Prepaid Accounts - Customer Credits or Gift Cards

[Taglotn]

We use Toast to run a summer season "soda bar" for our HOA community.  We serve ice cream and a grill menu along with some merchandise.  We are open from Memorial Day to Labor Day only.  For years we have offered (and struggled with) allowing families to deposit money with us and then just wander in off the beach and "charge" their purchases against that prepaid amount.  No one carries their wallet, credit cards or cash with them when enjoying the beach.  Nor do they often have their phones (sandy).  So we let them put down a deposit (e.g. $200) and then try to keep track using the House Accounts feature.  However, the soda bar workers don't have any idea what the remaining balance is at any given time and we end every season with a few dozen folks who "charged" more than they deposited and then we have to chase them for the amounts due.

We are looking for a solution and both Customer Credits (record their deposit) and Gift Cards have surfaced as possibilities.  Customer Credits look reasonable, but we are liking the idea that with gift cards members have an online option for seeing their balance and refreshing the amounts when they run low.  

Any thoughts?

[Kirsten_H · Accepted solution]

If you're using the House Accounts feature anyway, why not just have your members fill out an 'application' to gather their billing information and then send them an invoice periodically (monthly or end of the season)?

If you have one location for ordering/paying, you could do gift cards and then keep the gift cards in a file by the register so that your staff can access the cards for payment and your customers don't have to worry about carrying them.

[Taglotn]

Thanks Kristen!  Yes, we did consider simply using the house accounts as they are attended with monthly or season ending billing.  That is where we landed as our plan for 2026.  However, this past summer's college student manager suggested we look into the other two features we might use as we have a fair number of non-members 

I love your idea of just housing the gift cards at the register (there is only one).