Driving range software should sell bay time and ball buckets online or at a kiosk, track prepaid credits, bill memberships automatically and run junior clinic sign-ups with a waiting list. AI can then draft the repeat replies: opening hours, weather closures, prices and clinic details. Refunds, injuries and safeguarding stay with a person.
A range is not a small golf course. Customers arrive for thirty to ninety minutes, pay per bucket or per hour, and come back often. The software needs to handle many small transactions without a queue at the counter. This tutorial lists what to demand, where the products on the market differ, and the exact replies where AI earns its keep.
What a range sells that a course does not
Course software is built around a tee sheet: a fixed round, a fixed group size, a start time. A range has four different things to sell, and each puts a different demand on the system.
- Bay time. A bay for 30, 60 or 90 minutes, possibly with a heated, covered or technology-equipped bay costing more.
- Ball buckets or credits. A bucket by the size, or a prepaid credit balance a regular tops up.
- Memberships. A monthly fee for a set number of sessions, unlimited off-peak play, or a discounted bucket rate.
- Clinics and lessons. A coach, a group of juniors, a fixed number of weeks, and parents who want one invoice.
When you read a vendor's page, ask which of these four it handles natively, and which it handles by a workaround such as a spreadsheet or a manual voucher. The workaround is where your time goes.
What the vendors say they do (October 2026)
None of the products below publishes a price for range operators, so I cannot give you a comparison table of fees. Each asks for a quote. The useful comparison is what each says about range operations.
| Product | What its own page says | What the page does not say |
|---|---|---|
| Toptracer Range | Ball-tracking games and performance data in the bay. Its Range Management System is a cloud portal where operators assign and manage bays, whether they charge by the bucket or by time, with bay status and an activity log. It is described as standard with any Toptracer Range installation. | How guests book bays, and what it costs |
| Dash Platform | Lists "Driving Ranges" among its solutions, with a drag-and-drop calendar, reporting and customer communications with segmentation. | Range-specific details on the page I read: bays, memberships, ball credits, juniors |
| Golfmanager | A Driving Range solution about digitising access to bays and a practice range, plus memberships, automatic memberships, member shares, reciprocal agreements and locker management. | How bay booking works, ball credits, and prices (quote only) |
Notice that these are different kinds of product. Toptracer is a bay technology with management built in; Dash and Golfmanager are facility and club platforms. If you already have, or plan to install, tracking technology, ask whether its management portal can take online bookings or whether you need a separate booking system alongside it. If you do not, a facility platform is the likelier fit. I have not tested any of them, so treat the questions in this tutorial as your own demonstration script.
Bay slots: the setup that fills the quiet hours
A bay booking system is mostly about the rules you set. Software that lets you configure these gives you control over revenue; software that does not leaves you discounting by hand.
Slot length and buffers
Decide your standard slot first. Say a range has 20 bays and charges $18 for a 60-minute bay with a $6 ball allowance included. Add a 10-minute buffer for resetting the bay and the system should treat each hour as 70 minutes, or let you set 60-minute slots that start on the hour with the buffer built into the price. Test that a customer cannot book a 60-minute slot beginning at the time the previous customer is still inside.
Peak and off-peak pricing
If you turn people away on Saturday mornings and sit empty on Tuesday afternoons, price rules should do the nudging. A worked sum, using made-up figures: 20 bays, weekday 1pm to 4pm, three hours. At 25 per cent occupancy that is 20 × 3 × 0.25 = 15 bay-hours sold. Cut the price from $18 to $14 and, if occupancy rises to 40 per cent, you sell 24 bay-hours. Revenue goes from 15 × $18 = $270 to 24 × $14 = $336. A change like that only works if occupancy does rise, so run it for four weeks and compare, rather than assuming.
No-shows and holds
Ask what happens to a bay booked and not used. The common answers are a card on file with a small no-show fee, a prepaid booking that is non-refundable inside two hours, or a hold that expires if the customer has not checked in ten minutes after the start. Pick one and write it on the booking page, then check the software can enforce it rather than relying on staff to remember.
Ball credits without a paper voucher trail
Credits are the feature smaller ranges most often run on cards or spreadsheets. A prepaid balance is a liability: you hold the customer's money until they use it. Good software shows each customer's balance, deducts at the bay or kiosk, and lets staff add credit with a record of who did it.
Test these four things:
- A customer buys 10 buckets for the price of 9. Does the system show a balance of 10, and mark the price paid as 9 buckets' worth?
- The customer returns with a lost card. Can a member of staff look up the balance by phone number and move it to a new card?
- A bucket is refunded after a ball dispenser fault. Does the credit go back, with a reason recorded?
- Do credits expire, and can you turn that off? Rules on expiry and unused prepaid balances vary between places, so ask a qualified adviser before you set one.
