Skip to content
Data ownership & exit

Your data is yours, and you can prove it by leaving

The test of who owns club data is not a clause in a privacy policy. It is whether you can get it out, in a format something else can read, on a day of your choosing, without asking. This page is the inventory: what exports, in which format, who is allowed to trigger it, and what is not built yet. There is no fee for any of it.

Lock-in is how golf software keeps clubs that would otherwise leave. The system frustrates the team for years, but the prospect of pulling a decade of member history and financial records out of a closed product is enough that the board renews anyway. That hold only exists while the data is hard to reach. Take the difficulty away and a club picks its software on the merits, which is the position we prefer to compete from.

So the exports are ordinary administrator functions, available on a Tuesday in year one, not a concession negotiated at the end. Members export to CSV or Excel with the filters you choose. Eleven financial reports, including the trial balance, income statement and balance sheet, export to CSV, Excel, PDF, or QuickBooks IIF. If you keep QuickBooks or Xero, an authorised connection pushes journals, invoices, bills and payments across on a schedule you set. Tee times and events publish as a subscribable calendar feed, and any single booking downloads as a calendar file.

Members have their own rights over their own records, separately from the club's. A member can request an export of their data from the portal, and the club can process an erasure request against them. That path is deliberately more protected than an administrator's report download: it asks for a fresh authentication step, it is rate limited, and it enforces a cooldown, because a data-export endpoint is exactly what somebody with a stolen session would reach for first.

Ownership also means restraint on our side. We do not sell club data, we do not pass it to third parties for their own purposes, and we do not train models on it. The AI features work on your data to serve your club and nothing else. That is the whole arrangement, and the exports above are how you hold us to it.

Two kinds of ownership

What the club can take, and what a member can ask for

A club's right to its records and a member's right to their own are different things, and they are handled separately.

For the club

Administrator exports

Available to staff holding the relevant permission, at any time, at no cost.

  • Members and CRM records to CSV or Excel, filtered by membership type and status
  • Trial balance, income statement, and balance sheet to CSV, Excel, PDF, or QuickBooks IIF
  • Sales, revenue by category, payment methods, AR ageing, AP ageing, deferred revenue, and the VAT return
  • A live QuickBooks or Xero connection carrying journals, invoices, bills, and payments
  • Event and competition registrations
  • Payroll hours as a provider-neutral CSV
  • A subscribable calendar feed of tee times and events, plus a file per booking
  • Gated on the same permission that already grants the underlying read, so exporting adds no new exposure

For a member

Subject rights in the portal

A member's own data, requested by the member, without going through the office.

  • Request an export of their own record from the portal
  • A fresh authentication step before the request is accepted
  • Rate limited, with a cooldown between requests
  • A separate export covering their food and drink history
  • Erasure requests recorded and processed by the club
  • Erasure keeps a tombstone: personal details are cleared, the financial history stays intact
  • Consent records held against the member
  • The same rights whether they are a member or a registered guest
Why it matters

The outcome for your club

Export is a normal function, not an exit event

The same buttons work in year one and in the month you leave. Giving notice changes none of your access, because none of it was withheld.

The formats travel

CSV and Excel for records, PDF for anything a board wants to read, and QuickBooks IIF for the ledger. Standard files that another system can open without a translation project.

Your accountant is already connected

A live authorised link to QuickBooks or Xero pushes journals, invoices, bills, and payments on a schedule you choose, against an account map you approve.

Members can exercise their own rights

A member requests their data from the portal behind a step-up authentication check, and erasure requests are handled as a process instead of a favour.

No fee, no notice period, no permission

There is no charge for exporting and nothing to ask us for. An administrator with the right permission does it themselves.

We do not sell it or train on it

No sale, no third-party sharing for their purposes, and no model training on your club's data. It runs your club and it leaves with your club.

The inventory

What leaves, in what format, and who presses the button

A vendor that means this can publish the list. Here is ours, including the row where the answer is not yet.

