2008 Procedure 11 Outing / Shotgun Setup
There are different methods for booking outings with Fore! Reservations. Following are some scenarios including the benefits and downsides of each. Each scenario requires a customer to be defined for the outing itself. The customer definition should include the name of the company or outing in the last name field (i.e. ABC Company), the full name of the tournament contact in the first name field (i.e. Kirk Burnett), as well as mailing address, e-mail address, credit card information and others for marketing purposes. Assign a customer type of outing or tournament to this customer profile. If this is done properly for all outings and the respective contacts, it is simple to perform a mail merge and send out next year‟s outing materials directly from Fore! Reservations.
Book on Top of Existing Tee Sheet
The simplest and quickest way to book an outing is to book your outing customer (ABC Company) on top of your existing tee sheet. If it is a full-field shotgun, in effect closing your course for the entire day, you would simply click on the first tee time and book the customer for the total number of slots that exist on the tee sheet. If there were 392 available slots, book the customer for all of those slots. The main benefit to this method is its speed. However, the rounds for that day and that customer are overstated. If there were only 144 players in the tournament, your rounds are off by 248. Also, at a glance, there is very little information that is conveyed to the reservationist. Unless there is a note in details or the message of the day, it is hard to know the number of players in the group and what time the outing starts.
Book on Top and Block
To help eliminate some of the confusion and get a more accurate round count, modify the booking method of the outing. Assume the same 144-player outing where reservations begin at 12:00 p.m. and fill through 6:00 p.m. with 10 minute intervals. Since it is a shotgun, part of the tee sheet needs to be blocked to ensure that everyone gets off the golf course prior to the outing. Highlight the 7:40 a.m. tee time and scroll through the 11:50 a.m. time, right-click and select block, type in a "Shotgun at 12:00 p.m." reason and click the OK button. This scenario is quick and simple gaining a more accurate count (144 rounds for the outing), as well as providing more visual information for the reservationist. You and your staff can see that the outing starts at 12:00 p.m., which helps when outing participants call the golf shop. You can also get a feel for how many rounds you "lose" from hosting shotgun outings by analyzing the total number of blocked rounds on the Utilization reports.
Change the Format of the Schedule (Recommended)
The last scenario involves changing the tee times structure to fit the outing, while maximizing the rest ofthe tee sheet for added profitability. The purge and load function in the season template assists in rebuilding the tee sheet in one step, assuming there are no existing reservations on the tee sheet. Purge and load removes all unfilled tee times for the day and loads the created template.
Always perform a Local Backup before changing your schedule. To do this, go to 'File' | 'Maintenance' | 'Local Backup' in Fore! Reservations.
Create a Shotgun course with an interval of 1 minute for the outing (see Course Screen on page 25). Create a template like the one below that fits the day‟s activity. In order to maximize revenue for the day, send players off both the first and tenth tee in the morning by doing a "double tee", represented in the template as the #1 Tee and #10 Tee entries:
Click the Load button and select the purge and load option to remove all existing times before loading. After purge and load completes, existing reservations are left on your regular morning course. To fix this, drag and drop them to either #1 Tee or #10 Tee times and then run purge and load again.
This scenario creates just enough slots (144) on the Shotgun course for the ABC Company. Therefore, the rounds count for that particular customer is accurate. The tee sheet is also accurate because only available times appear, eliminating any confusion for your reservationist. Also, you can quickly tell what time the outing starts and how many foursomes are participating.
