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Golf course management software
Membership dues, the tee sheet, tournaments and the clubhouse on one record, for golf courses that have outgrown separate systems.
The Sunday reconciliation
Five records of one Saturday
The tee sheet, the handicap return, the tournament entry sheet, the sweep and the POS 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 general manager 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 membership dues behind that name is unpaid, or that the same player entered the medal.
Tournament 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.
POS and card terminal
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, membership dues, 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 membership dues
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 and course inventory
Tee sheet software is usually the first system a course 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 carries rules, pricing and an owner, and every booking against it is a transaction on a member or public record.
Rules cover what most operations still police by hand. Member tee times, public windows, cart availability, tournament holds and outing blocks are conditions on the interval itself, so the sheet enforces them rather than the person answering the phone.
- Interval rules for member, public, outing and tournament play
- Member, public and twilight rates read from one grid, applied by who is booking
- Outings held against real inventory, not penciled into a separate book
- No double entry: an online booking and a phone booking are the same record
Tournaments on one record
Tournament 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 tournaments calculated from played rounds
Membership dues and arrears
Club membership management is an annual event that behaves like a monthly one. Renewal runs, category changes, joiners, resignations, ACH collections and the awkward cases in between all have to reconcile to a figure the board 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
- ACH collection and card payment against the same account
- An arrears position the board can read without a spreadsheet
- Entitlements attached to the category, enforced by the tee sheet
The bar and the golf shop
Golf club POS usually sits outside the member system, which is why a member can spend forty dollars in the clubhouse without the club knowing which member spent it. In Fescue the POS 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 golf 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 terminal to a sales report.
- POS charging directly to the member account at the point of sale
- Golf shop retail, hire and coaching on the same ledger as the membership dues
- 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 |
| POS | 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 |
| Tournament 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 tournament 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 tournament 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, membership dues 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.