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Pitch booking software development

For facilities managers, school business managers and pitch operators who need slot availability, peak pricing, club block bookings with invoicing, floodlight and changing-room add-ons, weather cancellations and maintenance closures designed around how their pitches, courts and halls are actually let.

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The problem

What goes wrong today

Where it usually starts

A sports centre with two full-size grass pitches, a floodlit artificial pitch that splits into three five-a-side thirds, four tennis courts and a sports hall lets them through a wall diary at reception and a bookings email inbox.

  • A five-a-side league books the whole artificial pitch on Monday nights for the season by email in August; in October a casual customer books a third of it online for a Monday because the website calendar never knew about the league.
  • The caretaker arrives to two groups and one pitch.
  • Floodlights are switched on for a Wednesday evening booking that nobody charged for, and left on after a booking that finished early.

Where it gets harder

Peak pricing exists on a laminated sheet: weekday evenings and weekend mornings cost more, but reception applies it from memory and two customers paying different prices for the same slot compare notes.

  • The grass pitches are called off on a Saturday morning after heavy rain; the manager phones eleven bookers, two cannot be reached, and credits are promised verbally and forgotten.
  • Club invoices for block bookings are built in a spreadsheet at month end from the diary, so cancelled sessions are billed and extra sessions are not.
  • The access code for the changing rooms is given out by text and never changed.
  • A pitch marked for re-seeding is still bookable online because the closure was written in the diary and nowhere else.
  • The manager cannot say how many hours each facility earned last quarter, which slots never sell, or how much is owed by which club.

Scope of the service

What the build covers

A custom pitch booking build normally covers:

  • A facility register where each pitch Court or hall carries its surface, size, lighting, changing-room pairing and the ways it can be split, so a full artificial pitch and its three thirds share one availability
  • Slot-based availability with slot lengths and buffers per facility And a price per slot that varies by day, time band and customer type
  • Online and desk booking for casual customers with payment at booking
  • Block bookings for clubs and leagues across a season With exceptions for cup weeks and holidays, that reserve the facility before casual sales open
  • Add-ons such as floodlights Changing rooms, equipment and a referee room priced per slot
  • Weather and maintenance cancellations That notify every affected booker and issue a credit or refund under rules you set
  • Closures for re-seeding Repairs or events that remove slots from sale with a reason
  • Access handling through codes issued per booking Key collection notes or a lock system with a published interface
  • Monthly invoicing for account customers from the bookings actually held
  • Usage and income reporting per facility and per time band

How discovery works

Discovery follows one week on your busiest facility with you: how a league's season is reserved, how a casual booking is taken and paid, how floodlights are switched and charged, how a wet Saturday is called off, how access is given and how the month is invoiced. Each becomes a named workflow stage in the scope document.

  1. Reserve block
  2. Sell slot
  3. Add on
  4. Access
  5. Cancel or close
  6. Invoice
  7. Report

Deliberately out of scope

  • Supplying or installing locks, lighting controllers or gates, which stay with your contractors and are connected through whatever interface they publish
  • Grounds maintenance planning beyond recording closures
  • League administration, which belongs to the tournament management topic
  • Accounting beyond the invoices the system raises

When the scope grows

Scoping scenario

A school trust letting seven sites to the community outside school hours, each with its own caretaker, opening rules and lighting, with term-time and holiday calendars, block bookings for twelve clubs invoiced monthly, and a trust finance team that needs income by site needs availability that respects each site's school calendar, caretaker rotas that decide when a site can open at all, invoicing per club across sites and reporting by site and facility. That is a different build from a single centre with one artificial pitch, and the scope document says so.

Deliverables

What you receive

  • Discovery notes from following one week on your busiest facility and one month-end invoice run
  • A written scope document naming each booking stage, the facility splits, the pricing bands, the cancellation and credit rules and what is out of scope
  • Design of the public availability search and booking flow, the reception day grid, the caretaker view and the manager reports on phone and desktop
  • The build, deployed to your hosting or ours
  • Migration of the facility register, this season's block bookings and account customers from your diary and spreadsheets, where practical
  • Training for reception, caretakers and the facilities manager, with a short written guide
  • Handover material and full ownership of the source code and your data

Process

How a project runs

Each stage maps onto the project view in your client panel. Durations are set in your proposal, never on this page.

  1. Onboarding

    Access, contacts, your current diary, price sheet, block booking agreements, invoicing spreadsheet and documentation for any lock or lighting controls.

    Project stage: Onboarding

  2. Planning

    Discovery with the facilities manager, a receptionist and a caretaker; the facility model, pricing bands, cancellation rules and scope document are agreed with a milestone plan.

