Concepts and sales points

At an event you rarely work “somewhere”. You work at a place on the event: a food truck, a bar, a kitchen, a gate, a zone. In Flooptimize we call that place a sales point. That makes clear who stands where, which briefing belongs with it, and what shifts are linked to.

What is a sales point?

A sales point is simply a place on an event (or job) where a worker can be scheduled. That can be anything: a food truck, a bar, a stand, a kitchen, an exit, zone X — you name it.

You link sales points to event days. Per sales point per day you say how many people you need. Based on that (and your shift rules) you can generate shifts.

For venues and sports locations, “zone” or “location” sometimes sounds more natural than “sales point”. In Flooptimize it is the same idea: a place where you schedule crew.

What is a concept?

A concept is the type of offer or work at that place, separate from the physical unit. Think: burger concept vs. coffee concept on two trucks, or “hospitality bar” vs. “gate host” as a type of work on a zone.

Concepts are not required. They help when you run multi-outlet or multi-zone operations and would otherwise keep explaining “which bar” or “which truck” you mean. Do you have one truck that always runs the same setup? Then one sales point with (optionally) one concept is often enough.

How does this fit together in the backoffice?

In the backoffice you set up your offering: which sales points you have, and which concepts you run. Both are optional to configure, and how useful they are depends a lot on how your business works and which industry you are in.

• Sales points — your physical (or logical) places: trucks, bars, zones.
• Concepts — what type of work or offer can land on them.
• Linking — you can attach a default concept to a sales point.
• Staff — you can link workers to concepts (who can do which type of work). That helps later with matching and scheduling.

Then, on an event, you simply assign the relevant sales points (and concepts) to the right days. You do not have to reinvent what “Bar A” or “Truck 3” is: that already lives in your setup.

How do you put this in place (high level)?

1. In the backoffice, create the sales points you actually see in practice.
2. Create concepts if you distinguish them in day-to-day work; otherwise skip this step.
3. Where it fits, link a default concept to a sales point.
4. Link staff to concepts if that applies to you.
5. Per event: assign sales points (and concepts) to the right days, fill in headcount, generate or schedule shifts.

You do not need everything perfect at once. For correct shift generation, days, times, and sales points need to be filled in properly.

Does every sales point have to come from your catalogue?

In practice you usually link sales points from your backoffice catalogue to an event day. In the preview above you can also type a place yourself — that is how ad-hoc labels are meant to work (handy for one-offs). That free-label path is still on the product roadmap; for today, count on catalogue + default concept as the fast path.

In short: set up what you see often; concepts stay optional; a default concept on a sales point saves work on every new event.

Why this matters

With multiple trucks, stands, or zones, things go wrong when scheduling, briefing, and “who stands where?” get mixed up in Excel or chat. By defining places and (optionally) concepts:

• you know per event where shifts land;
• the worker sees in the portal which place and which concept belong with the shift;
• you can later link products to that place or concept (covered in the products article);
• strip planning on large multi-day events becomes clearer (later in the series).

When is one sales point enough?

Do you have one place, one team, almost always the same setup? Start with one sales point. Better three labels everyone understands than twenty nobody maintains.

As soon as you run multiple outlets or zones in parallel — or the same unit with rotating concepts — a clean set of sales points (and concepts where needed) pays off in scheduling, the portal, and later products.

How does this fit the rest of Flooptimize?

• Before / alongside: what is an event or a job?, from job to payout
• Here: concepts and sales points
• Next: linking products; later strip planning and event/day overviews
• Shifts: shift templates, shift rules

Want to see how this fits your trucks, bars, or zones? Book a demo.