PlayAreaOS in Saudi Arabia

Configured for the Kingdom

The floor and the counter work the same wherever a venue is: the POS, the play timers and colour wristbands, waivers signed on a parent's phone, birthday parties, multi-visit passes, the café and the stock behind it, the rota and the pay run. What is particular here is that the country, the currency, the tax rate, the timezone and the weekend days all belong to your own organisation, so a venue in Riyadh, Jeddah or Dammam is configured for the Kingdom instead of working around defaults written for somewhere else.

The sections below take the parts of that a Saudi operator asks about first. Everything a family reads — the waiver wording, the booking form, the price list, the feedback page and every message — is text you write and store yourself, and it opens on a parent's phone from a QR code.

Riyals and the 15% VAT rate

SAR is one of the currencies PlayAreaOS trades in, and the VAT rate is a field on your organisation rather than a number fixed in the software. You set 15 once, and the POS, every receipt, every party deposit and balance, every purchase order and every line of the profit and loss follow it. Package prices and service charges read the way you charge them.

• At the POS. Play time, café items, passes, vouchers and party balances ring up in riyals, and the shift closes with its own takings by payment method.
• On purchases. Purchase VAT sits on each line as stock is received, so the input side is recorded as it happens rather than reconstructed at the quarter end.
• In finance. Photograph a supplier bill and watch it land in the books, with a running profit and loss beside it.

What PlayAreaOS keeps is the record your accountant works from: every sale with the rate it was charged at, every purchase line with the VAT you paid on it, and a running profit and loss beside them, so the quarter is read off a record rather than rebuilt from receipts. The VAT pricing calculator takes any rate and any currency label, so it turns a net price into a shelf price and back again at 15% just as well as at any other rate.

The Saudi week, Ramadan and the Eid holidays

The Kingdom's working week runs Sunday to Thursday, with Friday and Saturday as the weekend. In PlayAreaOS the days that count as the weekend are a setting on your organisation, and weekend pricing, rota cover and booking quotes all read it, so a Saudi venue sets it once instead of correcting it in three places later.

• Rest days. Payroll keeps its own default rest days for the organisation, and an individual employee's rest days override them, which is what a floor team on a rotating pattern actually needs.
• Public holidays. Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha, Founding Day on 22 February and National Day on 23 September are paid holidays for private-sector staff. A public holiday credits a day in lieu, and you choose whether that credit goes to everyone, only to people whose working days it fell on, or one person at a time.
• Ramadan. Saudi labour law cuts actual working hours for Muslim employees during Ramadan to six a day and thirty-six a week. Shift types carry their own start and end times, so a six-hour Ramadan shift is built the same way any other shift is, dropped onto the rota for the month and taken off again afterwards.
• The trading shape. Late Ramadan evenings and the Eid holidays do not look like an ordinary week for a family venue. Forecasting shows expected seats, booked parties and a staffing suggestion for the days ahead, so those weeks are planned rather than guessed at.

Payroll for a Saudi venue

The payroll module runs the month itself. A pay run closes as a fixed record, so a raise this month never rewrites what someone was paid last month. Approved leave blocks the rota, so nobody is scheduled while they are away. Advances are entered once and repaid across the following runs until they are clear, and staff read their own payslips in the app instead of collecting paper.

Every figure in the run is in riyals at your own rates: basic pay, overtime, bonuses, leave encashment, deductions and the loan or advance repayments due that month, worked out from the attendance the rota already recorded. The payroll page walks a month-end run through from start to finish, and the rota is where the hours behind it are set.

Why WhatsApp is the family channel

WhatsApp is the most used messaging platform in Saudi Arabia, and a parent booking a party, asking about opening hours or wondering whether socks are included does it there rather than by email. PlayAreaOS treats WhatsApp as the first channel and email as the second, rather than the other way round.

• One inbox. Family messages arrive where the desk and the office can both see them, tied to the customer record the POS already keeps.
• An answer at midnight. The auto-reply handles the questions families ask over and over, in your own words, so nobody waits until the morning to hear your opening hours.
• Reminders. A nudge before a child's session ends, a reminder before a party, and a thank-you the day after.
• Campaigns. Welcome notes, birthdays, feedback and broadcasts, by WhatsApp and by email.

Your venue owns its own Meta business profile and its own message templates, so the number families recognise stays yours and the wording stays whatever you wrote. The WhatsApp page covers the setup, and the guide to WhatsApp for play centres covers what to send and what to leave alone.

A unit inside a Riyadh or Jeddah mall

Saudi family entertainment has grown up largely inside shopping malls and mixed-use developments, and Riyadh and Jeddah carry most of that demand. A mall unit has its own constraints: a fixed floor plate, a landlord's connection you do not control, evenings that go from empty to full inside an hour, and often a second unit across the city.

The wider set of consequences — turnover rent, the landlord’s trading hours, loading-bay delivery windows and footfall you borrow from the centre — is covered in operating inside a mall.

• The POS keeps selling offline. If the connection drops, the counter carries on; each sale is held on the device and catches up on its own when the link returns.
• Occupancy against a real capacity. How many children are on the floor right now, against that branch's own capacity, so the desk knows when to hold the next family at the door. Capacity management sets out how to pick the number.
• Timers and wristbands. Every child who is playing on one board, each clock matched to the colour band on their wrist, so an evening of drop-ins stays legible.
• A second unit is a branch, not a second system. Each branch keeps its own capacity, cash, shifts, rota and reports under one organisation and one login. What changes for a group with several units is set out separately.

Moving in from what you use today

Your families, your product list and your opening balances come across from your old POS or your spreadsheets, and you go live on a day that suits your venue rather than one you are handed. Your prices and packages arrive reading exactly as they read today. The switching page walks the whole move through, and the guide to migration and opening balances covers what an opening balance has to carry.

Which Saudi venues is it for?

• Kids' play areas, including a single mall unit run by one owner.
• Soft play centres with toddler and junior areas, a café and a party room.
• Trampoline parks where the day turns on waivers and timed jump sessions.
• Family entertainment centres running several attractions and branches under one office.
• Indoor playgrounds and play cafés, where the floor and the counter are one business.

Getting started in the Kingdom

PlayAreaOS runs in any modern browser on the tablets, phones and laptops your venue already owns. Nothing to install, no hardware to buy. The waiver, the booking form, the price list and the feedback page open on a parent's phone from a QR code, and the words on them are yours.

Every night your records are copied off-site, over an encrypted connection to storage that encrypts what it keeps. Questions about a venue in Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam or anywhere else in the Kingdom go to info@playareaos.com.