What do I need to know?

[Randy@DCVRV Park]

Greetings. We are reviewing software to run our RV park, and this one has come to the front of the list, for a number of reasons. Of course, there are several questions. . . :eek:

For reference/background, our park has 59 full-hookup sites, 5 of them back-in's, the rest pull-throughs. We have daily, weekly & monthly rates as I'm sure most of us do. We charge our monthlys for electricity, but all others are inclusive. We offer propane on-site as well as some other small POS sales, but nothing extensive - at least for now. We also have a system-controlled access gate that closes at 6pm and automatically reopens at 7am each day.

To start with, as the title says, what do I need to know to properly evaluate this software? I have already downloaded the demo and have it up and running. What are the important questions I need to be aware of, that I don't know I need to ask? :)

I have close to 40 years in the IT industry, so the computer/network/etc is no problem for me, or our IT support person. We just need to know what to start with, where to look, etc., before we commit to any program.

I'm sure there will be other questions along the way. Thanks for helping out!


Randy
Park manager
Deer Creek Valley RV Park
Topeka, KS.

[Wolfes]

Hello Randy,

We first downloaded the Demo, played around and started to enter our campground data. We have 135 sites which includes overnight camping (from 1 night to 2 weeks), Seasonal Camping and Monthly Camping. We also distinguish individual sites as Primitive, electric only, electric & water, and full hook-up sites. Our pricing tiers also include "holiday" rates where we charge a little more (we have more activity expenses over the holiday weekends). The CM program works wonderful.

We also charge our monthly & seasonal campers for their electric usage and CM handles it perfectly.

When setting up our sites, we coded the abbreviated names with their type of service, for example:
M-01, M-05 etc for our monthly sites
S-32, S-76 etc for our seasonal sites
For our overnight sites we put them into categories such as:

A-10, A-11, A-29 etc
We used the A prefix for our full hook-up sites
B-xx for our electric & water sites
C-xxx for our electric only sites
D-xxx for our primitive sites

Doing this helps our workers find sites by type

But however YOU decide to set it up initially, you are able to change it later if you find another way that works better for you and your staff.

The program can also handle gas & water charges if applicable.

We were tied into online reservations through Friend Communications and it communicated well, we have since stopped taking "online" reservations due to the various sizes of our individual campsites. We're an older campground and have 30 amp sites along with some redesigned larger sites with 20/30/50 amp service. We found some campers would "fudge" their unit dimensions to avert the site restrictions then gripe when they arrived and they could get their unit into the site they chose. Just saying, make sure you have all your site details entered in for each site before starting online reservations.

There are so many aspects of the program, it's difficult to give exact information on the initial set up, but in most cases adjustments can be made along the way.

Also know that the information you change in the demo will not be lost when you purchase the program. The information will still be there when you enter the activation codes...

Good Luck & Happy Camping!!!