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Golf club management software
Membership, the tee sheet, competitions and the bar on one record, for golf clubs that have outgrown separate systems.
The Sunday reconciliation
Five records of one Saturday
The tee sheet, the handicap return, the competition entry sheet, the sweep and the till are five records of one Saturday. Somebody reconciles them on Sunday.
Each of the five is accurate about its own small part of the day and blind to the other four. The club secretary is the only place they meet, which is why the reconciliation is a person rather than a process.
Tee sheet
Knows who played at 08:40. Does not know the subscription behind that name is unpaid, or that the same player entered the medal.
Competition entry sheet
Knows who entered. Does not know who actually teed off, so the office cross-checks it against the tee sheet by eye.
Handicap return
Knows the scores that were typed into it. Does not know about the card that never made it back to the office.
The sweep
Knows the cash in the tin. Does not know which entries were paid by card, or which member is still owed a prize from last month.
Till and card machine
Knows a round of drinks was sold. Does not know it was sold to a member, so it never reaches a statement.
Reconciliation spreadsheet
Knows nothing until somebody types the other five into it, usually on a Sunday evening.
The record is the member
Every green fee, subscription, lesson and bar round reaches one account
The member record is not a page in a database that other systems refer to. It is the thing every part of the club writes to, the moment the transaction happens, without a nightly export and without anybody retyping a name.
A green fee taken at the desk lands on the account before the group reaches the first tee
A lesson booked in the coaching diary bills from the same account as the subscription
A round of drinks charged at the bar appears on the statement that evening
The arrears position is a fact about the member, not a figure assembled at month end
The tee sheet
Tee sheet software is usually the first system a club buys and the last one it manages to replace, because everything else has been arranged around its limitations. Fescue treats the sheet as inventory rather than as a diary: every interval has rules, pricing and an owner, and every booking against it is a transaction on a member or visitor record.
Loop-level rules cover the things clubs currently police by hand. Member ballots, visitor windows, buggy availability, competition holds and society blocks are all conditions on the interval itself, so the sheet enforces them rather than the person answering the telephone.
- Loop-level rules for member, visitor, society and competition play
- Member and visitor pricing read from one grid, applied by who is booking
- Societies held against real inventory, not pencilled into a separate visitor book
- No double entry: an online booking and a telephone booking are the same record
Competitions on one record
Competition management is where the cost of separate systems is most visible, because a single event is entered, played, scored, handicapped and settled in four different places. In Fescue the entry is the tee time, the score is written against the member, the handicap is read from that member on the morning of play, and the settlement is a movement on the same account.
Results publish once, from the record, to the board in the clubhouse and to the app in the member's pocket. Nothing is retyped into a website, a noticeboard sheet and a mailing list, so the three cannot disagree.
- Entry, tee sheet, scoring, handicap and settlement on one record
- The sweep settles on member statements rather than in a tin
- Results publish once, to the board and to the app, from the same source
- Order of merit and season-long competitions calculated from played rounds
Subscriptions and arrears
Club membership management is an annual event that behaves like a monthly one. Renewal runs, category changes, joiners, resignations, direct debit collections and the awkward cases in between all have to reconcile to a figure the committee will read out at a meeting.
Fescue runs the renewal from the member record and holds the result there. Categories, entitlements and pro-rata joining terms are properties of the member, so the arrears position is available on the day rather than reconstructed in a spreadsheet the week before the board pack is due.
- Renewal runs by category, with joining and resignation dates handled properly
- Direct debit collection and card payment against the same account
- An arrears position the committee can read without a spreadsheet
- Entitlements attached to the category, enforced by the tee sheet
The bar and the pro shop
Golf club EPOS usually sits outside the member system, which is why a member can spend forty pounds in the clubhouse without the club knowing which member spent it. In Fescue the till is a window onto the same ledger, so charging to the member account is the fastest thing the bar staff can do rather than the slowest.
The pro shop works the same way. Retail, hire, coaching and re-gripping are posted as they happen, and the Saturday round and the round of drinks arrive on the same statement without anybody reconciling a card machine to a sales report.
- EPOS charging directly to the member account at the point of sale
- Pro shop retail, hire and coaching on the same ledger as the subscription
- One statement per member, always current
- Card takings reconcile automatically because the sale and the payment are one record
What Fescue replaces at a golf club
This is the list of systems we typically remove during migration. In most clubs the annual figure for Fescue is compared against the total of these, not against any one of them.
| What it replaces | What it becomes in Fescue |
|---|---|
| Tee sheet or booking system | Inventory on the member record, with loop-level rules |
| Membership database | The record itself, written to by every other part of the club |
| Till | A window onto the same ledger, charging to the member account |
| Card machine | Payment against the transaction that created it |
| Coaching diary | Bookable inventory, billed from the member account |
| Competition software | Entry, scoring, handicap and settlement on one record |
| Reconciliation spreadsheet | Not required, because nothing was ever separate |
Questions
Asked by committees.
Does Fescue handle handicap returns?
Yes. Scores entered against a competition are held on the member record and returned to the handicapping body from that record, rather than typed a second time into a separate system. Because the handicap sits on the member rather than in a side database, the figure used on the morning of play is the current one.
Can visitors and members be priced differently on the same tee sheet?
Yes. One rate grid carries member, visitor, society and concession pricing, applied by who is booking rather than by which book the booking was written in. A visitor booking online pays the visitor rate without the office adjusting anything afterwards.
How do competition sweeps settle?
The entry is charged to the member account when the member enters, and prize money is credited to the same account. The sweep therefore settles on member statements rather than in cash that has to be counted, held and reconciled later.
What happens to our existing member data?
We migrate it. Membership records, categories, subscription history, handicaps and outstanding balances are brought across and checked against your current system, and we run the two in parallel until the club is satisfied the figures agree. Migration and parallel running are included in the annual figure.
See it at your venue
Request a demonstration
We will come to your club, with a blank notepad, and show you your own Saturday in Fescue.
HELLO@FESCUE.CLUB
Other venue types
The same platform, arranged around the thing your venue actually counts. Pricing is the same in every case, and is set out on the pricing page.