Donna Genie walks studio owners through writing a party contract or policy document. Spell out rules for decorations, cleanup, food and drinks, guest counts, and fees upfront. Set minimum pricing, cancellation terms, and deposit requirements, then have staff review it before offering clients printed, email, or online signing options.
How are your parties going in your studios? Are you wishing you had more people who would follow the rules? Well, one of the easy ways is to set good expectations up front. Are you having the party booker sign off on a document, more or less a contract for how that party is going to work, what the minimum fees are, what the pricing is and what they're allowed to do? If not, I highly suggest that you consider doing that. Set up a document and spell out what the rules are. Have your staff take a look and make sure that those documents include everything to help you avoid problem areas going forward. When you get that document set, have it either printed and have that party booker sign it or it's really easy these days to send it out via email or through a form on your website and have them sign it there. Whatever your choice is, just make sure you have the rules spelled out in advance to avoid those problem areas. Make sure you consider things like what are they allowed to do for decorations? I just recently saw an over the top mom who decorated almost the whole studio on the chatter and it looked like a lot of work. Hope she was planning on cleaning that up as well. Spell that out. Who gets the cleanup? What food or beverages are allowed or not allowed? How many people are allowed to be in attendance? What if there are less people than they told you? Do you have a minimum price they have to stick to? What if there are more people than they told you? Are there fees for different types of things, items that are not included in the normal packages? Spell that all out and also put your cancellation policy in there. I'd suggest highly that you charge a slight fee for or keep part of the deposit for the cancellation because you have reserved their studio time for them and if they cancel you couldn't have sold it to somebody else and you may have missed out on revenue. So spell it all out. Sounds like a fun project. Have a great day.
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