Nobody opens their first karting track or sim racing center knowing what a “bookable unit” is, and you should not have to. This page is the checklist we wish every operator had six months before opening, useful whether or not you ever buy anything from us.
These are cheap to change now and painful to change once you have taken a thousand bookings. Make them deliberately, write them down, and every software decision after this becomes easy.
Everything else can be done in a week. These four have other people’s timelines attached, and every one of them has delayed somebody’s opening.
A merchant account goes through underwriting, and a brand-new business with no trading history is exactly the profile that gets extra questions. Apply as soon as the entity exists. Not being able to take a card on opening day is a genuinely common failure.
Transponders and a timing loop are physical goods with a delivery date and an installation appointment. They also need to be commissioned and tested against real karts, which is not a thing to do the week you open.
A domain, a real website and a Google Business Profile all take time to be trusted and found. A site that goes live two months before opening starts collecting bookings and search traffic during build-out instead of on day one.
Have a lawyer in your state look at it, including the section covering minors and who is allowed to sign for them. Then make sure whatever system you use records the guardian, versions the document and can re-collect a signature when it changes.
Rough timings, every build-out slips, so treat these as an order of operations rather than dates. The point is what depends on what.
Make the six decisions above. Register the entity, apply for card processing, buy the domain. If you run karts, order timing hardware. Start a simple site so search engines know you exist.
Build the real website and put your session types and prices on it. Get your waiver reviewed. Configure the venue in software: attractions, capacities, session lengths, packages. Start selling gift cards. They are cash before you open.
Turn on online booking for a soft-open window. Install and test kiosks, terminals and screens. Train staff on the real system, not a slide deck. Run a full dry day: book, check in, pay, run the session, close the till.
Open with your smallest sensible list of session types. Watch where the counter queue forms and fix that first. Leave memberships, leagues and complex pricing for month two. You will know far more by then.
We would rather help you decide these things than sell you something. Bring your floor plan and your opening date, even if that date is a year away.
You do not need everything at launch, and buying everything at launch is how a venue ends up with software nobody has been trained on. Here is the honest split.
Talk to us, venues in build-out are the customers we most want, and it makes more sense to get you configured and ready for opening day than have you paying for a platform while the building is still a shell. Bring your opening date to the call and we will be straightforward about it.
Ours starts at $579 a month for the platform, plus the attractions you actually run, so a small sim lounge is about $723 and a mid-size karting venue with a kitchen is around $2,053. The whole rate card is published, which is unusual in this industry: most competitors in karting will not tell you a number without a sales call. Expect a one-time onboarding fee too, ours is $2,149 and covers configuration, your page build, staff training and go-live support.
Yes, and it is the one thing we would argue hardest about. Your busiest booking hour is usually after you close. A venue that only takes bookings by phone is invisible to the guest deciding at 10pm on a Tuesday where to take eight kids on Saturday, and that guest does not call back the next morning, they book the venue that let them book.
A bookable unit is anything the schedule assigns to a guest: a bay, a lane, a court, a party room, an escape room. It is capacity you chose to install, which is why it is a fair thing to price on. Simulators, karts and restaurant tables are not units. They are priced inside their own packs. And general-admission headcount is never a unit, so a busy open-play session costs you nothing extra. More terms explained here.
Yes, and for a new venue we usually recommend it. Start with the platform and one activity pack. Adding a module later provisions its screens and pages automatically, and dropping one retires them cleanly. You are never charged for a capability you are not using.
Setup is thirteen plain-English interviews rather than a blank admin screen, how long is a session, who can drive what, what happens to a no-show, and the platform builds your real classes, rigs, menus and packages from the answers. Onboarding includes staff training and go-live support, and the go-live check tells you plainly whether you are actually taking real payments or still in practice mode.
Four questions, in this order. What is the total monthly cost at my size, in writing? What is the contract term, the notice period and the cost to leave early? Who owns the guest data, and can I export it? What does the product not do that I am likely to need? A vendor that answers all four plainly is telling you something about how the next three years will go. Ours are answered on the pricing page and on what we do not do.
Send us your layout and your opening date and we will configure a tenant to match, then walk you through the decisions above with your own numbers in front of you. Even if you are a year out, and even if you end up buying something else.
Thirty minutes. No slide deck.
Depth on the decisions above.