For clubs
How to set up a court booking system
Taking bookings by phone works at a small club and stops working past two courts. The hard part of rolling out a system is not choosing the software — it is deciding the rules, because the software only enforces the decisions you make.
Set the booking window
How many days ahead can a member book? That single question decides how your courts fill up. Too wide a window and a handful of regulars lock every prime-time slot months out, leaving nothing for new members. Too narrow and nobody can plan.
The common answer is to vary the window by membership type: seven days for full members, two for guests. Capping how many active bookings one member may hold at once gives you fairness without shortening the window for everyone.
Manage prime time separately
Weekday evenings and weekend mornings are over-subscribed at almost every club. If those hours follow the same rules as the rest of the day, installing a system solves nothing — it just moves the same scramble online.
A separate price, a separate quota or a shorter window for prime time is the most practical way to spread demand across the day.
Write the cancellation and no-show policy first
Free cancellation up to the last minute is the most common reason a court sits empty: the person who booked does not show, and the slot frees up too late for anyone else to take it.
Define a cancellation cut-off (say 12 hours) and a clear consequence for not showing up. The consequence does not need to be harsh — it needs to be predictable.
Turn guest access into a rule
Members bringing guests is both revenue and your best source of new members, but left unregulated it turns into non-members using the courts.
Record who invited the guest, whether guests are charged separately, and how often the same person may come as a guest. Those three fields cover the whole of guest management.
Open the calendar to members
The real win of a booking system is not the record-keeping — it is ending the front desk’s phone traffic. Once members can see free slots on their own phone, the “is there a court free today?” calls stop.
That depends on the calendar being real time. A calendar that updates late produces double bookings, and double bookings bring the habit of phoning to confirm straight back.