Hello. How can we help you?

Per organisation. The organisation is the business account your staff sign in to, and branches belong to it. If you run more than one site, email the team with the number of branches and they will explain how that is priced.

No. Bringing your families, your product list and your opening balances over from your old POS or your spreadsheets comes with the subscription. The switching page walks the whole move through.

Yes. Send the request to upgrade, downgrade or add an extra tile from the subscription page inside the app, and the PlayArea OS team actions it for you.

Not straight away. A reminder comes before the due date and a three-day grace period afterwards keeps waivers and the POS working. If the account then pauses, everything stays where you left it and paying switches it all back on instantly.

You keep full access to the end of the period you have paid for, and your records are kept safely for a year afterwards in case you come back. Nothing is ever charged after you cancel.

Your country, your currency, your tax rate and the days your week treats as the weekend are all yours, and the rest of the system follows: the POS, the play timers, the waivers, the parties, the passes, the customer records, the stock, the suppliers, the rota, the reports and the books.

No. PlayArea OS runs in the browser on the tablets, phones and laptops you already own, so there is nothing to buy and nothing to install.

One product. The POS, the timers, the waivers, the parties, the passes, the campaigns, the rota, the payroll, the finance and the stock all live in a single browser-based system, sharing one family record and one set of staff logins.

You bring your family list, your product list and your opening balances over from your old POS or your spreadsheets, at whatever pace suits your venue, and go live on a day that suits you. The switching page walks the whole move through.

No. The POS, the play timers, the waivers, the parties, the passes, the customer records, the stock, the suppliers, the rota and the books work the same in any country, and your country, currency, tax rate, weekend days, prices, packages and wording are all set inside the app. Venues in the UAE get the WPS bank file and the MOHRE SIF out of the same payroll run.

The PlayArea OS organisation, a team that builds and runs the product from Dubai. It is published by the organisation rather than by a named individual, and you reach the team at info@playareaos.com.

PlayArea OS has been built in Dubai since 2026, for kids’ play areas, soft-play centres, indoor playgrounds, trampoline parks and family entertainment centres, in the UAE and beyond.

Yes. Email info@playareaos.com with your venue type, city and size and the team will arrange a walkthrough. If you would rather look first, the Try it now button opens the app in your browser and the home page runs a day through it.

You bring your family list, your product list and your opening balances across from your old POS or your spreadsheets, and go live on a day that suits your venue. The switching page walks through the whole move, and the team will help if you would like a hand.

To the same address, info@playareaos.com. Include your organisation name, the branch and what you were doing at the time. Subscription changes such as upgrading, downgrading, adding a tile or cancelling are sent from the subscription page inside the app instead.

They are used to reply to you and to help with what you asked, and for nothing else. The privacy policy explains what PlayArea OS holds and why.

None. Your old POS or spreadsheets keep running while you export, look at what will land, import and enter your opening balances. The only moment that changes anything is the day you move across, and that day is yours to pick, so the switch can land at closing time or on a day the venue is shut.

Yes. A Loyverse export and a spreadsheet of your own both arrive as CSV and go through the same look-before-you-leap step. It is a one-time import to get you started, and your old system stays exactly as it is until you are ready to close it.

As long as your files take. Exporting, checking and importing spread over as many evenings as suit you, and the switch itself happens on the day you pick. A file that needs another pass is a quick correction and a re-run rather than a restart.

Your customer list, your product catalogue and your opening balances for stock, finance and payroll. Families arrive as one record each, the catalogue arrives ready to price in the POS, and your prices and packages come across exactly as they read today.

Yes. Products, packages, add-ons, deposits, VAT rate and currency are all yours, so you recreate your current price list as it stands and change it later whenever your venue needs to. Your waiver wording, your email text and your staff roles are yours to edit in the same way.

No. PlayArea OS runs in any modern browser, so the tablets, phones and laptops you already use are enough. Nothing for staff to install, and nothing for parents to download: they scan a QR code for the waiver, the booking form and the price list.

Reading bills comes with PlayArea OS. All of it runs on PlayArea OS's own AI account, so you never supply or pay for an AI key; the monthly allowances are on the pricing page.

An afternoon. You write your venue's answers in your own words, and turn it on when you are happy with what it says.

Your customer list, your products and your opening balances come in from a spreadsheet or a POS export, and a check report tells you exactly what will land before a single record is written. Switching to PlayArea OS and the migration guide take it step by step.

Never. The off-site copy is made every night for every venue, travelling over an encrypted connection to storage away from the live system, held by a provider that encrypts what it keeps.

Every table your organisation owns. Each file carries a checksum, and a manifest written at the end lists what landed, so a short copy is never mistaken for a whole one. You can ask for a copy of your own data whenever you want it, and the reports export to CSV on any day you like.

They will, because you write them. Every message leaves in your venue's own words, and you can rewrite any of them whenever the season, the packages or the mood changes.

Yes, from a spreadsheet export, and you can start sending as soon as they land. The switching guide covers the move step by step.

That is the Emailer. Name the families it should reach, write the message, and it leaves from your venue's own email address — a seasonal offer, a new package, a change of opening hours. It runs alongside the messages that send themselves, on the same family records.

Yes. Export the families you have now to a spreadsheet, and the import reads it back to you before a single record is written, so nothing lands unseen. The switching guide walks through the whole move.

It stays yours. Your whole organisation is copied off-site every night, over an encrypted connection to storage that encrypts what it keeps, and you can ask for a copy of your own data whenever you want it. The backups and migration page has the detail.

No. A parent taps your link or scans the code, signs in the browser on their own phone, and that is the end of it. Nothing to install, on their side or yours.

Import your customer list first and returning families are already on file on your opening day, ready to sign your wording on their next visit. The switching page sets out the order to do it in.

Your opening balances, suppliers and catalogue transfer from whatever you keep them in now, and nothing is written until you have looked at it. The switching page walks the move through, and the opening balances guide covers the accounting side of it.

It stays yours. The reports export to CSV whenever you want them, and every night your records are copied off-site, over an encrypted connection to storage that encrypts what it keeps.

It reads your own trading, so it fills in as your weeks on PlayArea OS add up, and the rota and the weekend stock order can lean on it well inside your first season.

Your customer list, your products and your opening balances import from a spreadsheet or a POS export, checked and reported back before anything is written. Switching to PlayArea OS walks through the whole move.

Yes. Alerts reach you by email or as a pop-up in the browser, on the phone, tablet or laptop you already carry. Nothing to install and nothing to buy.

Yes. Every POS, tablet and laptop in the building that is signed in shows the alert, because the whole thing runs in a browser. Nothing to install and nothing extra to buy.

One sentence. Raising an alert is a single tap from the screen a member of staff is already using, which is the point: the worst minute of the day is the wrong moment to be remembering a procedure.

Little. A new branch trades on the prices, packages, passes and staff you already have, so opening one is a matter of naming it and opening a POS rather than setting up all over again.

Yes. Each site's customer list, products and opening balances import the same way, checked and reported before anything is written. Switching to PlayArea OS covers how a move is run.

Yes. It runs in a browser, so the tablet at the desk, the laptop in the office and the television on the wall all show the same live figure. Nothing to install, nothing to buy.

In a shift. It is one number on a board they are already standing in front of, and it means the same thing to the person on the POS as it does to the person out on the frames.

Yes. Every package, add-on and deposit on the form is yours, written in your own words at your own prices, and yours to change again whenever your offer changes.

Bring your customer list over by import, then take new bookings on your own form from opening day; the parties already in your diary go on the calendar as you confirm them. The switching page covers the order to do it in.

Yes. A pass can be a bundle of visits a family uses whenever they like, or a membership that stays valid for a stretch of time. Both are yours to name and price, and a family can hold more than one.

Yes. Import your customer list first, so passes and memberships are sold against the families you already know rather than typed in from scratch. The switching page walks through the order to do it in.

Yes. Employees arrive with their opening payroll balances by spreadsheet import, checked and shown to you first, so the first pay run starts from figures you have already approved. The switching page covers the order to do it in.

Yes. The monthly run works in your own currency: salaries and allowances, deductions and advances, leave, end-of-service and a payslip for every employee, all at your own rates. The WPS bank file and the MOHRE SIF are there for the venues that file them.

Enough to know your own salaries. Open the month, look down each payslip and complete the run. It is usually one person's job, often the owner's, and it is the same handful of steps every month.

No. The POS runs in a web browser on the tablets, phones and laptops your venue already owns, so the counter you have today is the counter you start on.