    Project stage: Planning

  3. Design

    Clickable designs of the availability search customers see, the reception day grid, the caretaker handover list and the usage report, checked on the devices your staff actually use.

    Project stage: Design

  4. Development

    Built in stages: facilities and availability first, then pricing and casual booking with payment, then block bookings and invoicing, then add-ons, cancellations, closures and access.

    Project stage: Development

  5. Client review

    Your team runs a mock week: a season block booking, a casual sale on the remaining third, a floodlit evening, a wet Saturday call-off with credits and a month-end invoice, and tells us where it does not match the desk.

    Project stage: Client review

  6. Revisions

    Pricing bands, split rules, credit handling and invoice layout are adjusted from the review and re-checked against the scope document.

    Project stage: Revisions

  7. Ready for launch

    Facilities and block bookings migrated, payments tested with the provider, cancellation messages tested to numbers you control, access codes tested on site, launch checklist signed off.

    Project stage: Ready for launch

  8. Delivered

    The facility runs on the new system; optional maintenance and hosting continue under their own agreement.

    Project stage: Delivered

Integrations

Commonly integrated

Systems this kind of business usually asks us to connect. Each integration is confirmed during discovery; none is assumed.

  • Card payment providers for casual bookings, add-ons and account customer payments
  • Smart lock, gate and lighting control systems through their published interfaces
  • SMS and email providers for confirmations, access codes and cancellation notices
  • Accounting software for block booking invoices and account statements
  • Calendar feeds so caretakers and clubs see bookings on their own devices
  • Weather data providers to support, never make, the call-off decision
  • Governing-body pitch-finder and facility directories that accept availability listings

How we would approach it

Worked example

Concept demo

A school trust letting seven sites outside school hours

The situation

A school trust let halls, artificial pitches and courts at seven sites to community clubs and casual bookers, each site with its own caretaker and lighting, and its finance team rebuilt invoices from seven diaries every month.

Why it is a custom build

This needs a custom build because availability depends on the school calendar and the caretaker rota as well as the booking diary, and a standard pitch booking tool knows about none of them.

The scope we would propose

  • A facility register per site with each facility's attributes, splits and paired changing rooms
  • A site calendar that blocks term-time daytime and inset days and only opens slots when a caretaker shift is rostered
  • Block bookings per club across sites with exceptions for holidays and exam weeks, reserved before casual sale
  • Per-slot pricing by site, time band and customer type
  • Cancellations for weather or closures that credit every affected booking in one action
  • A monthly invoice per club built from sessions actually held, with income reported by site and facility for the trust

Concept demo: a scoping scenario written to show how we would approach the work. It is not a delivered client project.

Pricing

What affects the price

Every proposal is priced on scope. These are the factors that move it most for this kind of build.

  • Number of sites and facilities, and how facilities split into smaller bookable units
  • Pricing bands by day, time and customer type
  • Block bookings with season exceptions and monthly invoicing
  • Add-ons such as floodlights and changing rooms and how they are charged
  • Weather and closure cancellation rules and credit handling
  • Access method: codes per booking, key collection or a lock system interface
  • Caretaker or site opening rules that constrain availability
  • Volume of block bookings and account customers to migrate
  • Hosting choice: your own hosting or ours

Start from a package

Pitch booking package

Facility register with splits and attributes, slot availability with peak pricing, club block bookings with invoicing, floodlight add-ons, weather credits, access codes and usage reporting for pitch and court operators.

Custom build
View the package

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Would the package do, or do we need a custom build?

A single centre or school with a handful of facilities, a standard peak and off-peak price sheet and a few club block bookings is usually well served by the pitch booking package configured around your facilities. Custom work is the honest answer for several sites with their own calendars and caretakers, lock or lighting integration or reporting the package does not ship. Discovery settles it before anything is quoted.

How are split pitches kept from being double booked?

A facility and the units it splits into share one availability. Booking the full artificial pitch takes all three thirds; booking one third leaves two for sale and makes the full pitch unavailable for that slot, whether the booking came online, from reception or from a season block.

What happens when we call a pitch off for weather?

The manager cancels the slots for that facility and time range in one action. Every affected booker is messaged, and each booking is credited or refunded under the rule you set for its customer type. Block booking sessions that were called off are excluded from that month's invoice automatically.

Can you switch our floodlights or open our gate?

Where a lighting controller or lock publishes an interface, we scope a connection against that documentation so a booking can issue a code or schedule lights for its slot. The hardware and its contractor remain responsible for the physical side, and we never promise a connection before seeing what the interface allows.

Who owns the system afterwards?

You do. Source code, the facility register, bookings, invoices and reports are handed over at delivery; hosting and maintenance are optional and separately agreed, and you can move the system to another provider.

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