A registered National Historic Landmark located in Ely, Nevada, the Nevada Northern Railway Museum (NNRY) maintains the original railway locomotives, rolling stock, track, passenger station and buildings that served the historic copper mining region of Central Nevada for over a century. As the best-preserved example of a standard-gauge short-line in North America, NNRY has received multiple tourism awards and has been featured in seven episodes of The History Channel show American Restorations.

After using Altru for six years, NNRY sought an integrated solution that better met their needs for ticketing, reservations, memberships, donations and merchandise sales, including reservations and discounts for multi-night lodging.

Selecting the right system would lay the groundwork for NNRY’s continued growth and success. NNRY selected Doubleknot.

Since implementing Doubleknot, NNRY reports:

• A 400 percent increase in online donations with a donation request integrated into the checkout process
• A 33 percent increase in reservations
• An overall upward trend in revenues booked online compared to call-in sales

Read the complete case study here!

Best Practice: Use Integrated POS/MPOS for On-Site Sales

Admission-based nonprofits are unique, with enterprise-level requirements for ticketing, registrations and reservations as well as nonprofit-only needs like fundraising and membership management.

But, most POS solutions are designed for the for-profit entertainment industry, and don’t easily support the additional ways that nonprofits generate revenue. If your ticketing, admissions and retail sales aren’t fully integrated with your membership, registrations, reservations and donations, you might face the following problems:

• You have to configure everything in two systems: one for online purchases and one for payments at your site.
• Fees may be higher. Generic payment solutions can have less favorable terms than the ones you’ve already negotiated.
• Because payments are recorded in another database, you have to manually consolidate sales and registration information from different systems for accounting.
• You can’t access purchases that a customer already made online, so you can’t update registrations or collect outstanding payments and have the information automatically updated in your records.

In addition, separate payment solutions fail to capture every constituent interaction in a single database for reporting and analytics.

To empower our clients to save time and money, Doubleknot offers Sales Station, a complete front-desk/front-gate/retail POS solution with support for industry-standard peripherals like ticket printers, receipt printers, scanners and more. With Doubleknot and Sales Station, you set up everything you offer to the public once, and it’s available for sale directly to customers through a web browser, or at your site at a Sales Station register.

And, the Sales Station mobile app for iOS delivers the flexibility of a mobile payment system with the power of our integrated database so you can sell and validate tickets, update registrations, collect donations and sell merchandise anywhere. The Sales Station app for iOS eliminates the need to set up an unrelated system for mobile sales, which saves money on processing fees as well as administrative time to set up and reconcile different systems.

So, no matter it’s purchased, every admission ticket, special event, camp and class registration, birthday party reservation, field trip, membership purchase or donation is recorded in a single integrated database with comprehensive analytics and reporting tools for a 360-view of your constituents.

With Doubleknot and Sales Station, you can:

• Add easy-access buttons to the Sales Station screen for any event, reservation, membership, merchandise or donation
• Add anything to a purchase (even if it’s not assigned to a button) with a few simple taps
• Reduce wait time and speed admissions by using the Sales Station app on iPads and iPhones as a pop-up ticket or membership booth
• Look up registrants and attendees, update registrations and collect payments anywhere
• Ask for donations to support an exhibit as visitors exit, and accept donations at special events on or off your site
• With roaming membership sales, convert visitors to members and credit the cost of today’s admission against the membership price
• Go Green with our optional paperless solution that includes electronic signature capture, electronic receipts and mobile ticket delivery and display!

Support for the Sales Station mobile app for iOS
is included in every Doubleknot subscription!

Call us at (408) 971-9120 x203 or visit
hello.doubleknot.com to learn more and request a demo. 

WEBINAR: Understanding Pricing, Price Groups & Payment Schedules

Doubleknot offers complete control over how prices are presented to your customers and how your customers can pay for their purchases. Please join us for a fact-filled webinar on Tuesday, November 8 at 2 PM Eastern/ 11 AM Pacific where we’ll thoroughly cover every aspect of pricing and payments including:

• Using price groups to display only the prices that are relevant for the selected registrant types
• How to schedule price changes in advance (especially helpful for facility reservations)
•  Setting up payment schedules so customers can pay in installments.

