A daily opening and closing checklist for a soft play centre

Why does a soft play centre need a daily checklist as well as a launch checklist?

The launch checklist in the guide to opening a soft play centre is walked once: licences displayed, equipment signed off, a restore rehearsed. Nobody repeats it on a Tuesday. What a venue repeats on a Tuesday, and every other day it trades, is a much shorter list whose whole value lies in being the same every time. The morning list gets the floor safe and the desk ready before the first pushchair comes through the door; the evening list turns a loud day into a closed shift, a counted drawer and a record somebody can read tomorrow.

The two lists below are written for the person on the early and the late position. Where a step belongs to your regulator, your insurer or your own building, the page says so and leaves the content blank for you to fill. It quotes no legal figure of any kind: not a head-count, not an inspection interval, not a supervision ratio. Those come from the body that issues your licence, and a checklist is your record of having done what they require, never a substitute for their list.

Who owns the opening, and who owns the close?

Assign the two lists to positions on the rota rather than to people. Whoever holds the early desk position opens; whoever holds the late one closes. Each of them signs their own round, so the form carries a real name without anyone writing it down. If the venue runs two POS, each drawer has its own shift and its own close, and the closer of one is not the closer of the other.

Budget the time. An unhurried opening before the doors costs less than a loose net clip found by a child at eleven. Rushing the close is how a drawer ends up counted at speed, with a variance nobody can explain on Monday. Put the two windows on the rota as paid time, not as goodwill.

Keep both lists somewhere they are signed rather than somewhere they are remembered. A laminated sheet with a pen on a string works; a form on the tablet that records who completed which round, and when, works better, because the record survives the shift. What matters is that a manager can tell the difference between a round that was done and a round that was meant to be.

What goes on the opening checklist?

Nine steps, in the order the morning happens.

1. Walk the floor before the doors open. Frame, nets and clips, foam and mats, ball pit, toddler fence, the slide landing, fire exits clear and unlocked from the inside, toilets and the changing table, the party room. What to look at, and how often, is your regulator's list and your equipment supplier's, not anyone else's. Sign the walk under your own name and write a note against anything that needs a repair, so the owner reads it before opening rather than after the weekend. Keep the supplier's inspection schedule and the maintenance history for the frame in the file where your insurer will look for them.
2. Count the float and open the shift. Count what is physically in the drawer before anything is sold and enter it as the opening float; everything taken today is measured against that number. A drawer that starts trading uncounted has lost its baseline for the whole day, and every variance after it is guesswork. Two drawers mean two floats and two shifts.
3. Ready the timer board and wristbands. The timer board should show nothing running from yesterday; a child still on it overnight means someone left without being marked off, and that is a closing fault to raise rather than a morning fix to hide. Check the wristband boxes against the colour slots, so the band handed to a nine o'clock arrival is the one the board expects. Confirm the branch's capacity figure is showing, because the desk reads it all day.
4. Set the waiver stand. The QR code for the digital waiver belongs where families queue, not behind the desk. Scan it once with a phone to confirm the current wording opens. Agree one rule for the family who arrives without a signature and hold everyone to it, so it is never re-argued at the counter with a queue behind them.
5. Confirm the lost-child posts. Say out loud who holds each exit today and what the code word is, then check that a lost-child alert can be raised from where the desk actually stands. The procedure itself, the roles and the escalation point come from the lost-child procedure guide and your own card; the morning check is only that today's people know their posts.
6. Read the day's parties. Open the bookings calendar for today. For each party note the time, the package and add-ons, the number of children and the balance still owed after the deposit, then set the room and tell the café. Families should already be expecting the day, because the confirmation and the reminder went out on their own; the morning read is so the host is expecting them too.
7. Check the café and the shelf. Look at what is on the shelf against what a normal day sells, and at what a party will draw. Anything short goes on a purchase order in stock and purchasing rather than on a napkin, so the delivery is received against an order and the bill lands against it too.
8. Ready the incident record and lost property. Know where the incident form sits before anyone needs it, because the moment a child slips is the wrong moment to hunt for one. Glance at the lost-and-found list so the desk can answer the parent who rings at ten about a jacket left yesterday.
9. Sign the opening form. A named sign-off, submitted before the first family arrives, is what turns nine good habits into a record. A morning where nothing was submitted is itself the signal to ring the venue.

What goes on the closing checklist?

Eight steps, from the last time-up alert to the moment the lights go off. The order matters more here than in the morning: cash movements must be recorded before the count, and the count must be done before the report is read.

