Buyer’s toolkit
Golf club software RFP template
A free, vendor-neutral request-for-proposal template for golf club management software. Copy the sections, score each vendor, and run a fair comparison. No sign-up, nothing gated.
How to use it
Ask every vendor the same questions
Send identical requirements to your whole shortlist and score the answers. The slickest demo is not the same as the best fit.
1.Company & commercials
Establish who you are buying from and on what terms before you score a single feature.
- How many golf clubs use your platform today, and how many in our country or region?
- Provide two reference clubs of our size and type that we may contact directly.
- What is the all-in annual cost for our club, including every module we need? Itemise add-ons.
- Is pricing published, or quote-only? If quote-only, why?
- What are the payment-processing fees, and do you take any share of our tee-time revenue?
- What is the contract term, the notice period, and any early-exit or renewal terms?
- What is included in onboarding, and what does it cost?
2.Tee sheet & booking
The system that has to survive Saturday morning.
- Describe the staff tee sheet: real-time updates, drag-and-drop, multi-format (standard, shotgun, crossover).
- Online booking on our own domain and branding? Member and guest flows?
- Lottery, waitlist with automatic offers, recurring tee times, and blackout dates?
- Member and guest booking restrictions, advance-booking windows, and overbooking protection?
- Deposits, pre-payment, rain checks, and configurable cancellation policy?
- Group, society, and corporate block bookings with a single party invoice?
3.Membership & CRM
How the platform holds and serves your members.
- 360-degree member profiles, family/household linking, and custom fields?
- Membership types with tiers, benefits, pricing, and permissions?
- Automated subscription and dues billing, including pro-rata and renewals?
- Communications log (email and SMS) and member-health / retention signals?
- Bulk import and export, and GDPR consent and erasure tooling?
4.POS, F&B & payments
Retail and hospitality on the same system as the tee sheet.
- Pro-shop POS with inventory, gift cards, refunds, and card-present (chip and contactless) checkout?
- F&B POS with floor plans, table service, kitchen display, and member mobile ordering?
- Public / guest F&B reservations with deposits and no-show protection?
- Charge-to-member-account and a single member statement across all spend?
- Which payment processors are supported, and what are the rates?
5.Accounting & finance
Whether the money side is real or a bolt-on.
- Built-in general ledger, journals, AP, AR, and daily reconciliation / close?
- Income statement, balance sheet, and trial balance out of the box?
- Export and sync to QuickBooks and Xero, plus CSV, Excel, PDF, and IIF?
- End-to-end reconciliation of member card payments back to the booking or invoice?
- Multi-currency and multi-tax (VAT/GST) handling?
6.Member portal & community
The member-facing experience, the most common reason clubs switch.
- Member dashboard, self-service profile, statements, and online payment?
- A genuine community layer: feed, announcements, polls, and a member directory?
- Competitions, live scoring, leaderboards, and an Order of Merit?
- Course records, honours board, and club history?
- A native or web member app, and web push notifications?
7.Handicapping & competitions (UK / Ireland)
For members' clubs in WHS territories, ask the vendor to be specific and to show it live.
- Do you compute WHS course and playing handicaps, and run medal, Stableford, fourball, and match formats?
- Do you post scores to the national handicapping body (e.g. Golf Ireland, England Golf), and is that two-way sync live today or on a roadmap? Ask for a live demonstration.
- Competition entry, results, and handicap-affecting adjustments?
8.AI, reporting & operations
Intelligence and the day-to-day running of the operation.
- What is genuinely AI-driven (forecasting, dynamic pricing, marketing), and what is a label?
- Standard and custom reporting, and how fast do reports run?
- Course maintenance, staff scheduling / time and attendance, and labour analytics?
- Marketing: email/SMS campaigns, segmentation, automation, and promo codes?
9.Data ownership, security & exit
The questions that decide whether you are ever trapped.
- Who owns the data, and can we export all of it at any time in standard formats? List the formats.
- Do you sell, share, or train AI models on our data?
- Public REST API, webhooks, OAuth 2.0, and API keys?
- Encryption in transit and at rest, tenant isolation, and GDPR / data-residency posture?
- What is the uptime commitment, is there a service-credit SLA, and is there a public status page?
- Describe your incident-response and breach-notification process and timelines.
10.Implementation & support
How you get live and what happens after.
- Typical go-live timeline for a club of our size, and what data you migrate for us?
- Support channels, hours, and response-time commitments?
- Is there a dedicated onboarding contact and an ongoing account manager?
- Training provided for staff and for members?
Questions about the template
- How do I use this golf club software RFP template?
- Copy the requirement sections into your own document or email, add any club-specific needs, and send the same questions to every vendor on your shortlist. Score each answer (for example 0 to 3) so you can compare like for like rather than reacting to whoever gives the slickest demo. The page is free, ungated, and printable, so you can also save it as a PDF to circulate to your board.
- Is this RFP template biased towards Links Meridian?
- It is written to be vendor-neutral and to expose the questions incumbents least like answering, such as whether they trade your tee times, whether pricing is published, and whether handicap sync is genuinely live. We are confident in how we answer these, but the template is useful against any vendor, including us.
- What should I insist a vendor demonstrates live, not just claims?
- Reconciliation of a member card payment back to the booking, the tee sheet under a simulated busy morning, an export of your data in a standard format, and, for UK and Ireland members' clubs, any claim of two-way handicap sync to the national body. 'Coming soon' on a core requirement should be treated as 'not built'.
See how Links Meridian answers every section
Transparent published pricing, no traded tee times, built-in accounting, and a member community no incumbent matches. Read our contract promise, then put us in your RFP.