While there are many individual benefits from its booking and competition modules, the overall SmartGolf experience is enormously positive for club members, administrators and pro-shop staff. Configuration is intuitive and natural, views on mobile through to desktop screens are uncluttered and comprehensive, and the natural flow and navigation in the product makes for an easy and stress-free SmartGolf experience with higher member engagement.

SmartGolf is a fully integrated package designed to replace any of your booking, competition and on-course scoring software. You can use the booking or competition modules of SmartGolf individually or combine them with your existing service modules.

SmartGolf includes all the booking features you expect and need: full member policy application, waiting lists, email confirmations, website integration, restricted visitor/commercial booking views, and more besides. Purse replenishment and buddy transfer is facilitated while holding a booking reservation. Tee sheets are constructed from highly flexible configured templates with day-of-week and time-of-day settings. Late changes to tee-sheets or full replacement are easily accommodated. Courses of 27 or more holes are well served by a flexible approach to course loops in the booking design. Most importantly, competitions are fully integrated into the booking system, meaning competition set-up fully captures booking policy (opening time, competition entry fee cut-off time, booking close time, and member category eligibility).

SmartGolf is specifically designed for high-speed booking during the initial booking rush at competition opening time. Data transfer is minimised for the initial tee-time request, so that repeat attempts can be made quickly when a chosen tee-time has been taken by another. It is feasible for an (unlucky) member to make repeated attempts to reserve a tee-time at less than a 1 second interval during this initial booking period.

The SmartGolf software system is licensed to clubs with either monthly or annual fees according to preference. We don’t barter tee times for payment, but we can assist with marketing selected tee times onto a third-party site, as determined by the club. Our promise and commitment is to deliver greatly increased functionality and usability than your existing providers and at a lower cost.

SmartGolf has unrivalled capabilities for competition handling, covering every form of singles and team competition, scoring variations, qualifier entry into matchplay competitions, open draw match play competitions, order-of-merits including automatic points update from their constituent competitions, competition open draws, and on-course scoring with optional live leader-board for all single and team stroke play formats. The ease-of-use and breadth of capabilities of SmartGolf will be very welcome to your members and staff.

Once you have registered SmartGolf as your new provider through Golf Ireland, the set-up of course and member data takes about 30 minutes. Any member data not stored in Golf Ireland records can be joined during or after import (e.g. member email addresses, membership categories and other data). You can construct booking tee sheets for a whole year in a couple of minutes, and configure a competition in under a minute, including its booking tee sheet. Typically, the complete system is ready to operate in a day or two, covering registration emails sent to all members (or initial passwords assigned), tee sheets for a full year constructed and a range of competitions configured.

In general, user authentication through email is preferable for security, and also since it allows members to receive booking confirmations and other communications. However, a member without email access can still create their user/password credentials, with the assistance of either the administration office or a friend. Once authenticated, a member can log-in with either their email address or card number.

SmartGolf is delivered through modern web browser technology, including the on-course scoring feature. It is fully functional on smart phone, tablet/iPad, laptop or desktop computer. Naturally, a smart phone is most appropriate for the on-course scoring feature.

By design, SmartGolf operates without the need for an installed App, instead using your device’s web browser. This choice harnesses the advanced and timely security of modern web browsers, provides a seamless user experience between a desktop/laptop, saves on Apple/Android App maintenance and updates, and most importantly continues to deliver its on-course scoring capability even when the device is temporarily offline.

Pro-shop and administration staff can create a member’s general play scoring intent in a few keystrokes or selections in SmartGolf, by choosing the member from a drop-down list and selecting the appropriate course and marker. The member’s handicap index is then retrieved and playing handicap calculated. With the intent created, the member can then log into the SmartGolf App, and complete the scorecard as they play their round.

The steps are broadly the same as for members. A search function in SmartGolf allows the pro-shop to locate the visitor by club and portion of their name, or by card number. Once the intent is created, the visitor can access their scorecard through the SmartGolf portal (the login screen has a ‘visitor access’ button, requiring only the golf card for limited access to the on-course scoring feature). The visitor completes their scorecard in the SmartGolf app, and the scorecard will then be automatically included in the SmartGolf end-of-day scores upload to the handicap platform.

The SmartGolf platform operates on secure HTTPS, with login authentication required for all accesses. In addition, a collection of permission settings govern all administration action, allowing you to tailor the access rightd of each staff user. GDPR requirements on members’ personal data are satisfied by both SmartGolf and Golf Ireland, with whom SmartGolf has a license agreement for handicap processing. Hosting is undertaken on a robust secure cloud platform located in the EU, and with significant scope to expand bandwidth and processing power.