What if courts have different slot lengths?

The grid has to draw each court in its own slot. 60 minutes is common on a football pitch and 90 on a padel court; forcing everything into 60 will either show the padel court as free when it is not, or fill it at the wrong hour.

What happens if two staff sell the same hour?

It has to be resolved at the sync layer: two devices acting at once must not delete each other's records, and an overlapping hour must be stopped before the record is taken. A warning that arrives afterwards is no use once the team is at the gate.

Should a second venue get its own account?

No. Separate accounts mean adding totals by hand at month end, defining staff twice and splitting the customer history. The right arrangement is venue separation inside one account: each venue with its own courts, tariff, till and reports.

What should staff be able to see?

An attendant opens bookings, closes matches and sells at the canteen; they do not need tariff editing or reports. Without role separation that line can only be drawn by not sharing the password, and it breaks at the next shift change.

What happens to a multi-court venue when the internet drops?

Opening bookings, closing matches and taking cash have to run on the device, syncing by themselves once the line returns. A system that asks the server for every action stops the venue exactly when the signal is weak.

What should appear on the board?

Only hours, courts and team names. Amounts and phone numbers must not reach the board; whatever stands on that screen is open to everyone who walks in.

Which reporting breakdown is useful?

Court revenue, deposits, canteen, dues and expenses, day by day. A single monthly total cannot show which day and which hour earns — and that is where a tariff decision comes from.

For businesses with several courts or several venues

Several courts, several venues: running the day from one schedule

At a single-pitch venue the schedule fits in a paper diary. When the second pitch opens the diary still works, but it now has two columns; by the third, finding the free slot while the phone is ringing takes a few seconds — and those seconds are the booking you lose at eight in the evening. This page is about running the day from one screen when there is more than one court, and more than one venue.

The problem is not capacity but concurrency: three courts, two members of staff and a ringing phone, all at once.

What changes when the second court opens

"Anything free?" multiplies. The answer now means checking every court at that hour, not one slot.
Double-booking risk grows. On one pitch it is carelessness; across three it becomes inevitable — especially once recurring matches are in the mix.
Price stops being single. Indoor and outdoor, large and small are not priced the same.
The till blurs. If you cannot see which court earns what, you cannot fix the tariff of the one that stays empty.

One grid, one column per court

At a multi-court venue the right view is not a calendar per court but one grid: courts as columns, hours as rows. Three things are visible at a glance — which hours are taken, which court is free, and today's occupancy. Telling the caller "court 2 is free at eight" should not require switching screens.

Slot lengths can differ between courts: 60 minutes on a football pitch, 90 on a padel court. The grid has to draw each court in its own slot; a system that forces everything into 60 minutes will either show the padel court as free when it is not, or fill it at the wrong hour.

Preventing double bookings

Overlaps arise in three ways, and all three have to be closed separately:

Same court, overlapping hour. The system has to stop it before the record is taken — a warning that arrives afterwards is no use once the team is at the gate.
A one-off booking on top of a recurring match. The weekly match has to be written forward in the schedule already, so nothing can be written over it.
Two staff, two devices. The phone at the counter and the tablet in the office must not sell the same hour at once, and the records must meet in the cloud without overwriting each other.

In detail: how booking conflicts are prevented.

A tariff per court

Price is the combination of three variables: which court, which day of the week, which time range. An indoor pitch on Friday evening is not the price of an outdoor one at midday on Tuesday. Defining that as rules beats having staff ask about the price on every booking or apply a discount from memory; without rules, the tariff is effectively whatever the attendant remembers.

For an hour that matches no rule, the court's base price should apply — a gap in the tariff table must never produce a zero-priced booking.

More than one venue

When the second venue opens, two separate accounts is the easiest and most expensive route: you add the totals by hand at the end of the month, staff are defined twice, and the customer history is split in two.

The right arrangement is venue separation inside one account. Each venue has its own courts, tariff, till and reports; the owner can look at one venue or at the totals. An attendant sees only the venue they work at — which prevents both confusion and selling the wrong court.

Who should see what

A multi-court venue usually has more than one person working, and they do not all need the same access:

Owner — everything: tariffs, till, reports, venues and staff.
Venue manager — the daily work and the till of their own venue.
Attendant — opens bookings, closes matches, sells at the canteen; does not edit tariffs or see reports.

Without role separation that line can only be drawn by not sharing the password — and it breaks at the next shift change.

Several devices at the same time

On an evening shift there is a phone at the counter, a tablet in the office and the owner's own phone. All three should show the same day, and a booking opened on one should appear on the others. Two things matter:

Work must not stop when the internet drops. Opening bookings, closing matches and taking cash have to run on the device and sync when the line returns.
Syncing must not lose anything. Two collections taken on two devices at the same time must not delete each other under a "last write wins" rule.

The entrance board and empty hours

At a multi-court venue the most repeated sentence is "is there anything free tonight". When the television at the entrance shows the day's schedule, that question is answered on screen: which court is taken at which hour, and which is free. Amounts and phone numbers must not appear on that board — whatever stands on the screen is open to everyone who walks in.

There is one more route for half-filled hours: a team looking for an opponent can be announced on the board, and another team fills the slot. Setup: putting the availability board on a TV.

Which number answers what

At a multi-court business the report is not a single revenue line. The useful breakdown is:

Court revenue — the core business; what selling hours brings in.
Deposits — held on the day they were taken; kept in the till when a team fails to show.
Canteen — a second income independent of court hours, driven by how busy the evening is.
Dues — period collections from recurring teams; kept apart from one-off bookings.
Expenses — the only line that turns revenue into net cash.

Kept day by day, this breakdown also makes "why are Tuesday evenings empty" a question the tariff can answer.

How ArenaPro is arranged for this

ArenaPro sets up a multi-court, multi-venue business exactly this way: one grid with courts as columns, a slot length and hourly tariff per court, conflicts stopped before the record is taken, several venues on one account, owner / venue manager / attendant roles, the same day synced across phone, tablet and browser, offline operation, the entrance board and day-by-day reporting.

For the category as a whole: what sports facility management software must do and how to choose it.