Members and CRM
FormatCSV or Excel, filtered by type and status
Who can trigger itAn administrator holding the member-view permission, which already grants the same records one at a time
The financial ledger
FormatCSV, Excel, PDF, or QuickBooks IIF, across eleven reports
Who can trigger itStaff with accounting access, on demand
The books, continuously
FormatA live QuickBooks or Xero connection
Who can trigger itSet up once by an administrator, then automatic at an hour you choose, with a log per attempt
Tee times and events
FormatA subscribable calendar feed, plus a file per booking
Who can trigger itAny member, into Apple, Google, or Outlook
A member's own data
FormatA portal request behind a step-up check
Who can trigger itThe member, without asking the office
Everything, over an API
FormatNot open to third parties today
Who can trigger itOn the roadmap. The API exists and serves our own apps; issuing credentials to your developer is the part still to build

The last row is on this page deliberately. A data-ownership page that only lists the answers a vendor likes is marketing, and the one thing you cannot verify from the outside is the thing worth stating plainly.

Leaving

What it looks like if you decide to go

  1. You decide, and tell us

    Notice runs per the contract. Nothing about your access changes when you give it, and no export capability is switched on or off by the decision.

  2. You take the records

    Members to CSV or Excel, the ledger to CSV, Excel, PDF, or IIF, registrations and payroll hours as their own exports. Same buttons you have always had.

  3. Your accountant keeps their copy

    If the QuickBooks or Xero connection has been running, the books are already in the system your accountant works in, and the club's history there does not depend on us.

  4. You check what you have

    Do this well before the end of the notice period, never on the last afternoon. A trial balance that reconciles against the exported ledger is the check worth doing.

  5. We help with the awkward parts

    Anything without a self-service export today, we produce as a structured handover during offboarding. Ask for it early in the process.

  6. The account closes

    Data is retained per the contract and the retention schedule, then removed. Members keep their subject rights throughout.

Head to head

How lock-in usually works, and what we do instead

Feature
The usual arrangement
Links Meridian
When export becomes available
On exit, as a negotiation
Any day, as a standard function
Cost of getting your data out
A migration or extract fee
None
Who performs it
The vendor, on their timetable
Your administrator, on yours
Member records
A PDF, or a bespoke extract
CSV or Excel, filtered
The ledger
Summary totals
Eleven reports, to CSV, Excel, PDF, or QuickBooks IIF
Accounting system of record
Theirs
Yours, kept current by a live connection
Member subject-access requests
Handled by hand
A portal request behind a step-up check
Erasure
Delete the row and break the accounts
Personal details cleared, financial history kept intact
Selling or sharing your data
Check the contract
No sale, no third-party sharing
Training AI models on your data
Check the contract
No
Open API for your own developer
Sometimes, at a price
Roadmap, and we say so on the page
The platform

What's included

Member and CRM records export to CSV and Excel
Export filters for membership type and status
Nine financial reports exporting to CSV, Excel, PDF, and QuickBooks IIF
Trial balance, income statement, and balance sheet
Daily summary, sales, revenue by category, payment methods, membership, and AR ageing
Live QuickBooks connection over OAuth, with account mapping
Live Xero connection over OAuth, with account mapping
Journals, invoices, bills, and payments pushed on a schedule you set
A log of every sync attempt, including failures
Event and competition registration export
Payroll hours as a provider-neutral CSV
Subscribable iCalendar feed of tee times and events
A calendar file per booking for Apple, Google, and Outlook
Booking and tee-time history export
F&B and POS transaction history export to CSV and Excel
Member-initiated data export from the portal
Step-up authentication, rate limiting, and a cooldown on member export requests
A separate food and drink data export for members
Erasure requests, with personal details cleared and financial history retained
Consent records held against the member
The same subject rights for registered guests
Exports gated on the permission that already grants the underlying read
Administrator-initiated export, available at any time
No penalty or fee for exporting your data
No data selling, third-party sharing, or AI training on your data
Public REST API over every record
API keys and OAuth 2.0 for third-party access
Webhooks for real-time data sync to your own systems
Questions

Common questions

Can we pull our data through an API today?

Not as a third party, and this is the honest answer to the question this page most invites. There is a versioned REST API and it is fully documented internally, but it authenticates the club's own staff and member sessions. There is no API key issuance, no OAuth authorization server for third-party applications, and the interactive documentation is switched off in production. Issuing credentials to your own developer is on the roadmap and is the highest-priority item on it. Until it ships, the honest position is that everything on this page moves by file export or by the QuickBooks and Xero connection, both of which are real today and neither of which needs us.