Your customers and your product list come over by import, so nobody spends the first morning retyping a catalogue. The switching page sets out what moves and in what order.

No. A product carries its own variations, each with its own price: one hour, two hours and three hours under a single Play time product, or an adult and a child price under one entry. The POS shows one tile, tapping it asks which one, and the sale rings at that variation's price. Your product list stays short instead of growing a tile for every combination, and the receipt records which variation was sold.

No. A scan opens an ordinary web page in whatever phone the parent is holding. They sign, book, leave feedback or read the prices, and close it again.

Your family list comes across first, and from your first day families sign on their own phone instead of at the desk. Switching to PlayArea OS covers what moves and when.

Yes. Every sales report exports to CSV for whatever date range you are looking at, so your bookkeeper works from the same numbers you do and nobody retypes a column.

Your customer list, your products and your opening balances, with a check report showing exactly what will land before anything is written. Switching to PlayArea OS covers the move step by step.

About as long as it takes to write your team down. Ready-made roles are there from the moment your venue exists, so you can invite people first and tighten the ticks later, and a new starter is working within a minute of being added.

Yes. Your people transfer with the rest of your records, and a preview shows the list you are about to create. The switching page walks the whole move through.

The forms look like the checklist they already work through, on a device they already carry. A new starter opens the tile, works down the list, adds a photo where it helps, and submits. If your routine changes, you change the form to match.

Write them straight in. Every form, every question, its order and its wording are yours from the first day, and the starter set a new venue arrives with is there to be rewritten rather than obeyed. The switching page covers the rest of the move.

Yes. Your staff, your customers and your catalogue come over from a spreadsheet or from the system you run today, and a full report shows what will be created before a single row is saved. The switching page sets out what moves and in what order.

Yes. PlayArea OS opens in a browser, so the counter tablet, a supervisor's phone and the office laptop all show the same week. Nothing to install, and no hardware to buy.

Yes. Suppliers, products and costs transfer in bulk, and a preview lists every row that will be created, so a bad column is caught early rather than unpicked later. Start at the switching page.

The pricing page carries the current plans. Stock and purchasing comes with the rest of the system rather than as a separate add-on.

About as long as it takes to write the offer. Name it, generate a batch, and download the sheet to print. It is a job for the morning of a campaign, not a project.

Yes. Print your next run as codes and honour the handwritten ones alongside them until they are gone, so no promotion has to be cancelled to make the change. The switching page covers moving the rest of your venue across.

Yes, and that is the point. The number parents already message, the profile behind it and the words that go out stay your venue's own. PlayArea OS is the screen your team works from.

An afternoon, once your WhatsApp profile is connected. Moving the rest of the venue across takes longer, and the switching guide lays out that move step by step.

The zone pays one subscription for the organisation, billed monthly or yearly. Three bundles cover progressively more of the operation, and the pricing page says what is in each of them.

The zone's product list and customer list import from a spreadsheet or a POS export, with a check report showing what would be created before it is. The rest of the park carries on untouched. The switching page walks through it.

A browser, so the tablet at the zone counter and the phone in a supervisor's pocket are enough. Nothing to install.

The counter is a screen of tiles, so a seasonal starter is selling on their first shift. The timer board takes a morning, because it is a wall of clocks and colours rather than a report to read.

It is one product, set up differently. The catalogue, the session lengths, the roles, the forms and the party packages are all yours to write, so a venue built around facilitated role-play configures the same system that a soft play centre does and ends up with a different day on the screen.

Yes. A group books on your own form, with your own packages and a deposit if you take one, and lands on the same calendar as the parties. Confirmations and reminders go out on their own. Payment terms with a school stay a matter between you and the school; what the system holds is the booking, the deposit and the sale at the POS.

One subscription for the organisation, billed monthly or yearly, rather than a charge per POS or per child. Three bundles cover progressively more of the business and the pricing page lists what is in each. Email info@playareaos.com and the team will quote the one that fits.

Your customer list, your catalogue and your staff come in from a spreadsheet as CSV, with a check report that tells you what the import would create before anything is written. You keep trading on the old system until go-live. The switching page sets out the order.

One subscription for the organisation, monthly or yearly, on whichever of the three bundles matches how much of the business runs in the system. The pricing page breaks them down, and info@playareaos.com will quote against your site count and size.

Catalogue and customers import from CSV, with a check report before anything is written and a corrected file that tops up rather than duplicates. The switching page describes the move, and the migration guide goes deeper on opening balances.

Two pieces of work: your own catalogue and packages, and your own people, sites and roles. Both are entered once and change whenever the business does. Everything else opens up from there.

Every part of it is a browser tab, so the POS, the timer boards, the office and a manager's phone are all devices the centre already owns.

They stay the centre's, across every site. They are copied off-site nightly, over an encrypted connection to storage that encrypts what it keeps, and the reports suite exports to CSV.

One subscription per organization, billed monthly or yearly. Three bundles cover progressively more of the business, from the front desk alone up to the front desk plus the whole back office, so a playground pays for the shape it actually is. What each bundle covers is on the pricing page.

Export your products and customers from whatever you use today, load them, and read the check report before anything lands. The old system keeps trading throughout, and the change happens on the day you go live. The switching page has the full sequence.

Anything with a modern browser: the tablet on the front desk, a wall screen for the timer board, a phone in a manager's pocket. Nothing to install and nothing to buy.

No. Parents scan a QR code, and the waiver, the party booking form, the price list and the feedback page each open as a normal web page on the phone they are already holding.

It becomes a branch of the same organization, with its own capacity, cash, shifts, schedule and reports, while the price list, the staff and the family list stay shared. Nothing has to be built twice.

PlayArea OS is priced per organisation, monthly or yearly, in three bundles built around how much of the venue you want in one place. The pricing page sets out what each one covers. For a figure, email info@playareaos.com with your venue type, city and size.

Your product list and your customer list come across from a spreadsheet or a POS export. A check report shows what the import would create before anything is written, and the old system keeps trading until the day you go live. The switching page walks the move through step by step.

Mostly entering your own prices, packages and waiver wording, so the POS matches how the venue actually trades. Once those are in, the first shift opens on the counter tablet and you are selling.

It runs in any modern browser, so the counter tablet becomes the POS and the timer board, and the office laptop becomes the back office. Nothing to install, nothing to buy.

They belong to the venue. Every night the whole organisation is copied off-site, over an encrypted connection to storage that encrypts what it keeps, and you can ask for a copy of your own data whenever you want it.

Billing is per organisation rather than per branch, monthly or yearly, on one of three bundles. The pricing page sets out what each covers, and info@playareaos.com will quote against the number of sites you run.

The group's catalogue and family list import from CSV under one organisation, with a check report before anything is written. Branches are added to that organisation as each one comes on. The switching page walks through the move.

It opens as a branch of the organisation you already have, running on the same prices, packages, roles and family list, while keeping its own capacity, cash, shifts and reports.

Only a browser, on the tablets, phones and laptops that site already has. Opening a branch is not a hardware order.

They belong to the group. Every night they are copied off-site, over an encrypted connection to storage that encrypts what it keeps, and reports export to CSV for one branch or for the organisation as a whole.

One subscription, billed monthly or yearly. The smallest of the three bundles is aimed at exactly this: a counter that needs to sign families in, start the clocks and take the money. The pricing page shows what the larger two add.

Both come in from a spreadsheet as CSV, and a check report tells you what the import would create before anything is written. The switching page covers the move end to end.

The POS is a screen of tiles, which is what a barista is used to. The play side adds one board of clocks and colours, and that is the whole of it beyond the coffee.

Yes. SAR is one of the currencies PlayArea OS trades in, and the VAT rate is a field on your organisation rather than a number fixed in the software, so you set 15 once and the POS, receipts, party balances, purchase orders and the profit and loss all follow it.

Every sale with the rate it was charged at, every purchase line with the VAT you paid on it as stock is received, and a running profit and loss beside them, so the quarter is read off a record rather than rebuilt from a box of receipts.

Basic pay, overtime, bonuses, leave encashment, deductions and the loan or advance repayments due that month, in riyals at your own rates, worked out from the attendance the rota recorded. A completed run closes as a fixed record and staff read their own payslips in the app.

Yes. Which days count as the weekend is a setting on your organisation, and weekend pricing, rota cover and booking quotes all read it. Payroll keeps its own default rest days, and an individual employee's rest days override them.