1. Run the last session out. The board raises a time-up alert as each child's clock ends; the closer watches the alerts, offers more time where the venue sells it, and marks each child as left as the family goes. Tally the overstays you saw as they happen rather than reconstructing them at close, and write the number on the end-of-day report. Leave the board empty: a child still showing as playing at midnight is a fault in the record, and every count that reads the board inherits it.
2. Clear the café and note the shelf. Anything thrown away is written off with its reason, expired or damaged, so the profit and loss knows what was lost rather than sold. Where the shelf and the system disagree, count the item and correct to the counted figure with the reason on record. Then raise tomorrow's order while the gaps are in front of you.
3. Record every cash movement. Before anyone counts, every safe drop, every supplier paid from the drawer, every petty-cash purchase and every extra float brought in during the shift must be on the POS with a reason, and marked as money spent or money moved, because the accounts treat the two differently. A drop that was made at four and never recorded shows up at close as a shortage against the cashier who did nothing wrong.
4. Count the drawer and cash up. Count by notes and coins, and enter the total. The POS compares it with what it expected and shows the difference. A difference with a reason written beside it is an explained day; a difference without one is an open question that gets harder to answer every hour. Close each drawer while the person who ran it is still in the building.

   Formula. Expected cash at close = opening float + cash sales during the shift + cash in − cash out. Variance = counted cash − expected cash.

5. Read the Z-report and file the end-of-day report. The Z-report is the shift's own summary: the payment mix, the refunds, and the variance with its note. Read it while the day is still fresh, then submit the end-of-day report: takings as counted, parties run, incidents if any, overstays counted, what the shelf needs, anything the morning person must know. It is the note the manager reads first.
6. Close the incident and lost-property records. Any incident is written up while the detail is exact, with the witnesses and the immediate actions taken; a report reconstructed on Monday from memory is worth less to an insurer than one filed at half past three. Log every item handed in with a description, where it was found and the finder's signature. Confirm every lost-child alert from the day has been stood down, because an alert that closes itself is a different fact from a child who was found.
7. Do the final walk and lock up. The closing round covers the floor, the ball pit, the toilets and the party room, in whatever order your regulator and your own routine require, alongside any closing items on your hazard list. Lights, alarm, keys and the safe belong to your building and your landlord; what the record holds is the signed round.
8. Let the backup run. There is nothing to press. Every night a copy of the organisation's records is made and sent over an encrypted connection to storage away from the live system, held by a provider that encrypts what it keeps; the backups page covers what is in it. The closer's only part in it is finishing the day properly, so what gets copied overnight is a closed shift rather than a live one.

What should a manager read the next morning?

Four things, in about ten minutes, before the venue opens again. First, yesterday's shifts in reports: each drawer, the names on its open and its close, its count against expectation, and the closer's note wherever the drawer was out. Second, the submitted forms: the opening sign-off, the closing round, any incident report, and the end-of-day report the closer wrote. Third, yesterday's sessions and minutes sold, set beside the overstay tally the closer kept. Fourth, the week so far on the sales reports, exported when the accountant wants them.

A manager who reads those four every morning for a month will know which position the venue's problems live on. A short drawer on Saturdays, or an empty board on Sunday mornings, points at a position rather than at a bad week.

An illustrative Tuesday, from float to backup

The opener signs in at half past eight, walks the frame, notes a frayed net edge on the hazard list and submits it. She counts 500 in the drawer, enters it as the float and opens the shift; the board is empty, the wristband boxes are full, the capacity figure reads "0 of 40". She scans the waiver stand, names the exit posts with the floor staff, reads one party at two o'clock with a balance of 320 owed, and raises an order for juice cartons that ran low on Sunday.

1. Through the day the drawer takes 2,600 in cash, alongside the card sales the bank's terminal handles.
2. At four o'clock the drawer is heavy, so 1,200 goes to the safe: recorded as cash out, reason "safe drop", marked as moved.
3. At half past four the host pays 40 for balloons from the drawer: recorded as cash out, marked as spent.
4. Expected cash at close = 500 + 2,600 − 1,200 − 40 = 1,860.
5. The closer counts by notes and coins and reaches 1,840. Variance = 1,840 − 1,860 = −20. She writes the reason: a parent was given change from the float tin for the vending machine and the tin was never squared back.
6. The Z-report shows the payment mix and the 20 short with her note. She files the end-of-day report: three overstays counted on the board, one party run, juice order raised, no incidents.

At ten that night the owner checks from home that the day is closed, sees one drawer 20 short with the note beside it, and goes to bed. On Wednesday morning the manager reads the closer's end-of-day report, opens the note about the frayed net, and rings the supplier about it before anyone rings her.

Both lists are lighter when the screens carry them. PlayAreaOS holds the shift, the float, the cash movements and the count with its variance note; the timer board and its time-up alerts; the waiver record; the lost-child alert and the lost-and-found list; the bookings calendar; stock, waste and purchase orders; and the hazard, cleaning, incident and end-of-day forms, each carrying the name of the person who submitted it. An end-of-day digest gathers the day's drawers on one page for the owner who wants to know before bed that the venue is properly shut, and the nightly off-site backup runs behind all of it. The shift and cash count entry in the glossary defines the unit this whole page turns on.