Who owns the data in our account?

Your club. Member records, bookings, financial data, and anything created in the platform belong to the club. We process it to run the service for you. Ownership is not a sentence in a policy though, it is whether you can act on it, which is why the rest of this page is an inventory instead of a promise.

What exactly can we export, and in what format?

Members and CRM records to CSV or Excel, filtered by membership type and status. Eleven financial reports to CSV, Excel, PDF, or QuickBooks IIF, covering the trial balance, income statement, balance sheet, sales, revenue by category, payment methods, AR ageing, deferred revenue, the VAT return, and an integrity check. Event and competition registrations. Payroll hours as a provider-neutral CSV. Tee times and events as a subscribable calendar feed, and any single booking as a calendar file.

Is there a fee or a penalty for exporting?

No, and there is nothing to ask for. Export is a standard administrator capability that works on any ordinary day, and giving notice does not switch anything on. If a vendor's export only becomes available during offboarding, the export was never the point of it.

How does a member get their own data?

From the portal, without going through the office. The request asks for a fresh authentication step first, is rate limited, and enforces a cooldown between requests. That is deliberate: a data-export endpoint is the first thing somebody with a stolen session would reach for, so it is protected more heavily than an ordinary screen. There is a separate export covering their food and drink history.

What happens to the accounts when a member is erased?

The personal details are cleared and the financial history stays. An erasure that deletes the row outright takes the club's ledger with it, which helps nobody and breaks the accounts. The record is kept as a tombstone so the money it was involved in still balances, while the person is no longer identifiable from it.

Do you sell our data or train AI on it?

No to both, and no third-party sharing for their own purposes either. The AI features in the platform work on your data to serve your club. If that ever changed it would be a contract change you were asked to agree to, not a quiet update to a policy page.

Can we keep QuickBooks or Xero as our system of record?

Yes, and plenty of clubs do. You authorise the connection, map our accounts onto yours once, and decide whether the club sends one summary journal a day or pushes invoices, bills, and payments as individual documents. It runs at an hour you set and writes a log for every attempt. The practical effect is that your accountant's copy of the books is current independently of us, which is a stronger ownership position than any export.

What does the exit process actually look like?

Give notice per the contract, take the exports, and confirm the handover. Nothing about your access changes when you give notice. The advice worth taking is to run the exports and reconcile them early in the notice period rather than on the final afternoon, because that is when you find the thing you wanted and did not have.

Is there anything we cannot self-serve today?

Yes. Bulk booking history and POS transaction history beyond the accounting reports do not have their own administrator export button, and neither does the community content. We produce those as a structured handover during offboarding. Naming them here is more use to you than a page that implies everything has a button, and both are tracked as gaps so they do not become an awkward discovery.

How do we know the export is complete?

Reconcile it. The trial balance is the useful check: exported and totalled, it should agree with the balance sheet for the same date. For members, the export row count should match the member count for the filters you set. If either disagrees, that is a question worth asking us well before the notice period runs out.

Who is allowed to run an export?

Staff holding the permission that already grants the underlying read. Exporting members needs the member-view permission, which is the same privilege that lets somebody open member records one at a time, so the export adds reach rather than new exposure. Accounting exports sit behind the accounting permissions. Member portal sessions cannot reach staff export routes at all.

What happens to our data after we leave?

It is retained for the period in the contract and the retention schedule, then removed. Members keep their subject rights during that window. If you need a copy after the account closes, ask before it does, because the point of the exports is that you never have to.

Does data ownership differ by plan?

No. Export is not a tier feature and it is not held back on the entry plan. A club paying the least has the same ability to leave as a club paying the most, which is the only version of this commitment that means anything.

Why publish the gaps on your own data-ownership page?

Because a page like this is only worth reading if it includes the answers we would rather not give. Any club can email and ask for API documentation, and finding out that way would be worse for both of us than reading it here. The API is the one significant gap, it is the top item on the roadmap, and everything else on this page works today.

Ask us the awkward question before you sign

Bring your own exit checklist to the demo and work through it. Free 30-day trial, with your existing data imported as part of onboarding.