Booking software is easy to buy and hard to change. Once your customers, staff and prices live in a system, moving out is painful. So it pays to choose carefully the first time.
This checklist is for owners of courts, turfs, nets and studios. It works whether you run one badminton hall or a multi-sport campus. Use it to judge any product, including ours.
1. Start with the problems you have
Before you look at any product, write down what goes wrong in a normal week. Be honest and specific. Common answers:
- Two people turn up for the same slot.
- Prime-time slots sit empty because the booking never got paid.
- Staff spend evenings answering "is the court free at 7?" on the phone.
- You chase payments after the game.
- Reports for the month take a day to build by hand.
Judge every system against that list, not against a feature table. A product with fifty features that does not fix your top three problems is the wrong product.
2. One calendar for online and counter
If your front desk and your website use different calendars, you will double-book. It is only a matter of time. Look for one calendar that both sides write to, so a slot is only ever sold once.
Then ask what happens while a customer is paying. A good system holds the slot during checkout and releases it if payment does not complete. In Venue Manager, the slot is held for 7 minutes plus a short gateway buffer, and customers see the countdown. If payment fails, the slot frees up on its own. Nobody has to clean up stuck carts.
3. Pricing rules that match your venue
Your prices are rarely one number. Weekday mornings cost less than Saturday evenings. Shared nets are sold per person. Regular teams get a negotiated rate. Check that the system can express all of this without workarounds:
- Time bands. Different prices and slot lengths by day pattern and time of day.
- Per-person pricing. For shared nets and open play, with a capacity cap.
- Deposits. Collect part of the price up front to lock a booking. Venue Manager lets you set anywhere from 20 to 99%.
- Season bookings. A team's weekly slot for months, checked for clashes before it is confirmed.
- Public and private rates. Keep negotiated rates off your public price list.
For more on using time bands to fill slow hours, read Fill quiet hours with time-band pricing.
4. Payments and tax
Money is where most systems fall short. Ask three questions.
Whose account does the money reach? Some platforms collect on your behalf and pay you later. Venue Manager connects your own gateway instead: Stripe or PayPal worldwide, or PayU and Cashfree in India. Funds settle to your merchant account, not ours. See own payment gateway.
Can every way of paying land in one place? You want online payments, payment links, QR and counter payments recorded against the same booking, so pending amounts are always clear.
Are invoices automatic? Every booking should produce an invoice with the right tax, whether that is GST, VAT or sales tax. Tax reports should be ready for filing, not rebuilt from exports.
5. The front desk on a busy night
Booking is only half the job. The other half happens at the desk. Picture a Friday evening with every court full, and ask how the system copes.
Can staff see who is on site right now? Can they bill extra time, rented rackets and an old unpaid order in one go when someone leaves? Venue Manager's live queue shows everyone checked in from bookings and memberships, and bills it all together at checkout.
Can your staff do all this from a phone? A staff app with quick, single and bulk bookings and check-in saves a trip to the counter.
6. Room to grow beyond bookings
Most venues end up selling more than slots. Hour packs and memberships. Lockers. Gear rental. Open games for players without a group. If each of these needs a separate tool, you are back to spreadsheets.
Look for a system where these sit on the same calendar and the same bill. In Venue Manager, slot memberships, lockers, rentals and open games all run alongside bookings.
7. Reports you will actually read
A system that holds your bookings should tell you what they mean. At minimum you want revenue, payment mix, refunds and your busiest hours, for any period and any space. Exports to PDF or Excel matter for your accountant.
Busiest hours are the most useful number most owners never see. They tell you where to raise prices, where to run offers and when to staff the desk.
8. Questions to ask every vendor
- How long does set-up take, and who does it?
- Who owns your customer data, and what happens to it if you leave?
- Can each staff member have their own login with only the access they need?
- Do customer messages come from your own email address and WhatsApp number, or the vendor's?
- Does it work in your currency, with a gateway you can use in your country?
- Can you try it for real, with your own courts and prices, before you pay?
On access, Venue Manager has 16 ready-made roles, custom roles and access per space, so a front-desk login never sees your finance reports. On messages, it sends from your own email and WhatsApp Business number.
9. Try it before you pay
No checklist beats a real week. Set up two or three courts with your real prices, take a few bookings online and at the counter, and see how it feels.
Every paid Venue Manager plan is free for 15 days with all of that plan's features, and you can extend by 15 more days yourself from inside the app. Compare the Slots plans on the pricing page, or read how Slots works end to end.
Run your venue on Sporfy Venue Manager.
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