Two couples want the second Saturday in June. One viewed the function room on a Tuesday evening and said they would "talk it over". The other rang on Thursday morning, ready to pay a deposit that afternoon. At a lot of golf clubs, whoever picks up the phone on Thursday decides which of them gets married there, usually by flicking through a paper diary and hoping the pencilled name from Tuesday is still current.
Functions are often the largest single bookings a club takes, and they tend to run on the least software. The enquiry arrives by email. The date sits in a diary in the office. The menu lives in a Word document someone edits by hand for each couple, and the deposit is a line in a spreadsheet that gets reconciled at month end, if it gets reconciled at all. None of that is careless. It is what happens when every other part of the club gets a proper system and the function room is left with whatever was to hand.
Today we are releasing Weddings and Private Events in Links Meridian. It runs functions on the same system as the course, the dining room and the ledger. This article walks through how it works, and it also sets out some practical habits any functions manager can adopt this season, whatever they use to run their bookings.
The held date is the whole problem
Ask an experienced events manager where function sales go wrong and the answer is rarely the menu. It is the date. A Saturday in June can only be sold once, and the gap between "we're very interested" and "here is our deposit" is where clubs lose bookings or, worse, promise the same room to two parties.
Hotels and wedding venues have long handled this with a simple discipline of holds, second options and challenges, and Links Meridian builds it into the booking itself.
When a couple are serious but not yet ready to sign, you hold the date, and the room is theirs until the hold expires. The expiry does something. Once it passes, the hold lapses on its own instead of lingering in a diary for weeks after the couple have quietly booked somewhere else.
If a second couple want the same room on the same day, they take a second option and wait in line behind the first. You do not have to tell them the date is free when it is not, and you do not have to turn them away while the first couple might yet fall through.
When the second couple are ready to commit, you set a challenge. The first couple get a deadline to sign or release. If they sign, the date is theirs. If the deadline passes, the second option is promoted automatically, and both the couple and your sales owner are told. You can clear a challenge too, if circumstances change.
What this gives you is a rule you can explain. When a couple ask why they lost their date, "you had until Friday to confirm, and we told you so" is a far easier conversation than "someone else rang first".
From enquiry to proposal on the same afternoon
Each kind of function you sell gets its own page on your club website. Weddings, anniversaries, society dinners, corporate days: whatever your rooms are good for. A couple choose a date and see it marked Available, Limited or Unavailable for the rooms that event uses, then send an enquiry with their guest count and a note.
The enquiry lands in the private events pipeline with its source recorded and an owner on your team. From there it moves through the stages a function really has, starting at enquiry and ending at settled once the account is at zero. In between, a function is quoted and held as an option before it is confirmed, then the final numbers come in and the day is played. Your team can work the pipeline as a board or a table, with Upcoming and Past views. If you take enquiries through booking partners, those can arrive by API into the same pipeline.
The proposal comes from your own price list. You set the parts of a sale once in settings, and every new proposal starts from them rather than from a blank document:
- Menu packages in tiers, each with its sections and a per-head price.
- Room minimums, a minimum spend for a room, with a shortfall line on the proposal if spend falls below it.
- Event charges such as a service charge, gratuity or admin fee, each set up as its own rule.
Those charges are not taxed the same way everywhere. In the UK a discretionary service charge shared among staff is usually treated differently from a compulsory one, and in many US states a mandatory service charge on a function invoice is taxable. Because the tax treatment differs by country, each charge in Links Meridian carries its own tax category. The client sees every charge as its own line, never folded into the price of the food, and your accountant can see how each one was taxed. If you are unsure how your own charges should be treated, that is a conversation for your accountant before you set the rules, not after the first wedding.
Proposals are numbered, with drafts and revisions, and you can preview each one exactly as the client will see it before you send it. Building a proposal becomes a few choices rather than an evening with a template, which means it can go out the same day as the viewing, while the couple are still talking about your view over the eighteenth.
The host's own page
Every function has a host, and the host gets a page of their own. A couple or an organiser signs in with a link sent by email. On that page they see the current proposal with every room and charge spelled out, the booking terms for their kind of event, and a documents list.
The client accepts and signs the exact version they read, with your booking terms attached. If the menu changes or the numbers move, the change goes back to them as a new version to accept, and the old one stays on file. Each signed version is available as a PDF. When a dispute arises eighteen months later about what was agreed for the drinks reception, you have the answer, tied to the version the client actually saw.
E-signature is switched on country by country as each region's consent wording is approved. Where it is not yet on, the client accepts online and the acceptance carries the same audit record.