Yes. If the connection drops, the counter carries on selling; each sale is held on the device and catches up on its own when the link returns, so a busy evening is not stopped by the landlord's network.

Yes. Each branch keeps its own capacity, cash, shifts, rota and reports under one organisation and one login, so a Riyadh unit and a Jeddah unit are two branches rather than two systems.

One subscription covers the organisation, billed monthly or yearly. There are three bundles, from a front desk that needs to sign families in and take money, up to one that carries payroll, bills and stock as well. The pricing page lists what sits in each.

Bring the catalogue and the family list in as CSV files. Nothing is written until a check report has told you what the import would do, and running a corrected file again tops up rather than duplicates. The switching page covers the whole move, including opening balances.

The counter is a screen of tiles: sessions, drinks, socks, passes, party balances. New starters take money on their first shift, and nobody has to remember which system a party balance lives in.

Any modern browser will do. The tablet on the café counter runs the POS, a screen on the wall carries the timer board, and the laptop in the office is the office. Nothing to install.

One subscription for the organisation, rather than a charge per POS or per jumper, billed monthly or yearly. Three bundles cover progressively more of the business, and the pricing page lists what is in each. Email info@playareaos.com and the team will quote the one that fits.

Your product list and your customer list come in as CSV from whatever you run now, with a check report first so nothing is written blind. The park keeps trading on the old system until go-live. The switching page sets out each step.

The work is your own: session lengths and prices, the waiver wording, the packages, and the capacity figure for the court. With those in, the desk opens a shift and the park is trading.

The park's records are the park's. They are copied off-site every night, over an encrypted connection to storage that encrypts what it keeps, and the reports export to CSV whenever you want the numbers in your own hands.

Yes. Your venue trades in AED at its own VAT rate, and every sale, receipt, party deposit and profit-and-loss line follows it. Your prices and rates are yours, and you can change them later whenever your venue needs to.

Yes. A completed monthly pay run exports the WPS bank file or the MOHRE SIF, with gratuity, statutory leave and the air ticket handled inside the run. Staff read their own payslips in the app.

Because in the UAE that is where families already are. PlayArea OS gives you a WhatsApp inbox, an auto-reply for the questions families ask every day, timer and party reminders, and welcome, birthday and feedback messages. Email is there too. Your venue owns its own Meta business profile.

Your families, your product list and your opening balances come over from your old POS or your spreadsheets, and you go live on a day that suits your venue. The switching page walks the whole move through.

Yes. Each branch keeps its own capacity, cash, shifts, rota and reports under one organisation and one login, so the owner sees every mall from the same place.

It can sell with one, and plenty do. What ends up on whiteboards, folders and diaries is everything else: the clocks, the waivers, how full the floor is, the party deposit and the pass. Those side records are the ones that never reconcile with the POS at the end of the night.

Export them as CSV. A check report reads the file back to you row by row, showing what will be created, updated or skipped before anything is written, and the same file can be run again without duplicating anything. The switching page walks the whole move.

An afternoon at the counter. Load your products and prices, open a shift and you are selling. The rest, customers, packages, rota and reporting, can arrive while you are already trading on it.

Yes. Retail items ring up on the same sale as a session, a pass visit, a party balance or a voucher, so one shift close covers the whole desk and revenue per visitor includes the cafe.

Yes. PlayArea OS opens in any modern browser, so the tablets, phones and laptops in the venue now are the hardware. Nothing to install, nothing to buy, and a new device at the desk is a sign-in.

A time for every step from room set-up to strip-down, the host's name, the headcount, the allergy plates, and the moment the balance is asked for. Print it, pin it where the host can read it, and write on it during the party so the notes survive to the debrief.

Just before food is ordered and the host is rostered, since those are the two costs that stop being reversible. State the deadline at booking, repeat it in the reminder that goes out beforehand, and price extra children who arrive after it at your published extra-child rate.

Enter the parties that are already booked by hand, since there are rarely many of them, and import the customer list from a CSV export so the families behind those bookings arrive with their history. The switching guide sets out the order, including the check report that runs before anything is written.

Yes. Parents open it in the browser they already have, on whatever phone is in their pocket, with nothing to install and no account to create. The same is true of the waiver and the feedback page.

An afternoon is usually enough. Build the packages and add-ons, put the booking form link on your social profiles and website, and write the run sheet your team will actually follow. The wording of every message that goes to a family is yours to edit before the first one is sent.

Start from its marginal cost: food, play at your cost per child-hour, a wristband and a party bag. Price above that, and below the base package's average per-child price so a larger party feels fairer per head. Cap the headcount at the room's capacity.

Large enough to cover what is committed before the day, which is usually the food order and a fair share of the host's time, and large enough that a family thinks twice about letting the date slide. State when the balance is due and what happens to the deposit on a cancellation or a no-show.

Either works. Paying at the desk on the day is simplest for the family and settles alongside extra children and add-ons. Taking the balance a few days before, with the final headcount, keeps the money talk out of the party. Pick one and write it on the form.

Yes, and they usually should. A weekday package with a lower minimum and a lower price fills a room that would otherwise sit empty, and the fixed costs behind that room are already being paid. Keep it visibly different from the weekend product so nobody feels they overpaid on Saturday.

Packages, add-ons and deposits are quick to type in once, and they are the part you want to rebuild deliberately rather than copy. Customers come across from a CSV export, with a check report to read before anything is written. The switching guide walks through the whole move.

No. Only costs that would disappear if the party were cancelled belong here: food per child, host hours, room set-up and add-ons. Rent and rostered staff are fixed costs and already sit in your break-even; counting them here as well makes every party look like a loss.

Count only the hours the party actually takes them away from the floor, including set-up and clearing, at what that hour costs you. If the host is on the floor the rest of the shift, that time belongs to the venue, not to the party.

At least the food cost per child plus a share of the host time and room cost, otherwise every extra child reduces the margin. The calculator warns you when the extra-child price is no higher than the food cost per child.

They protect the direct cost. A no-show still costs the food you ordered and the room you held. The deposit you ask for should at least cover that, and the party pricing guide works through when it is due and what happens on cancellation.

No. It stores nothing you type: a static page with no account, no network call and no storage of your numbers. Your numbers exist only in the browser tab and are gone when you close it.

Your regulator, through the fire, safety and licensing rules that apply to your building, and sometimes your insurer through a condition of cover. The play frame manufacturer may also rate the structure. Where the figures differ, the lowest one is your number. Ask in writing and keep the answer with its date.

Capacity is how many children may be inside at one moment. The day's total is that ceiling multiplied by how many times the floor turns over, which depends on session length and on how quickly finished sessions actually clear. Two venues with the same ceiling can serve very different numbers of families.

Divide your capacity by the average dwell time in hours. Forty places and a two-hour average stay is twenty arrivals an hour; the same forty places with a ninety-minute average absorb about twenty-seven. Shortening the real stay, rather than the sold session, is what raises the ceiling on a busy day.

Yes. It runs in a browser, so the tablet at the desk, the laptop in the office and the screen on the wall all show the same live count with nothing to install. A phone works too, for whoever is walking the floor rather than standing behind the POS.

Export what your current POS or spreadsheets hold to CSV, read the check report before anything is written, then import and set your opening balances. The switching guide walks through the order and the point at which the old system is retired.

Large enough to make change through the first hour of trade without a trip to the safe, and no larger, because every extra note in the drawer is exposed. Hold the figure steady from day to day so a wrong float is obvious, and hold it in the denominations parents actually hand over. Whoever opens the shift counts it and types it.

Yes, and while they are still on site. The count belongs to the person answerable for the shift, with a second counter where staffing allows. If a drawer must change hands during the day, close the shift and open a new one at the handover, so each half has one name and one count.

Write the reason at the time, in the closer's own words, and attach it to the shift. Above the figure your procedure names, a second person with the authority to close a drawer reviews the count and signs, and the owner hears the same day. The count itself is never edited to make the difference disappear, and a difference is never carried into tomorrow's float.

Yes, if the procedure fits on a card and the first close is walked with them rather than explained. The parts a new starter has to get right are small: count the float, record a movement the moment it happens, count by denomination at the end, and write a reason for any difference. PlayArea OS runs the POS and the shift close in a browser on the tablet already at the desk, so the training is about the routine rather than the equipment.

Start by writing down the float figure, the payout ceiling and the difference at which a second signature is needed, because those are decisions rather than settings and they should survive the move. Then bring your product and customer lists across as CSV, count the cash and stock on the cutover date as your opening balances, and run the first week's closes both ways until the two agree. The switching page covers what comes across.

