After months of social-distancing and live-streaming-only worship, it is exciting to hear the conversations about safely re-opening. Two weeks ago we started getting calls about using our registration system for reservations to help manage re-opening at 25% to start.
You could do it, but the original (still available) approach required entering everyone's name. Knowing this upgrade would be really helpful during this season we put aside a few things and focused last week on making the upgrade. We released it last Thursday and did a short email to clients on Friday.
The Knowledge Base article, "How do I set up reservations for groups of people", has the details. The bottom line is that we added an option to the dropdown responses for a registration attribute to allow a registrant to select the number of additional people they are bringing. Basically, like an online reservation at a restaurant, I register my information and then how many are in my party. It looks like this.
If you are using this feature, be sure you read this Knowledge Base article on "What is the best way to manage recurring events". You don't want to create a new registration each week, this article will help you learn how to re-use the registration. By the way, this is a really helpful practice for less frequent but recurring events like New Member's class and Youth Camp registrations.
If you are looking for a way to take reservations, give Churchteams a try. Even if you are happy with another software that doesn't offer this functionality, why not do a 30 day free trial? Just follow the instructions in this blog to set up your reservation system for a few weeks. By the time your free trial is over, hopefully you will be fully re-opened. And we would have had the opportunity to have played a little part in it.
Serving the Lord by serving you.