Running a golf society: Managing Payments for games

For those tasked with organising golf days or golf societies, one of the most difficult tasks can be handling payments for events.  Here are some helpful links and tips for you to use.

Managing and taking payments for events

Unfortunately Golfshake does not have any plans to provide a mechanism for taking online transactions for those arranging games and societies but there is a great service available to use:

Teeofftimes - Professional Society Service

Teeofftimes.co.uk has a dedicated society team that can help with organising your society days and managing your deposits, particularly when you are setting up your society days for the whole year and the deposit amounts required upfront are substantial, especially if you are a larger group.

For further information please contact the society team at Teeofftimes.co.uk on 01753 754375 or email [email protected].

Paypal

Paypal is an online global payment processing website owned by ebay which allows people to request and pay for items and events online using their secure processing system and via email.

Typically Paypal will charge a processing fee for the transaction of +3.4% + 0.20p

A £40 green fee would work out at around £1.80 on top of the £40 to process the transaction. 

Handling deposits

I've heard from a few members how they always try and limit deposits with the courses to £50 per event but some courses insist on at least £10 per person.  This can be quite tricky to organise, especially if you have 36 people attending.  One of the best suggestions I heard for those running a society, is to take an up front season fee that can then be used as the deposit pot but allowing a cheaper final event.

charge a £10 subscription fee to each member on the first event to cover the deposits for the year. We then reduce the cost of the final event by £10 to refund the money to the members