A realistic mistake, described as an illustration: a range sells a 20-bucket pass and lets staff add buckets by hand. After a busy summer the credit total on the system sits far above what the cash taken would justify, because a fault refund was added twice. A weekly reconciliation, credit sold against credit used, would have caught it in days. Build that report into your Monday routine whatever software you choose.
Memberships: monthly fees that collect themselves
For a range, a membership is usually one of three shapes. Know which yours is before you shop, because it shapes the billing rules you need.
| Shape | Example (illustrative) | What the software must do |
|---|---|---|
| Session pack | $40 a month for 4 bay sessions | Count sessions used, handle unused sessions at renewal |
| Unlimited off-peak | $55 a month, weekdays before 4pm | Block peak bookings automatically for that member type |
| Rate discount | $15 a month, buckets at 20% off | Apply the discount at the till or kiosk without staff intervention |
On top of those, ask about freezing a membership for an injury or holiday, family or household add-ons, and what happens when a card fails. A failed card should trigger a retry and a polite message, not a silent loss. Golfmanager's page lists automatic memberships among its products, so that is a question to put to them directly. With Dash and Toptracer, ask the same.
A renewal sum worth doing
Say a range has 120 members on a $40 plan. Annual income is 120 × $40 × 12 = $57,600. If 8 per cent of cards fail in a month and half are never recovered, that is about 5 members lost each month by accident, or roughly $200 a month in fees. Automatic retries and a reminder message are therefore worth asking for in the demo, not just a payment page. The 8 per cent is an assumption for the sum, so use your own failure rate.
Junior clinics: sign-ups, waiting lists and parents
A junior clinic has different people on every side: a child who plays, a parent who pays, a coach who needs numbers. Software should let a parent register more than one child, pay for a block of weeks, and be told if the clinic is full.
The checks I would run in a demo:
- A clinic runs six Saturdays with a cap of 12 children. After 12 sign-ups, does the thirteenth join a waiting list automatically?
- If a child drops out in week two, can the next child on the list be offered the place and can the parent accept by link?
- Can the coach print or view a register with each child's age group and any medical note the parent entered?
- Can a parent pay once for six weeks and receive one receipt?
Safeguarding and child-data rules are set by your local authority or sporting body and differ widely. Keep children's details in the platform's protected fields and ask your governing body or adviser what you must record.
Replies AI can draft, and the ones it must not
The customer messages that fill a range manager's day are repetitive. They are good candidates for AI drafting because the answers sit in a fact sheet you control. Create a one-page fact sheet with your hours, prices, bay types, clinic dates and weather policy, then use it as the only source.
You write replies for a driving range. Use ONLY the fact sheet below.
If the answer is not in the fact sheet, reply: "I will check and come back to you today" and flag it for staff.
Never promise refunds, discounts or lesson availability.
Keep replies under 70 words, friendly and plain.
FACT SHEET
Hours: 8am to 9pm daily, last bay booking 8pm.
Prices: 60-minute bay $18, small bucket $6, large bucket $10.
Covered bays: 10 of 20. Heated bays: not available.
Weather: range stays open in rain; closed for lightning, we message booked customers.
Junior clinic: Saturdays 9am, ages 7 to 12, six weeks, $90, 12 places.
MESSAGE
[paste the customer's message]A realistic input and draft output (illustrative):
Customer: "Is the range open Sunday if it's pouring, and do I need to book a covered bay?"
Draft: "Hi [first name], yes, we are open in the rain, 8am to 9pm on Sunday. We have 10 covered bays out of 20, and booking one online is the safest way to be sure of a dry spot. See you soon, [your name]."
What you would fix: the draft is accurate, but "the safest way" implies a guarantee. Change it to "booking ahead gives you the best chance of a covered bay". Small wording like this is why you read before sending.
A before and after for weather closures
Before: an operator rings 14 booked customers, one by one, when lightning closes the range for an hour. After: the operator types "closed until further notice, lightning, bookings held for rebooking" into the booking software and the platform sends one message to every booked customer, with a rebooking link. If the vendor does not support bulk messages to affected bookings, ask what the alternative is. An AI draft of the message is easy; sending it to the right customers is the software's job.
What stays with a person
- Refunds and disputes. Draft a reply for the manager to approve, never auto-send.
- Injuries or incidents on site. Escalate to the manager immediately; AI has no role in the record.
- Anything involving a child. Parent queries about safeguarding, medical needs or photos go to the clinic lead.
- Complaints about staff. Reply by a human, using AI only to polish the first draft if you wish.
If calls ring out while the shop is busy, an AI phone answerer is a separate decision; how much an AI receptionist costs a small business gives the price range, and the comparison with an answering service covers when a person on the end of the line still wins.
A demonstration script to use with any vendor
Ask every vendor to do the same twelve minutes of work on a screen share. Use your own numbers, not the demo data.
- Create a 20-bay range, 8am to 9pm, with ten covered bays at $18 an hour and ten open bays at $14.
