Will the door open for a paid booking when nobody is on site?
How a paid booking becomes a working door code at a golf simulator studio with no staff: when the code is issued, how long it works, which doors it opens, and what happens if the lock refuses it.
Updated 2026-10-24. Every quote links to where it was published.
In owners' own words
“For unmanned and hybrid venues, the booking system is the access system”
“A crash at 2 a.m. is a refund, not a 30-second fix.”
What it is
At an unstaffed studio the booking and the door are one job. A golfer who has paid has to reach the bay at the booked time with a code that works on every door between the street and the simulator, and the code has to stop working when the session ends. Nobody is there to buzz them in, so a code that arrives late, opens only the bay door, or is never issued becomes a refund and a review.
How OpenTeeSheet does it
| A prepaid booking gets no door code until Stripe confirms the payment. If the venue requires a waiver, no code is issued to anyone who has not accepted it. | Pinned by automated tests: booking-finalize.test.ts, booking-payments.test.ts, waiver-realdb.test.ts |
| The grant opens 10 minutes before the booked start and ends at the end of the session; the confirmation email, text and My Bookings page all say so. | Pinned by automated tests: booking-finalize.test.ts, door-access-realdb.test.ts |
| One booking's credential covers the venue-wide door and the bay's own lock and any extra doors on them, for igloohome, RemoteLock, Kisi, Seam and Salto KS. | Pinned by automated tests: every-door-opens-realdb.test.ts, lock-multidoor-realdb.test.ts |
| Every step that issues and sends the code has a deadline: the lock vendor gets 15 seconds for the whole door path, and the code goes out within 60 seconds of the booking being confirmed. | Pinned by automated tests: unmanned-timing-claims.test.ts |
| If the lock vendor refuses a code for a paid booking, the booking is flagged for staff entry and the owner is emailed and texted. A backup code created in advance can be sent to the golfer instead of a dead end. | Pinned by automated tests: lock-failure-unattended.test.ts, lock-backup-realdb.test.ts |
Not built or not measured yet
We have not yet published a run of 100 consecutive paid bookings against a real lock with every door-open event recorded. The behaviour above is pinned by tests against a real database with the lock vendors' HTTP faked; the live run is the next bar.
What owners report from other tools
A general booking tool leaves the door to a separate access system that the owner connects, schedules and watches. Buyer guides for this market tell owners to ask whether a lock integration is native or bolted on.
Questions
- When does the door code start working?
- 10 minutes before the booked start, and it stops at the end of the session.
- What happens if the lock refuses the code for a paid booking?
- The booking is flagged, the owner is emailed and texted, and a backup code created in advance can go to the golfer instead.
- Which smart locks does OpenTeeSheet issue codes on?
- igloohome, RemoteLock, Kisi, Seam and Salto KS. Schlage and Yale locks are reached through Seam or RemoteLock.