No. A visit is one child coming through the door for whatever length of play they bought; a child-hour is a fixed amount of floor time. A two-hour session is one visit and two child-hours, so a venue that sells more than one session length needs child-hours to compare its costs and its utilisation fairly.

From the timers. Every session on the board carries a length, and the timers report totals the minutes of play sold over whichever period you are looking at, which is the figure sixty divides into.

Yes, as an estimate: divide a month of fixed costs by the child-hours you realistically expect to sell, then replace the estimate with measured minutes once the floor has been open a few weeks. The break-even calculator runs the same arithmetic on your own figures.

One hour of one child's play costs you something to provide, and that amount is the cost per child-hour: your fixed costs spread across the child-hours you sell, plus the variable cost of serving that hour. Price per child-hour is what you charge for it, the session price divided by the session length in hours. The gap between the two is your margin on time.

There is one honest answer: the system that runs your particular Saturday with the fewest workarounds. Your session model, your party packages, your payroll country and your number of sites all move the answer, which is why a ranked list is worth so little. Write the day down first, then test each candidate against it. Anyone who answers this question without asking about your venue is selling rather than advising.

Fewer is usually calmer, because the value is in the joins: a party booking that becomes a sale, a waiver that follows a family, a rota that becomes a payslip. But one system is better only if it does each job properly. If a single-system candidate handles your main job badly, a smaller system plus a good specialist is the honest choice. Whatever you pick, make sure every part can export its data.

A card terminal from your bank or payment provider, wristbands and consumables, a tablet or laptop for the desk and a screen for the timer board if you want one on the wall, and the time your own team spends loading prices, packages and wording before you go live. Browser-based systems such as PlayArea OS run on hardware most venues already own, so the device line is often smaller than the setup-time line.

Ask what you get on the day you cancel: which records, in what format, and whether you can take them yourself without raising a support ticket. Ask how long your data is kept afterwards and how it is deleted. A vendor confident in the product answers the leaving question easily; a vendor who deflects it is telling you something.

Export what you hold today as CSV, load it into the new system, and read its check report before anything commits, so a stray column is caught while it is still cheap to fix. Then count your stock, cash and outstanding deposits on the cutover date and enter them as opening balances, so your first day starts from where the business really is. The switching page and the migration guide cover both halves.

A parent scans a QR code or taps a link, the waiver opens in their phone's browser, and they read it and sign there. The party booking form, the feedback page and the price list all work the same way.

Wherever a parent is already standing still: a stand by the door, the counter, and the party confirmation a family reads days before they arrive. Each public link comes with a printable poster, so a code can go up in more than one place without anyone designing anything.

A migrated child can carry the date your existing paper waiver runs until, so a returning family signs naturally on their first visit after that date rather than at the door on day one. Customers, your catalogue and outstanding balances come in from a spreadsheet or your current POS's export with a check report you read first, as the switching page describes.

Each time you change your wording, the new text becomes a new version. Signatures already collected stay attached to the version that was actually signed, so you can update your terms without losing the record of what each parent agreed to.

Scale and mix. A soft play centre is built around one padded play structure with a café and party rooms. A family entertainment centre puts several attractions under one roof, a play floor plus games, rides, sport or activity zones, retail and a larger food offer, and usually has an office with separate teams for the floor, the kitchen, parties and the back office.

Because the same three letters are used by an unrelated government body, so a search for FEC software returns mostly results about that body. Searching the full phrase, family entertainment centre software or family entertainment center software, gets you venue systems instead.

The play floor with timers and wristbands, the café and front-desk POS, digital waivers, party bookings, passes and loyalty, WhatsApp and campaigns, staff rota with clock-in, UAE payroll, finance, stock and purchasing, reports and multi-branch, all on one family record across every branch.

Records first, trading second. Customers, your catalogue and outstanding balances come in from a spreadsheet or your current POS's export, and every import produces a check report you read before anything goes live. A group moves branch by branch, and the switching page sets out the order.

No. They are good at the job they were built for, and several are better than us at the arcade and cashless-card side of it. The point is where the software stops. If a system covers the front desk and you are content running the rota, the purchasing and the accounts elsewhere, it is doing what it promised.

Possibly not, and you should say so out loud before you buy anything. The case for one system is the seams, not the licence fee: the same sale that pays a wage, the same delivery that changes a stock figure. If those hand-offs already work and nobody spends their week retyping, keep them.

Everything a customer touches or that happens at the counter: online booking, admissions, ticketing, the POS, cashless cards or wristbands, waivers, memberships. It is the majority of what venue software sells, and it is genuinely the harder half to get right on a Saturday.

The staff rota and the hours that become a wage, payroll, suppliers and purchase orders, receiving deliveries, stock and what it really cost, and the finance picture those add up to. It is the half that is usually a spreadsheet.

Not the second licence. It is that the numbers stop agreeing: takings in one place, wages in another, stock in a third, and a month-end where somebody reconciles them by hand and everybody trusts the result a little less.

This page defines the operating words of a play area: the things on the floor, at the POS, in the party diary and in payroll. The KPI glossary defines the numbers you measure about them, such as occupancy rate and pass utilisation. Where a term here has a matching KPI, the Related line points to it.

Customers, your catalogue and outstanding balances come in from a spreadsheet or your current POS's export, and every import produces a check report you read before anything goes live. The switching page walks through the move in the order to do it in.

A browser. It runs on the tablets, phones and laptops a venue already owns, and the pricing page sets out the plans.

The page carries a visible Last reviewed date under the introduction. Entries are re-read whenever a module changes, and the date moves when the wording has been checked.

On the basic wage, not allowances such as housing or transport, which is why the split between basic and allowances on each employment contract matters from the first month. The precise definition of the wage to use, and the current rates and cap, are published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation; this page states no figure.

Because the liability grows every month an employee stays, but the cash leaves in one lump when they go. A venue that only thinks about gratuity at resignation gets a large, unbudgeted bill; a venue that accrues the monthly amount as a cost sees the true labour cost all along and has the money set aside. Your accountant will tell you how to book it.

The last period's wages, any accrued but untaken leave the contract or law says is payable, an unused air ticket where the contract provides one, and deductions for outstanding advances or loans. Gratuity is usually the largest item, but the settlement is the whole list, and each item needs its own record.

A reliable start date, the basic wage held apart from allowances, and a clean record of unpaid days, all captured as they happen rather than reconstructed on the day someone resigns. PlayArea OS works gratuity and end-of-service out from the salary and dates already on the employee's record.

It depends on your market, your landlord and your regulator, so build the plan backwards from the equipment delivery date rather than forwards from today. The long poles are usually the lease, the licence approvals and the equipment lead time, and they run in parallel once the site is signed. Treat every approval as its own line with an owner and a due date.

The standard your own regulator recognises, which differs by country and sometimes by emirate, state or municipality. Ask your licensing body which standard applies before you sign an equipment order, then ask the supplier for a certificate to that standard, an installation report and a recommended inspection schedule. Every height, gap and age limit belongs to the regulator, not to a guide.

Enough to meet the supervision ratio your regulator or insurer sets for your age groups, plus the fixed posts that are not supervision: the desk, the cafe and a party host while a party is running. Roster by hour against expected children rather than by day, and cover breaks explicitly. The staff-to-child ratio guide walks through the arithmetic.

Allow a fortnight between signing and the soft launch and you will be comfortable. Most of that time is your own content rather than any installation: loading products, sessions and party packages at your prices, writing the waiver and the message wording, printing the QR signs, and rehearsing a full day with the people who will work it. PlayArea OS runs in a browser on the tablets and laptops a venue already owns, so there is nothing to install on opening morning.

Export the product list and the customer list from whatever the venue runs today, as CSV, then load them into the new system and read its check report before anything commits. Count the stock, the cash and the party deposits on the cutover date so your opening balances start from where the business really is. The switching page and the migration guide walk through both halves.

Visits per day, revenue per visitor, peak occupancy against your capacity, party enquiries and confirmed bookings, waiver coverage, and how often sessions run over. None of them has a right value on day one; the point is to record your own baseline so that every later change — a price, a session length, a new package — can be judged against it.

No. It opens in any modern browser on the tablets, phones and laptops you already own, so there is nothing to install on each machine and no hardware to buy. Adding a device at the desk means signing in on it.

Export what you need from the local database or its reporting screens as CSV, usually the product list and the customer list first. A check report reads the file back to you row by row before anything is written, so you fix what it flags and import with your eyes open. The switching page covers opening balances and the cutover.

