Sports club management software for members, subs, teams and the work off the pitch

In most clubs the work is not one big project. It is dozens of small jobs that come back every week, and they only look small until you add them up over a season with fifteen teams.

No club needs all of it at once. A club with two adult teams gains most from a clean membership list and subs, which is the core of any CRM adapted to members instead of customers. A club with a big junior section gains from the coach app and contact with parents. Start with whatever takes the most time each week. If you are not sure your spreadsheet has had its day, read our guide on Excel or planning software first.

A club plans two things at once: which team trains, and on which pitch or in which hall. A pitch takes one team at a time, and a floodlit 3G pitch is worth its weight in gold in January. The board knows every pitch, every hall and every team, and stops two coaches booking the same slot.

League fixtures sit on the same board. When a home game moves, the board shifts the session that was in that slot and tells the coach and the parents of that team. A coach only sees his own squad on his phone: who is coming, who has dropped out and who can make Saturday. The app runs in the browser as a PWA, so nobody has to download anything from an app store.

If your club hires out a pitch or the function room to other clubs, schools or businesses, those bookings belong on the same board. A request through the website arrives as a proposal and never clashes with training. How that works is on our page about a booking system for your website.

Subs are the biggest income for most clubs, and collecting them is the most thankless job on the committee. Payments without a reference, one payment for two children, or a season paid in three parts turn matching into an evening's puzzle.

In the membership system every member gets a payment request with its own reference. When the money arrives, the member is marked as paid. A reminder goes out by itself after the period you choose, in a friendly tone and with a link to pay. Family discounts, instalments or a reduced rate for those who cannot afford the full fee are set up once. The treasurer sees per team what is still outstanding, the coach only a dot next to a name.

For a registered community amateur sports club, fees matter for more than cash flow. HMRC's guidance treats a club charging more than £1,612 a year as not open to the whole community, and where membership costs more than £520 a year the club must make provision for members who cannot afford more. A membership system that knows every fee and every reduction makes that easy to show.

AI does not replace your youth coordinator. It removes the retyping: a fixtures export from the league, an email from an opposing club moving a game, or a list of summer camp sign-ups becomes a proposal that someone checks and approves. The coordinator decides, the software does the typing. How we build those steps is on our page about AI automation.

A sports club handles children's data, pays some coaches, often runs a bar and may be registered with HMRC as a community amateur sports club. These are the rules that most often end up in the software. Check the current figures with HMRC, the DBS and the ICO, and with your accountant before you rely on them.

Photos of players, medical notes for juniors and emergency contacts all count as personal data, and health information is special category data. Ask only what a coach needs to keep a child safe, and let only that coach see it. How UK GDPR differs from the EU version is in our guide on UK GDPR and EU GDPR, and what your club website needs is in our guide to a GDPR-compliant website.

Almost every club is looking for the same people: a coach for the youngest teams, someone for the bar on Saturdays and a few parents who will drive to away games. A page on your site with a short form works better than a message in a group chat that sinks within the hour. Whoever signs up picks the role and the days, and the coordinator sees straight away who still needs a DBS check before working with children.

For the bar and match days, volunteers sign up for shifts themselves. The software shows which shift is still empty and sends a reminder the day before. It is the same idea as our staff scheduling software, without contracts and with more patience for people who cancel.

Sponsors get a place of their own: which board along which pitch, which logo on which shirt, which deal ends this season and which invoice still has to go out. Whether sponsorship invoices carry VAT depends on your club's VAT position, so ask your accountant. Parents and members who want to see their own payments and sessions can do so in a member portal.

A club with one team does not need an ERP. A multi-sport club with six sections needs more than a shared spreadsheet. What we would set up depends on your number of members and what you run besides the sport.

For many small clubs an off-the-shelf package, sometimes offered through the governing body, is the sensible start. Custom software pays off when your package makes you do things twice, when sections each keep their own list, or when you want something no package does, such as hire and subs in one system. Clubs that run a gym or fitness classes next to the pitches will recognise much of our page on software for gyms. How to weigh that up is in our guide on replacing Excel with software.

The gain is not only in the hours. A treasurer who sees in November which team still owes subs can call the right people, and a coach no longer asks for money on the touchline. For a rough idea of what custom software costs, try our software development cost calculator or read what custom software costs.

No sports club is on our client list yet. For Business Centrum we did build a management platform that replaces their Excel, with files, documents, tasks and a portal for their clients.