Webinar: Understanding Pricing, Price Groups & Payment Schedules

Date: November 8, 2016
Time: 2 PM Eastern / 11 AM Pacific

Sales Station on iPhones Automatically Adapts to Your Usage

To ensure the best possible experience when you’re using the Sales Station mobile POS app on an iPhone, the contents of the screen changes depending on whether the iPhone is in landscape mode or portrait mode.

In portrait mode, the items in the purchase aren’t displayed on the main register screen, which provides more space for register buttons and easier scrolling. The number at the top of the screen shows the number of items in the purchase. To view the items, tap View Cart. To return to the register buttons, tap Hide Cart. You can swipe a card or tap Charge to begin the payment process on either screen.

Left: Sales Station in portrait mode hides the contents of the order to improve visibility and navigation. Right: If you tap View Cart, the items in the order are displayed. 

In the iPhone’s landscape mode, Sales Station displays both the register buttons and the contents of the order.

Sales Station in iPhone landscape mode. 

Use of the Sales Station app for iOS is included with your Doubleknot subscription. For more information, contact us at Doubleknot@doubleknot.com.

Speed Sales and Checkin with Mobile POS and a Bluetooth Scanner

With a Bluetooth scanner and Doubleknot’s Sales Station app for iOS, there are new ways to quickly check in participants, ticket holders and members; collect outstanding payments; add products to a purchase; and apply member discounts. The following table explains the different ways that you can use a scanner to streamline in-person transactions.

When you scan the code on a:	Sales Station will:
Receipt of any kind	Display the complete order. From there, you can perform any action available for the kinds of items in the order.
Registration or reservation	If no money is due, the person is checked in. If money is due, the order is displayed so you can collect.
Admission ticket	If no money is due, the person is checked in. If money is due, the order is displayed so you can collect.
Membership card	Display information about the membership and allow you to check the member(s) in, look up membership details and apply member discounts to other items in the purchase.
Product (UPC code)	Add the product to the purchase.

For more information about the Sales Station app for iOS and supported scanners, contact us at doubleknot@doubleknot.com.

Sales Station Mobile POS for iPhones Available Now!

Sales Station for iOS extends the full power of Doubleknot’s integrated solutions with the simplicity and convenience of a mobile point-of-sale solution. Sales Station turns iPads and iPhones into a completely portable point-of-sale with easy access to everything you offer.

Adding tickets to a purchase

Because Sales Station is fully integrated with Doubleknot, you don’t need to set up tickets, memberships, reservations or merchandise a second time. You can add buttons to the screen for any event, reservation, membership or product, and add anything to a purchase (even if it’s not assigned to a button) with a few simple taps. And with all of your online, on-site and mobile sales and donations are recorded in Doubleknot’s database, you’ll have a 360-degree view of your customers and operations and a single source of data for reporting.

Items in the purchase are displayed in the Charges column. Just tap the blue button or swipe a credit card to collect and record payment (credit card reader not shown).

Here are a few ways that nonprofits use Sales Station:

• Linebusting. Reduce wait time and speed admissions by using Sales Station as a pop-up ticket or membership booth.
• Checkin for camps, events and programs. Look up registrants, update registrations and collect payments anywhere without requiring program staff to handle cash or checks.
• Fundraising. Ask for donations to support an exhibit as visitors exit, and accept donations at special events on or off your site.
• Memberships. With roaming membership sales, staff can convert visitors to members and credit the cost of today’s admission against the membership price. Existing members automatically receive their benefits on any purchase.

If you’re ready to start using Sales Station for iOS or if you have any questions, contact us at doubleknot@doubleknot.com.

WEBINAR: Increasing Revenues with Discounts and Promotions

Discounts help attract new constituents, reward your current supporters and members and increase overall purchases. With Doubleknot’s Discounts module—the most comprehensive discount management solution in the industry—you can offer almost any kind of discount on everything you sell, with exceptional flexibility for setting the qualifying purchase and the discounted item. Join us for a webinar on Thursday, September 8, 2016 at 2 PM Eastern / 11 AM Pacific, where we’ll cover how to create and track discounts, introduce new features and answer your questions.

Understanding Discounts and Promotions

Date: Thursday, September 8, 2016
Time: 2 PM Eastern / 11 AM Pacific

Improvements to Text Message Receipts

We are pleased to announce that you no longer need a Google Voice account to use Sales Station’s option to send receipts to customers by text message. This change simplifies the Sales Station setup process and increases the delivery speed and reliability of text message receipts. Please note that all text message receipts will be sent from the phone number (415) 741-1018.