Yes, and you should. Export, check report, import and opening balances all happen while the old system is still trading. The go-live day is yours to pick, which means it can land at closing time or on a day the venue is shut.

The counter. Sales are saved on the device and queued, then sync on their own when the connection returns, so the desk keeps serving families and nothing is lost.

A shift for the counter. It is tiles on a tablet rather than a menu tree, and staff who have used a phone have used most of it already. The back office takes longer, but that is one or two people, not the whole team, and you can run it beside the old system while they get comfortable.

It opens in a browser on the tablets and laptops you already own, so the work is loading your own venue rather than installing anything. Bring your product and customer lists across from a CSV export, put in your prices, packages and wording, and a small venue can be trading on it within a day. The switching guide walks the whole move.

Often enough that every person who works any shift has run it at least once, and recently. A practical rhythm is one short drill a month, timed and logged, plus a walk-through for every new starter in their first week. Choose a rhythm you will actually keep and write it into the card.

We suggest not. Holding photographs of children in advance creates a privacy burden out of proportion to its use. What helps a search is a picture taken at that moment, usually from the parent's own phone, shared with the team while the search is on and deleted when it ends.

At an escalation point settled before the day it happens: a number of minutes after the alert, or a trigger such as a possible exit with an unknown adult, written on the card so nobody debates it during an incident. The figure itself belongs to your own local guidance, your insurer or your regulator.

A code word or phrase lets you start the procedure over a radio or across a room without announcing to every family that a child is missing. It keeps parents calm and keeps the team moving. Agree one, drill it, and pair it with the on-screen alert so that a colleague who missed the radio still sees it.

Who raised it, the time, the child and the guardian, the description, who covered exits and zones, when and how it was stood down, whether the child was found or it was a false alarm, and anything you would change. Read the record within the week, in daylight, and fold the changes into the card and the next drill.

No. The booking form opens in the browser on the parent's own phone from a link or a code. There is nothing to install and no account to create.

Yes. The person on the desk can take or change a booking by hand while the parent is on the line or standing in front of them. The form is the front door, not the only door; what matters is that every booking ends up on the same calendar.

Put them in as you would a phone booking, oldest date first, and the calendar is current in an hour or two. Your customer list comes across as a CSV import with a check report, so the families behind those parties arrive with them. The switching page walks the whole move.

Every package, add-on and deposit is yours. They are written inside the app in your own words and prices, changed whenever you like, and the booking form and the counter always quote the same thing.

An afternoon, most of which is writing your packages down properly rather than anything technical. Once they exist, the public form is a link and a code you can put on your own website, on Instagram or on a card at the desk.

Yes. Leave visits included blank and enter the visits you expect a member to make in the window. The page then skips the breakage lines, works out the effective price per visit from those expected visits, and shows break-even visits: the number of visits at which the member has cost you more to serve than they paid.

Breakage is the value of the visits on a pass that a family never takes before it expires: unused visits multiplied by the price per visit as sold. It is money you have already received, but until the pass expires those visits are still owed, so it is a liability rather than profit. Price the pass so it works without it; if the visits go unused, that is the bonus.

Only what one extra punched visit makes you spend: the wristband, cleaning materials, consumables, a snack if the pass includes one. Staff who are on the rota whether or not that family turns up are a fixed cost, and they belong in your break-even rather than in this line. If you already know your cost per child-hour, multiply it by the play time a pass visit gives.

One divides the pass price by the visits printed on it, which is the discount the family sees and the line to price on. The other divides it by the visits you expect them to use, which is what each delivered visit really earned. The gap between them is breakage, and it is only yours once the pass has expired.

No. Everything is worked out inside your browser tab. Nothing you type is stored or sent anywhere, no network call carries them, and the figures vanish when you close the tab.

Plan a fortnight of evenings rather than a weekend. Exporting takes an afternoon, the check-and-fix loop usually takes two or three passes, and entering your own prices, packages and wording is the part that takes real time because it is the part only you can do. The counting for opening balances happens on the cutover morning itself and takes an hour or two in a small venue.

The product list and the customer list as CSV, at minimum, with every column the old system will give you. Then take the last twelve months of sales by day, outstanding passes with visits remaining, party bookings with dates and deposits, supplier balances and your stock list, as a read-only record. Keep the untouched originals in a folder nobody edits and work on copies.

They are where the business stands on the morning you switch: stock on the shelf, unused visits still owed on passes, deposits held for parties yet to happen, supplier balances, cash in the drawer and the payroll position for each employee. Counted properly, they make day one start from the truth. Skipped, they make every report for a year disagree with reality.

Fix it in the source spreadsheet and run the check again, which is why the check comes before anything is written. Ask any candidate system whether re-running the same file creates duplicates, because a good import recognises rows it has already brought in and a correction should be a re-run rather than a restart.

Yes, and most venues do. The old system carries on until the cutover date, and the new one carries everything from that moment; the discipline is that nothing is entered in both. Pick a quiet weekday morning, count the opening balances before the first sale, and tell the whole team the hour it changes. The switching page sets out what comes across from a POS export or a spreadsheet.

A multi-visit pass is counted in visits: ten visits, used one at a time, usually before an expiry date. A timed membership is counted in days: a month or a term of unlimited visits. A pass suits the family that comes every couple of weeks; a membership suits the family that comes every couple of days. Both sit on the family record and both are punched at the POS.

Cash arrives on the day, but the visits are owed until they are used, so an accountant will usually treat unused visits as a liability and recognise revenue as each visit is punched. Ask your own accountant how to book it; the point for the operator is that a strong month of pass sales is cash before it is income, and that the visits still owed are a real obligation.

Renewing keeps the unused visits and adds the new bundle on top, so nobody loses what they have already paid for. Whether they carry over is worth stating on the pass itself, because it is the first thing a parent asks.

Yes. Customers, your catalogue and outstanding balances come in from a spreadsheet or your current POS's export, and every import produces a check report you read before anything goes live, which is where a pass with the wrong number of visits left on it gets caught. The switching page walks through the move.

Yes. A punched visit puts the child on the timer board exactly as a paid session does, and counts the same in live occupancy, so the floor never has to know how a child got there.

A launch checklist is walked once, in the days before a venue first trades, and covers licences, equipment sign-off, prices loaded and a restore rehearsed. The daily list is the short routine that opens and closes every trading day: the same steps in the same order, signed by whoever held the opening and closing positions that day.

Yes. It runs in a browser, so the counter tablet, the phone in someone's pocket, the laptop in the office and the screen on the wall all show the same day. There is nothing to install and nothing to buy, which is also why a new starter can be shown the opening round on their first shift instead of being trained on a device.

They are copied off-site every night, over an encrypted connection to storage away from the live system, held by a provider that encrypts what it keeps. Nothing about the closing routine starts it. What the closer can do is finish the day properly, so the copy taken overnight holds a closed shift rather than an open one.

Export them from your old POS or your spreadsheets as CSV, read the check report before anything is written, then import; running a corrected file again tops up rather than duplicates. Enter where stock, finance and payroll stand on the moving day, lock the cutover when it suits you, and open on the new system the next morning. The switching guide covers each step.

It is rent tied to your sales: a percentage of turnover above a threshold, or a percentage standing in for part of the base rent. The landlord will want a sales figure at an agreed interval, usually monthly, and often a certified statement once a year. Agree in writing what counts as turnover before you sign, with worked examples for passes, party deposits, vouchers and refunds, and make sure the figure you report reconciles with the one your accountant and your tax return see.

Usually yes. A mall lease normally obliges you to open whenever the centre trades and to stay open and staffed until it closes, including late weekend hours and extended holiday hours. Build the rota against the centre's published calendar rather than your own preference, ask how much notice you are given of a change, and put the extra evening hours into your wage bill before you sign.

Get on the distribution list for it and treat it as an input to the rota and the stock order rather than as news. The centre's holidays, sale periods and events move your takings more than your own promotions do. Forecast from your own trading history at that unit, because generic seasonality will not contain the centre's events.

Usually not. Loading bays run to restricted hours, typically before the centre opens or after it closes, often with a booked slot and a goods lift other tenants also want. Put the delivery window into the order so the supplier arrives when they can get in, and count the goods in at the bay rather than hours later, because a shortage found on the next shift is a credit you are unlikely to recover.

Yes, because a child can be out of your unit and into a public concourse in seconds. The procedure has to include the centre's control room: the direct number, who calls it, at what point, and what the centre can do about exits, announcements and camera footage. Agree the escalation timings in advance and rehearse them with centre security before you need them.