- Book a customer for Saturday at 10am, then try to double-book the same bay.
- Sell a 10-bucket pack for the price of nine and use two buckets.
- Set up a $40 monthly membership for four sessions, fail the card, and show the retry.
- Create a six-week junior clinic with 12 places and add a 13th child.
- Close the range for lightning and message the booked customers.
- Run the day-end report: cash, card, credit sold, credit used.
Score each vendor on the seven steps and note how many clicks each took. A system that needs a support call to do step four has already told you something.
Hardware and the till: where software meets the bay
Booking software that cannot talk to the bay is only half a system. Ask three questions about the physical side. How does a customer start a session: a QR code on the bay, a kiosk, a card tap? How does the ball dispenser know a credit was paid? And what happens during an internet outage: can staff keep selling and have the sales sync later? Toptracer's own page mentions a QR-code option on its Go product for fixed-bay ranges; ask any other vendor what their equivalent is.
A small range might run with a tablet at the counter and a QR code on each bay; a larger one may justify a kiosk. Price the hardware separately from the monthly fee and ask about card-reader fees in the same quote.
Linking range customers to the rest of your golf business
If you also run a shop, a fitting room or a mini golf area, one customer record across all of them is worth asking for. A customer who books a clinic for their child is a good candidate for a fitting day invitation; golf shop marketing ideas for fittings and demo days shows how to word those offers. For party bookings and season passes on a smaller course, see mini golf business software. If you operate a full course alongside the range, AI golf booking software for tee times and members covers that side, and it is a different set of requirements.
A day-end reconciliation, filled in
Whatever you buy, close each day with one short check. Here is a filled-in version for an imaginary 20-bay range on a busy Saturday; every figure is invented for illustration.
| Line | System says | Till and cards say | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bay hours booked online | $2,340 (130 hours at $18) | $2,340 settled | 0 |
| Walk-up buckets | $612 | $600 in the drawer and reader | $12 short |
| Credit packs sold | 6 packs, $324 | $324 settled | 0 |
| Credit buckets used | 41 | 41 dispensed (dispenser count) | 0 |
The $12 gap is two large buckets sold on a hand-written note during a reader outage and never keyed in. The same check catches double-added refunds and unrecorded comps. Five minutes a night is cheaper than a month-end hunt, and it tells you quickly whether the software's records can be trusted.
Ask the vendor whether the end-of-day report can be exported with these four lines already separated, and whether the dispenser count can feed in automatically. If neither is possible, a simple shared spreadsheet with the four lines works as a stopgap.
How to tell after three months whether it worked
Pick four numbers before you switch and read them again at 30, 60 and 90 days. They are simple enough to pull from a spreadsheet.
- Off-peak bay-hours sold per week.
- Membership payments recovered after a first failure.
- Junior clinic places filled, including from the waiting list.
- Staff time on messages, estimated from a one-week tally of how many repeat questions you answered.
If off-peak sales have not moved, the pricing rules are wrong, not the software. If message time has not fallen, the fact sheet is probably too thin: add the questions people actually ask, and the next batch of AI drafts improves.
Questions range owners ask before choosing software
Is driving range software the same as golf course software?
No. A course sells tee times for a fixed round, while a range sells short, repeated bay sessions and ball buckets, often walk-up. Course tools can cover memberships, but check that they handle bays, credits and per-bucket payments, not only tee sheets.
Do I need online bay booking, or is walk-up enough?
Walk-up is fine while bays are rarely full. Once you turn people away at peak times, or sell heated or covered bays, online booking pays for itself by filling off-peak slots and removing the queue. Count your turn-aways for two weekends first.
Can AI answer customer messages without a person checking?
For fixed facts such as opening hours, prices and directions, yes, if it is limited to a written fact sheet. Anything involving refunds, injuries, lost items or junior safeguarding should go to a person. Start with drafts you approve before you let anything send automatically.
How do I compare vendors when prices are not published?
Send each the same one-page brief: number of bays, sessions a day, member count and payment methods. Ask for a monthly price in writing, including card fees, setup and hardware. Quotes on the same brief can be compared fairly.
Further reads
- AI for Golf Course Management: Can It Plan Staffing Around Weather? — How weather changes staffing, useful if you share a site.
- Kayak Rental Software: Bookings, Waivers and Weather Calls With AI — Another outdoor business that cancels on weather.
- Padel Club Software: Court Bookings, Memberships and Open-Play Matching — What a small padel club needs from booking software, five vendors checked on their own pages, and the open-play matching messages AI can draft.
- Pickleball Court Booking Software: Rules, Reminders and No-Show Fixes — How a small pickleball venue sets booking rules, takes payment up front and sends reminders that cut no-shows, with AI drafting the wording.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: Toptracer Range, Dash Platform and Golfmanager product pages, read in October 2026. None publishes a price for range software; quotes are by request.