendly and they don't have the capacity to build the rules so they can actually let the citizen or the client[15:17] do the whole booking themselves, right? Cuz like I get a lot of calls where people like I want to do the booking but I control it. So, I show them the features on how they can admin control it, but I'm always like, look, I also have the option of like, you do all that stuff in advance. And as soon as you've done all your bookings, whatever spots are left, showcase them, right? And build in some rules where somebody can't book if you know, if it's a big hall, they can't book two days in advance, right? Cuz you need time to prep. Or you don't know if that hall will be booked[15:44] months in advance. So, you don't allow people to book it, you know, 2 months. It's 30-day rolling schedule, right? So, you can only book within the next 30 days. So, when you have those little rules that really follow exactly how you want to do it, it's a lost opportunity not to do it because people have to phone in to maybe rent something, then you have to look on a calendar. I've had people saying it's a paper calendar. People phone in, they're like, "Oh, we" and then somebody else didn't put it and there's booking conflicts. So, have it all structured in[16:11] your software, but the features need to be there. So, ask tell them about the rules and then let them show you kind of what the the platform does and make sure that the the all those things are there. So if you've got all that flexibility in terms of configuring your parameters, you know, when can people book, how much time in advance, how much time after, how much time can they cancel, all that stuff just like configured in the platform and you block those resources for the classes that you're giving in those spaces.[16:38] Um, and then your calendar just basically automatically populates all of the free spaces. um that that basically you know uh obey all those rules that you've put into place and that's in a sense almost free money like you know yeah it's a really good revenue generation it makes it easy for clients to like every time I have to phone in somewhere I'm like do I really want to do I really want to phone in right and then make a reservation if I can do it online I prefer to do it online so I think more you'll get more bookings[17:11] because of that but then also we're talking about rules what about member non-member pricing citizen non noncitizen pricing. Uh early bird, what if you're renting, you know, uh indoor kind of tennis clubs? Well, like those those courts will be more expensive during the winter than in the summer. So, can you change your pricing across the year in your system, right? So, all these little questions should be asked because if you can configure it the exact way that you want it, well, then you can actually put it out there to the public to book, right? And that[17:40] makes a massive difference in your revenue. And then now we're talking for people who do a lot of that. But what if you're right now you're finishing this and you're like you're a small dance studio and you're pretty full all the time. You only have four hours a week that you could actually rent. Are you really going to get a software for that? Are you really going to but that's money. You're paying rent. You're paying electricity. Why not offer it up and maybe make a few hundred bucks a week more because you have people coming[18:04] into your studio, seeing your location, maybe signing up for an event, for a program, right? So, a lot of those maybe softwares that don't have that, again, you're probably not looking for it, but then that's a revenue possibility right there because the software does it, right? And just that feature can pay for the software almost the entirety of 100% 100%. It can really be enough money per month to to to pay the software and it's an afterthought in your conversation on the sales call. Yeah.[18:30] Right. It's actually so it's these things can really pay for the software but you have to ask a question um you know upfront when you're when you're discovering products right so yeah and so that's why you know weOutro[18:41] encourage you to think about these things even if you never thought about doing rentals of your space you know there could be some really nice advantages to it so um there you go we really do hope that was helpful that was like a 15ish sort of things to think about um we are very aware that you know like not every single point is going to apply to every single person or business listening to this podcast. But we hope that it was able to stimulate some ideas, maybe some things that you hadn't thought about on your own uh end. And so hopefully this was useful. We want to[19:13] hear your ideas. So let us know. Uh we want this to be a conversation, not just us talking to each other, you know, and and and and you guys just, you know, passively listening. We want this to be a conversation between all of us. So, let us know uh how you like this uh series of episodes. And if you have any idea for future episodes or things we missed in this list, uh just let us know and we're ears wide open. So, with that, we'll see you on the next episode. Bye-bye, everybody.

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