Charging for it means selling a paid time extension, and a centre can separately allow a short goodwill grace when it suits. What matters is that the policy is written down, that giving time away is a deliberate act by someone senior enough to do it, and that the two are kept apart in the record, so the POS and the floor board agree.

Two numbers. Overstay rate is the sessions that ran past their end time divided by all sessions in the period. Overstay minutes is the total time run over, which converts to lost capacity. Both need a board that records the end of every session and the moment it was actually closed.

A time extension is paid: the family buys more minutes and the end of the session moves. A free grace is given: the centre adds a few minutes at no charge. Keeping the two apart in the record is what lets an owner tell the minutes that were sold from the minutes that were handed over.

Yes. A child who has run over is still on the floor, so they still count against your capacity figure. That is why an untracked overstay is a capacity problem as well as a revenue problem: the board says you have room when you do not.

A browser and a screen the floor can see. PlayArea OS opens the timer board on the tablet at the desk or the monitor on the wall you already own, and moving your customers and catalogue over from a spreadsheet or your current POS is covered on the switching page.

Take the block from your session length and your desk. A short block is easy to say yes to and quick to ring up, so it sells more often; a long block earns more per sale but is refused more often at the end of a visit. A single step up from each session length, priced so it is never cheaper per minute than the session itself, is enough.

Anyone your rule names, for a reason your rule lists. Writing the reasons down is what lets the person on the floor give the time without hunting for a manager and without arguing with the family. Keep the list short, keep it on the same card as the ladder, and review it when the tally says free time is going out on most sessions.

Whichever one actually happens on your busiest Saturday. A team member walking over is warmer and works well when the floor is calm; a message to the parent's phone is the only version that survives a queue at the desk. Many venues run both, with the message as the safety net and the walk-over as the courtesy.

Tally it at the desk. The denominator is the number of sessions started in the period, which your POS or timer board already knows. The numerator is the number of children your team marked as running over, counted at the moment rather than reconstructed at close. Divide one by the other over the same range, and keep the tally going for a few weeks before reading anything into it.

Settle the policy first, because the ladder, the block length and the list of reasons are decisions rather than settings and they should survive the move. Then export the product list as CSV and load it into the new system, so each session length and each block of extra time arrives as a priced line the desk can sell. The switching page covers what comes across from a POS export or a spreadsheet.

No, and the difference matters on the day. A deposit is part of the package price and comes off the balance the family pays. A booking fee is charged on top of the price and is usually kept whatever happens. Name yours correctly on the form, because a family who paid something called a deposit will expect it to count towards the total.

Either works if the rule is written down. A share scales with the package, so a bigger party carries a bigger commitment; a fixed sum is easier to quote on the phone and easier for a family to remember. What matters more than the choice is that a parent hears the same number on the phone, on the form and at the desk.

Whatever the written policy says: returned, moved to a new date or kept. If it is returned, refund it through the same POS and against the same booking, so the record and the tax on it reverse together. The policy itself is yours to write and belongs on the form before anyone pays.

Customers, your catalogue and outstanding balances come in from a spreadsheet or your current POS's export, and every import produces a check report you read before anything goes live, which is where a deposit recorded against the wrong date is caught. The switching page sets out the order to move in.

Price it against the visits you expect the family to use, not the visits printed on the pass. Work out the effective price per visit as the pass price divided by the visits on it, then compare it with your single-session price: the gap is the discount you are giving for the cash up front. Check the effective price still covers your cost per child-hour with a margin, and remember that unused visits stop being a liability only when the pass expires.

Because you still owe the family the visits. Until each visit is used or the pass expires, the cash sits in the bank while the service is still to come, so accountants treat it as a liability called deferred revenue and recognise it visit by visit. Spending it as if it were profit is the classic pass mistake; keep a running figure of visits sold and still owed, and check it monthly with your accountant.

Settle it in your terms before you sell the first pass, and make the kind choice: carry them over. Renewing a visit pass in PlayArea OS keeps the unused visits and adds the new package's visits on top, so nobody loses what they paid for, and the family's record shows what is left and when it was last used.

Yes. Your customer list imports from a CSV export of your old POS or a spreadsheet, checked before anything is written, and each family's outstanding visits are added to their record before you open on the new system, so a parent who walks in on the first morning is served from their real remaining count. The switching guide covers the check report and the cutover.

In child visits. Capacity is set in children, timers count children, and the price is per child, so the calculation stays in the same unit all the way through. A family of three counts as three visits.

Only costs that rise with each child and each hour: consumables, a wristband, cleaning materials, any snack included in the price. Staff who are rostered regardless of how busy it is belong in fixed costs, not here.

Either, as long as costs and prices are on the same basis. Mixing a VAT-inclusive price with VAT-exclusive costs overstates contribution. The rate itself is whatever your venue has configured; this page does not assume one.

Usually because other revenue is carrying the venue. This calculator counts only session revenue. If the café, parties or retail add a lot per visit, the real break-even in play visits is lower. The revenue per visitor calculator shows how much they add.

No. It stores nothing you type: a static page with no account, no network call and no storage of your numbers. The numbers exist only in your browser tab and are gone when you close it.

Yes, because most of these numbers are a by-product of serving families rather than a job of their own. A desk that starts a timer, rings the sale and closes the shift has already produced occupancy, sessions, minutes and takings without anybody counting anything. The reading is the skill, and it takes about ten minutes a morning.

There isn't a single right answer. A healthy occupancy depends on your space, your pricing and your market, so the level that means full and happy for one venue can mean overcrowded or quiet for another. What matters is your own trend: watch how today compares with your normal, and whether the changes you make move it the way you want.

Your customer and product lists come across from a CSV export of your old POS or spreadsheets, and your opening positions for stock, finance and payroll go in on the day you move, so the trend starts from real figures rather than zero. Keep your old reports for the seasons before the move; a baseline you can still read is worth having. The switching guide covers the steps.

Start with the one tied to the decision in front of you. If you are worried about crowding or safety, watch occupancy and overstay. If you are weighing prices or staffing, watch revenue per child and labour cost. Pick one, learn what is normal for your venue over a few weeks, then add the next.

They overlap. Play area management software is the broad category: any product that helps run a kids' venue. A play area operating system is the stricter idea within it, one system where the POS, timers, waivers, parties, passes, rota, payroll, finance and stock all work from the same records, so nothing is copied between tools.

Sell one hour of play at the POS and watch what else happens. If the timer starts, the pass is punched, the waiver is checked, the family record updates and the day's P and L moves, it is one system. If a person has to type any of that into a second screen, it is a bundle.

Customers, your catalogue and outstanding balances come across from a spreadsheet or your current POS's export, and every import produces a check report you read before anything goes live. The switching page walks through the move in order.

No. It runs in any modern browser on the tablets, phones and laptops a venue already owns, and the POS keeps selling when the internet drops and syncs when it returns.

Records are backed up off-site every night, over an encrypted connection to storage that encrypts what it keeps, and a venue can ask for a copy of its own data whenever it wants one. The sales reports export to CSV whenever you would rather work the numbers in a spreadsheet yourself.

No. Adults do not use floor capacity and are not what your timers or your break-even count. Count child visits, and treat what adults spend at the café as part of the revenue those child visits brought in.

No. One transaction often admits several children, so average transaction value rises simply when bigger families visit. Revenue per visitor divides by children, which keeps it in the same unit as capacity and break-even.

Either, as long as you always do the same. Counting at sale is simpler but swings the number between the month passes sell and the months they are used. Counting at each punch, at the pass price divided by its visits, is steadier. Do not switch between the two.

A calendar month is the usual choice, with weekend and weekday split out if that is possible. Whichever it is, count visits and sales over exactly the same days, and keep every category on the same VAT basis.

Visits come off the timer board and the passes punched at the counter; sales come from the reports, because everything rings through one POS. Type them in here, or read the trend in the reports directly. This page stores nothing you type.

Salary Information File. It is the standard file format used under the UAE Wage Protection System to tell a bank or exchange house what to pay each employee for a period, and to give the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation the record of that payment.

Technically yes, because it is a plain text file with one row per employee, and that is exactly why so many are rejected: a routing code typed wrong, a date in the wrong format, a control row whose total was not updated after a late change. A file generated from a completed pay run carries the same figures the payslips show, which removes the retyping.