Proposals and contracts are issued from your own document templates, so the paperwork still looks and reads like your club.
Payment schedules that chase themselves
Most clubs already know the shape of their deposit terms. The difficulty is collecting against them. Somebody has to remember that the second instalment for a September wedding falls due next week, send the email and, a week later, send it again.
In Links Meridian the payment schedule follows the terms you set for each event type. A typical wedding schedule might be a deposit at signing, a percentage a few months out and a per-head balance once final numbers are in. Milestones can be set at signing, as a percentage, as a fixed sum or as a per-head amount. Booking terms are set per event type too, including the refund ladder as the date approaches, so a corporate dinner and a wedding can carry different terms without anyone editing a contract by hand.
Each milestone has a due date and a reminder. The client's page shows what has been paid and puts a Pay button beside the next one. The host can pay a milestone by card in a couple of taps. Your team sees what is due and what is overdue without opening a spreadsheet.
Why a deposit is not revenue yet
When a couple pay a deposit in October for a wedding next September, the club has not earned that money. It has taken money for a service it still owes. If the wedding is cancelled under your refund terms, some or all of it goes back. Booking deposits as revenue in the month they arrive flatters this year's figures at the expense of next year's, and makes it harder to see what the function room actually earned in any given season.
Links Meridian holds deposits and instalments as a liability until the function is delivered. After the day, your team marks the function delivered, and the money is recognised as revenue, split by package and charge, each under its own tax category. VAT or sales tax is taken at the point your country requires, which the club sets once in settings. The function then settles and closes at a zero balance.
Your accountant sees deposits as deposits. You can read more about how the ledger handles this on our golf club accounting software page.
When the function takes half the dining room
Plenty of clubs do not have a dedicated function suite. The wedding breakfast takes the main dining room, or a fortieth birthday takes the back half of it while members eat at the front.
Function rooms in Links Meridian are linked to your dining rooms, and rooms can be split into parts. Hire half the dining room for a private event and those seats come off the restaurant's covers for that evening. The host stand shows the space as a private event. Front of house cannot book a table of four into the middle of a wedding, because the restaurant and the events team are working from the same picture. The country club restaurant POS page covers the dining side in more detail.
Member-hosted functions in the Digital Clubhouse
Members host functions too: a retirement dinner, a christening lunch, a captain's evening. When a member is the host, the function is linked to their membership, and they read and accept the proposal inside the Digital Clubhouse they already use for booking and their account. There is no separate login and no separate email trail to keep track of.
A practical checklist for any functions manager
Whatever system you run, a few habits make the held-date problem far easier to manage. These are working practices rather than rules, and every club will tune them to its own season and market.
Put an expiry on every hold. An open-ended hold is where most date disputes start. Agree an expiry when the hold is placed and tell the couple the date in writing. Peak Saturdays usually warrant shorter holds than a midweek date in February, because demand behind them is stronger.
Write your challenge deadline into your terms. Decide in advance how long a first-option holder gets to respond once a second party is ready to commit, and say so in the terms a couple receive with their hold. A deadline the couple knew about from the start is much easier to enforce than one invented on the day.
Keep second options in strict order. If three parties want the same date, record the order they asked in. When the first releases, the second is next, and the third knows exactly where they stand.
Build the deposit schedule around your risk. A sensible schedule usually has three parts:
- A deposit at signing, large enough that a couple take the commitment seriously and that it covers the date you are turning other enquiries away for.
- One or more interim payments, timed so that the bulk of the money is in before the point where you could not realistically resell the date.
- A balance tied to final numbers, often calculated per head, due far enough ahead of the day that your team is not chasing money in the week of the event.
Match the refund ladder to the schedule. The closer the date, the less of a deposit should be refundable, because the chance of reselling the room falls. Write the ladder into your booking terms so the couple can see it before they sign.
Itemise every charge. Put each charge on its own line and check its tax treatment with your accountant. Clients trust a proposal they can read line by line, and your year-end is easier for it.
Keep deposits out of the month's takings. Even if you work from a spreadsheet, record function deposits in their own account and move them to revenue only after the function has taken place.
What is included, and where
Private events is included from the Professional plan upwards, with no separate events module to buy. The club switches it on when it is ready to publish its first event type, and current prices are on our pricing page.
The full feature list, including how proposals and payment schedules are set up, is on the golf club wedding and events software page.
If you would like to see a wedding run through your own rooms, with your own packages and your own deposit terms, we would be glad to set that up for you. Request a demo whenever it suits, or start a 30-day trial and publish your first event type when you are ready.