If you’re already using Sales Station, no changes are required—your text messages will automatically be sent through the new system. If you’re not using Sales Station, please call or write us to discuss how this innovative app for iPads (included in your Doubleknot subscription) can help you save time, increase revenues and better serve your constituents.

Sending an SMS text message receipt from Sales Station

Five Easy and Effective Ways to Increase Revenue

We know your nonprofit isn’t about revenue—you’re committed to delivering your mission. But, we also understand that you have to maintain and increase revenues to support and expand your programs. Here are five fast, high-impact ways that Doubleknot can help you raise more money for your organization.

1. Collect more donations at your site and events. Guests are most receptive to donation requests when they’ve just visited an exhibit, watched a presentation or attended a class that calls their attention to the plight of an animal, an ecosystem or a valuable initiative. Place your staff in strategic locations to ask each visitor for support, and collect donations on a smartphone or tablet so that all the donor has to do is swipe a credit card. One of our clients recently collected more than $6000 in on-site donations at a weekend event using Doubleknot’s Sales Station app and secure card reader on iPads!
2. “Adoption” campaigns aren’t just for zoos. Zoos around the country rely on animal “adoptions” as an important fundraiser, but adoption can be adopted by almost any other kind of nonprofit. For example, museums could offer the adoption of an exhibit while nature centers can offer adoption of a habitat, a trail or local wildlife. And, the same Doubleknot features that support adoption can also be used for fundraisers like donor plaques, bricks and more.
3. Make adoptions giftable! Grandparents and other adults appreciate the option to give a charitable gift in a young person’s name that’s meaningful to the child. And, children can appreciate the gift of a donation when it comes with a personalized certificate and a plushy or other small memento. Additional on-site recognition opportunities for adopters, like awarding every young adopter with a ribbon that they can proudly wear on their visits, can help drive attendance and increase positive engagement with your organization.
4. Integrate a donation request with every purchase. It’s easy for visitors to ignore a Donate Now button, even if it appears on every page of your web site. An integrated checkout donation request places the “ask” exactly where you want it—at the beginning of the checkout process when the visitor has already decided to make a purchase at your site. One of Doubleknot’s clients raised an extra $100,000 in donations just by adding a donation request during every membership signup.
5. Drive new memberships with meaningful incentives. Standard membership benefits like free admission, gift shop discounts and reduced registration fees may not be enough to convert some of your visitors to members. Consider other kinds of incentives that purchaser’s will value but won’t reduce your revenues, like offering early members-only hours on popular days or priority early member registration for camps and classes: for many parents, locking down summer and holiday plans early is easily worth the membership cost.

If you’d like to learn more about how Doubleknot supports these initiatives, if you have questions about how to get started or if you can suggest an idea that we missed, please let us know at Doubleknot@doubleknot.com.

Why Generic Plug-In Credit Card Readers are a Poor Choice for Nonprofits

Your Nonprofit Isn’t Generic. Don’t Rely on a Generic Payment Solution!

Using Square or a similar solution for collecting in-person credit card payments may seem like a good idea, but the truth is, generic solutions can cause very real problems:

• You have to configure everything in two systems: one for online purchases and one for payments at your site.
• Fees may be higher. Generic payment solutions can have less favorable terms than the ones you’ve already negotiated for your online sales.
• Because payments are recorded in another database, you have to manually consolidate sales and registration information from different systems for accounting.
• You can’t access purchases that a customer already made online, so you can’t update registrations or collect outstanding payments and have the information automatically updated in Doubleknot.

The Doubleknot Sales Station app for iPads is the only fully integrated mobile point-of-sale designed specifically for nonprofits. With Sales Station, you can sell merchandise, sign up new members, collect donations and book new registrations and reservations anywhere.

You can even look up an existing registration, update the information and collect outstanding payments on the spot. And because Sales Station is fully integrated with Doubleknot, every piece of information is automatically stored in the single, unified database.

Every Doubleknot subscription includes the use of Sales Station at no additional cost, so if you’re already a client, there’s no reason to delay. Let us know that you’re interested, and we’ll get you started right away.

If you’d like to learn how Doubleknot’s integrated online, on-site and mobile solutions for nonprofit ticketing, admissions, registrations, reservations, memberships and fundraising can help your organization,  please let us know!

• Call us at (408) 971-9120 x203
• Send us an email at Sales@doubleknot.com
• Click here to request a custom demo