They carry the same information. The SIF is the standard layout; some banks accept it as is, while others provide their own upload template with the same fields in a different arrangement. PlayArea OS exports both from a completed pay run, so you send whichever your agent accepts.

With the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation and your WPS agent. Field names, formats and validation rules are theirs and change from time to time, so this page describes the shape of the file rather than the specification. Always work from the current version your bank or exchange house points you to.

The split is the centre's own decision: a separate padded area for babies and toddlers, and the main frame for children who can climb on their own, with an upper age limit above that. It is guided by the equipment's design and by the regulator, and the age bands are what the ticket types, wristband colours and staff positions are built around.

In practice, yes. Soft play centre is the usual term in the UK, Ireland and much of the Gulf; indoor playground is the usual term in North America and Asia. Both describe an indoor venue selling timed play on padded structures. The operating words, sessions, timers, wristbands, waivers and parties, are the same.

Your local regulator and the standard your equipment was built and inspected to. The rules on padding, fall heights, netting, gaps, ratios and capacity differ by country, so the number to work to is the one on your own licence and inspection report, rather than a figure from a website.

Bring the records across first and trade on them second. Customers, your catalogue and outstanding balances come in from a spreadsheet or your current POS's export, and every import produces a check report you read before anything goes live. The switching page sets out the order to do it in.

Export your product list and your customer list as CSV. A check report reads the files and shows you, row by row, what will be created, updated or skipped before anything is written, and running the same file again tops the records up rather than duplicating them. The switching page walks the whole move.

An afternoon for the counter, and a week or so for the rest. Get products and prices in, get the POS and the timer board running, and you are trading. Customers, packages, rota and payroll can follow while you are already open, and your sheets keep working the whole time.

No. Those stay in the folder. From the day you switch, each family signs the digital waiver once on their own phone by scanning a code at the desk, and that one record covers every visit that follows.

Yes. PlayArea OS opens in any modern browser on the tablets, phones and laptops in the venue now. There is nothing to install and no hardware to buy, so a new device at the desk is a sign-in.

Records live in the system rather than on the device, and they are backed up off-site every night. Sign in on any other device you own and carry on.

For the wage cost of an opening hour, yes: everyone you pay to be in the building during that hour, whatever they are doing. For the coverage line, which sets children against your ratio, only the people watching the floor belong in the count, so run the page twice with the two counts and keep both answers.

No. The field is empty until you type into it, and the illustrative default is a round placeholder chosen to keep the sums simple. Your supervision ratio is set by whoever licenses the venue and by your insurer; where the two differ, the stricter one applies. This page states no ratio; the one that governs you comes from your licence and your insurer.

Leave hourly pay blank, then fill in monthly pay and the paid hours that salary covers each month; the page divides one by the other to reach an hourly figure. Where people on the same shift are paid differently, use the average, or run the page once per pay grade and add the hourly costs together.

Because the roster is largely fixed while the children are not. A morning with three people on shift and six children costs many times more per child-hour than a Saturday afternoon with the same three people and forty children. Run the page for each band of the week separately; the swing is the case for rostering by the hour and for off-peak pricing.

Both come out of PlayArea OS. Payroll follows the wage bill month by month, and the reports give the minutes of play sold over any range, which divided by sixty are your child-hours. Put one over the other, or type the two figures into this page and let it do the rest.

No. The page is static and runs entirely in your browser: it stores nothing you type, no network call carries them, and there is no account to sign into. Close the tab and the figures are gone.

No single figure exists, and this guide names none. The ratio, where your jurisdiction sets one at all, comes from your regulator, and your insurer may impose a stricter condition of cover. Ask both in writing, record the answer with its source and date, and treat the stricter of the two as your rule. Where nobody sets a figure for you, write your own from a risk assessment and hold to it.

Only where your regulator or insurer says so, and the safer assumption is that it excludes them. A person serving customers, running the cafe or hosting a party is not watching the frame. Count supervision posts apart from fixed posts, and roster both.

Forecast by hour from your own trading history, divide the expected children by your ratio and round up. Before you have history, use your capacity for the busy hours and a deliberate estimate for the quiet ones, then correct it weekly. Build in one person of slack on the hours you are least sure about, and send them home early if the day stays quiet.

Export what you already hold to CSV, read the check report before anything is written, then import. Staff, rates and leave balances come over that way, and the first rota is built fresh for the week you go live. Running a week in parallel before retiring the old sheet is the calmest order, and the switching guide walks through each step.

Keep three records that line up: the rota showing who was planned, the attendance record showing who was at the venue and when, and the occupancy record showing how many children were on the floor through the day. Together they answer the question an insurer or a regulator asks after an incident, which is not what your policy says but who was there.

You need an agreed price before the goods arrive, and that is all a purchase order is. Without one, the first written price is the invoice, which means the supplier sets the price after you have already taken the delivery. For a weekly cafe order it can be a standing arrangement; for netting, padding or arcade spares, put it in writing every time.

Checking that three documents agree: what you ordered, what actually arrived, and what you were invoiced. Money leaks in the gaps, usually as goods invoiced but never delivered, or a unit price that quietly rose between the order and the bill. Match all three and those become visible instead of absorbed.

Take the invoice line, add delivery and any charges, subtract discounts, then divide by the units that actually arrived, including free or bonus units. A hundred pairs at 4.00 with ten free is not 4.00 a pair, it is 3.64. Spreading it across every unit received is what makes your margin real rather than optimistic.

Record what arrived, not what was ordered. Receive the quantity you counted, leave the rest of the order open, and let the shortfall sit visible against the supplier until it is delivered or credited. Receiving the full order because the paperwork says so is how stock counts and margins drift apart.

Order centrally where the supplier gives a better price for volume, and receive locally, because only the person at the door can count what came off the van. Keep one supplier record for the group with the terms you negotiated, and let each site raise and receive against it.

It means entry is sold by the clock. A family pays for a set number of minutes for each child, the child's time is tracked from the moment the sale is made, and when it runs out the family leaves or buys more. The alternative is all-day admission, where one price covers however long the family chooses to stay.

Yes, in two ways worth keeping apart. They can buy more time at the desk, which moves the end of the session later and is refunded like any other sale if plans change. Or a team member can add a few minutes at no charge, which is a gift rather than a sale and should read as one in the record. A child who stays on without either is an overstay.

Nearly. A play session is the block of time a child plays for; calling it timed stresses that it has a fixed length and an end somebody acts on, rather than an open-ended visit. In a venue where every session is sold with a length, the two words describe the same thing.

Long enough that a family feels they had a proper visit and short enough that the floor turns over on a busy day, and no single number suits every venue. Shorter sessions give more turns and more time-up conversations, longer ones give fewer of both. Work it out from your own capacity and cost per child-hour, then judge any change against your own earlier figures rather than another venue's.

No. The wristband is a colour the venue already buys, matched to the same colour on the timer board, and a team member reads it across the room by eye. PlayArea OS runs in a browser on the tablets and phones a venue already owns.

A Salary Information File is the fixed-layout plain-text file an employer submits through its bank or exchange house under the Wages Protection System. It carries one record per employee, identifier, routing code, account, pay period, fixed and variable pay and leave days, plus one control record summarising the employer, the month, the record count and the total.

Private-sector establishments registered with the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation are required to pay wages through WPS. The exact scope, exemptions and timing windows are set by the ministry and change, so confirm your position on the ministry's site or with your licensing authority, especially if you are licensed in a free zone.

One clock decides whether a worker is entitled at all, continuous service from the start date with unpaid absences typically excluded. The other decides the rate each year accrues at, the same service read against the years where the rate steps up. Keep both on the record, and a final settlement is worked out from dates rather than from memory.

The move runs at your own pace, because the old system keeps working until the day you switch. Bring your staff list across, enter where payroll stands on the moving date so service and leave balances start from real figures, run one month in parallel if it makes you comfortable, then go live. The switching guide sets out each step.

No. It is general information about how WPS payroll works for a small UAE venue. The ministry's site and your accountant are the authorities on the current rules, figures and deadlines, and where they differ from this page, they are right.

Once a venue is VAT-registered, the play sessions, party packages, café sales, socks and passes it sells are taxable supplies unless the FTA's rules place a particular item elsewhere, so VAT is charged on them at the rate the FTA publishes. Whether you have to register at all depends on your taxable turnover against the FTA's published registration figures; the rate and any special treatment are for the FTA and your adviser to confirm.

For sales to the public the safe practice in the UAE is a price that already contains the tax, so the figure on the wall is the figure the parent pays and the receipt shows the VAT inside it. Confirm the current display rule with the FTA or your adviser, then hold that same treatment everywhere a price appears: the board, the price list, a party quote and a booking form.

Treat it as if it is, unless your adviser tells you otherwise. In many VAT systems a payment taken in advance brings the tax point forward for the amount received, and the UAE's own date-of-supply rules are the ones to check with your adviser, so the cautious approach is to account for the tax in the period you took the money.

A registered venue can generally recover the VAT it pays on purchases used for its taxable business, provided it holds a proper tax invoice from the supplier and the FTA's conditions for input tax recovery are met. Some kinds of cost may be restricted, which is exactly the sort of detail to leave with your accountant. The venue's job is to keep every supplier invoice, its VAT amount and the supplier's TRN in a register the accountant can work from.

Export your product and customer lists from your old POS or spreadsheets as CSV, read the check report before anything is written, import, then enter where stock, finance and payroll stand on the day you move so the first quarter starts from real numbers. The switching guide walks the whole move step by step.

No. The rate field is blank until you fill it, and the illustrative defaults use a round example figure that is not put forward as anyone's legal rate. Take the percentage from your tax authority's published guidance for the goods or services you sell, and check it again whenever the rules change.

Start from whichever number is fixed. If the board price is settled and you need to know how much of it is tax, enter the gross and take VAT out. If your margin is settled and the shelf price can move, enter the net, add VAT and use the rounding step to tidy the result.

Almost always rounding. A POS that rounds VAT on every line and adds the lines up will differ from a spreadsheet that rounds once on the basket total, by up to half a coin per line in either direction. Both are consistent methods. The gap only turns into a problem when two of your own figures were produced by different rules.

Enter 0 as the rate and the page reports no VAT, with net and gross equal. Deciding whether an item is standard-rated, zero-rated or exempt is not something a calculator can do for you; that classification comes from your tax authority and your accountant.

No. The arithmetic runs in your browser on a static page with no account; it stores nothing you type, and no network call carries your figures. Shut the tab and they are gone.

No. That number comes from your regulator, insurer or fire officer for your equipment, age range and exits. The planner takes the figure you were given, or your floor area and their area-per-child figure, and works out what it means for sessions and daily visits.

Work out your own average session length, which is the minutes you sold divided by the number of sessions, and use that figure with zero changeover. What comes back is an average number of turns per day rather than a timetable, and it moves as your average session moves.

Because it assumes every session is full, including the first one on a weekday morning. The gap between the ceiling and your real visits is your utilisation, which is the number to manage with pricing, sessions and marketing rather than a fault in the arithmetic.

Party children occupy places on the floor in the sessions they play, so on a party-heavy day the walk-in ceiling is lower than the planner shows. Subtract the party children from children at once for those sessions to see what is left for walk-ins.

The timer board. Every child playing is a clock on it, so occupancy is read rather than estimated, branch by branch, and the ceiling this page works out is the line you watch it against.

The signing adult with a contact number and their relationship to each child, every child by name and date of birth, the date and time of signing, the exact version of the wording agreed to, the house rules you rely on, and any medical, allergy or photography declaration you will act on.

A waiver belongs to the family rather than to the visit, so a parent signs once and returns as a known family, with the second visit a check instead of a form. Ask again when your terms change materially, or at whatever interval your own advisor recommends.

They stay attached to the version that was in force on the day they were given, because a signature is evidence of agreement to particular words. Publish the change as a new version rather than editing the live text, and decide separately whether families already on file are asked to sign again.

Yes, and it is the single biggest improvement available at the door. Put the link in booking confirmations, on party invitations, on a stand at the entrance and in your social profile. Parents open it in the browser on their own phone, with nothing to install.

Keep the paper file for reference and collect fresh signatures from the day you go live, since a signature is evidence of agreement to a particular wording rather than data to be copied. Customers, children and visit history come across from a CSV export instead. The switching guide sets out the order.

The venue, as a business, on a number the business controls, inside a business portfolio the owner administers. Not a member of staff's personal number, and not a software vendor's account. Staff and any software you use are given access to the profile; they never own it. If a person leaves or you change software, the number, the conversations and the templates stay with the venue.

After a customer messages you, you can reply with free-form typed text for 24 hours from their last message. Once that window closes, you can only reach them with a message template approved in advance, until they write to you again and the window reopens. Reminders and campaigns you start therefore always use approved templates; conversation replies inside the window do not.

Treat it as yes, always, for anything the parent did not ask for. Capture a clear marketing question on the waiver and the party booking form, record the answer against the family, and send marketing only to families who said yes. A message the parent is expecting, such as a reminder for the party they booked, is different in kind, but your privacy law and the platform's business policy decide what is allowed; when unsure, ask first.

Yes, and it is the single change that fixes most unanswered messages. PlayArea OS puts the venue's conversations on every signed-in screen in the browser, so the desk tablet, the office laptop and a phone on the floor are all looking at the same inbox on your own profile and your own number. Nothing is installed and no dedicated handset sits in a drawer.

Yes. Export the list as CSV and load it into the new system, which reads it and reports what it found before anything is written, so a stray column is caught while it is still cheap to fix. A family who has already asked not to be messaged travels with that request rather than arriving as a fresh contact. The switching page covers what comes across from a POS export or a spreadsheet.

If it is a private-sector employer registered with the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation, the obligation applies regardless of size. Some free zones run their own arrangements, so check with your own licensing authority and bank rather than assuming. The MOHRE website is the authoritative source.

WPS is the scheme; the SIF, or Salary Information File, is the standard file you submit under it each month. The file lists every employee's pay for the period plus a control row with the employer's identifiers and totals. Some banks accept the standard SIF directly and others provide their own upload template that carries the same information.

Usually a mismatch: an employee identifier that does not match the ministry's record, a bank routing code or account that does not match the employee's card or account, pay period dates that overlap or fall short of the month, or a control-row total that does not equal the sum of the rows. The fix is a clean staff record and a file that is generated from it rather than typed.

One employee at a time, with the identifiers, bank routing details and start dates entered once and checked, because those are the fields a rejected file usually turns on. Bringing the rest of a venue over, customers and catalogue included, is set out on the switching page.

Your venue is. The waiver wording, the list of families who hear from you and the records held about your staff are all yours. PlayArea OS processes that data on your behalf and for nothing else.

The POS records how a sale was paid, such as cash or card. Card numbers are never entered into PlayArea OS.

Yes. A family’s request to stop is honoured, and welcome, birthday, feedback and broadcast messages to them end. Reminders about a visit or a party the family has booked relate to that booking.

A copy of each organisation’s records is made every night and stored off-site, away from the live system, travelling over an encrypted connection to a storage provider that encrypts what it keeps.

You keep access until the end of the period you have paid for, and your data is kept for a year afterwards in case you come back. It is then deleted, unless the law requires it to be kept longer or you ask for it sooner.

Billing is monthly or yearly per organisation, and you keep full access until the end of whatever period you have paid for. Nothing is charged after you cancel.

Your venue does. PlayArea OS processes it on your behalf, keeps it apart from every other organisation, backs it up off-site every night, and keeps it for a year after you cancel in case you come back.

No. The waiver is your document between your venue and the family. PlayArea OS collects the signature and keeps a versioned record; whether the wording is right for your venue is between you and your own legal advisor.

Yes. The account holder is told by email and this page is updated with the change and its date. Continuing to use the service after that date means accepting the changed terms.

Yes. Every record belongs to one organisation and the separation is built into the platform itself, not applied as a filter. Your families, waivers, sales, shifts and payroll are yours alone, and branches within your organisation keep their own records straight.

Yes, and it is worth it. Staff share the counter device but not an identity: the screen locks between people and each person unlocks it as themselves, so the desk always shows who is standing at it and the record has a name on it.

Backups run every night with nothing to set up. Each copy travels over an encrypted connection to storage away from the live system, held by a provider that encrypts what it stores. Every copy carries a checksum, and you can ask for a copy of your own data whenever you want it.

Your family list, your product list and your opening balances come over from your old POS or your spreadsheets, and you go live on a day that suits your venue. The switching page walks through the whole move.

You keep full access to the end of the period you have paid for, your data is kept for a year afterwards in case you come back, and nothing is charged after you cancel. If a payment is simply late, a three-day grace period keeps waivers and the POS working first.

Yes. Both the marketing site and the app are served only over HTTPS and send Strict Transport Security headers, so browsers that have visited once refuse an insecure connection afterwards.