Just signed a lease on an indoor golf sim studio? What to set up for online booking, payments and memberships before opening day
The short answer: before opening day you need a payment account that pays out to you, a booking page that takes the card before it holds the bay, your hours and prices, a cancellation and no-show rule the golfer reads before paying, a waiver if your insurer wants one, a door that opens only for the booked window if nobody is on site, and the memberships or packs you plan to sell. Then book and pay for one session yourself, end to end, before the first customer does.
The steps below are in the order they depend on each other: payments first, because prepaid booking, memberships and packs all need somewhere for the money to go. Each step says what OpenTeeSheet does for it, pinned by the automated test named beside it, and the outside facts link to the source and the day we read it.
Rows checked 2026-10-28; each source shows the day it was read.
Put your own numbers through it.Open the free studio calculator
1. Payments and booking: the money has to land before anything else works
| Fact | Source |
|---|---|
| Payments run through the venue's own Stripe account, and the platform takes no application fee on any booking. | OpenTeeSheet behaviour, pinned by automated tests: no-application-fee.test.ts |
| At sign-up, card at booking (prepay) is the default, labelled Recommended with the reason: an unstaffed studio on pay-at-venue collects nothing. It switches on once Stripe payouts are connected. Pay-at-venue is still allowed if you choose it. | OpenTeeSheet behaviour, pinned by automated tests: onboarding-prepay.test.ts |
| A prepaid booking gets no door code until Stripe confirms the payment. | OpenTeeSheet behaviour, pinned by automated tests: booking-finalize.test.ts, booking-payments.test.ts |
| Stripe's standard US online card rate is 2.9% + 30¢ per successful domestic card transaction. | Stripe: pricing (read 2026-10-18) |
2. Hours and prices
| Fact | Source |
|---|---|
| Opening hours are enforced when the booking is made: a request for a closed hour, or one that runs past closing, is refused and nothing is stored. A 24/7 venue can say so. | OpenTeeSheet behaviour, pinned by automated tests: booking-operating-hours-realdb.test.ts |
| Optional price rules by day of week, time band and lead time (for example weekends 20% higher, or a happy hour). The server charges the price, and the booking page shows the same number before payment. | OpenTeeSheet behaviour, pinned by automated tests: price-rules-realdb.test.ts |
| Promo codes: a percentage or a fixed amount off, with a usage limit and an expiry, computed on the server. | OpenTeeSheet behaviour, pinned by automated tests: promo-codes-realdb.test.ts |
| For a starting point on rate: GolfSim.co's directory report (794 venues with a published rate, checked July 2, 2026) gives a national median of $40 for an hour in a simulator bay, with the middle half between $25 and $55. Rates were auto-extracted from venue websites and are approximate. | GolfSim.co report on indoor golf venues (AB Newswire, 2026-07-13) (read 2026-10-18) |
3. Cancellations, no-shows and waivers: the rules nobody is on site to enforce
| Fact | Source |
|---|---|
| You set a cancellation window from 30 minutes up to 7 days. Cancel before it and the golfer is refunded automatically; inside it the bay is freed and the door code revoked, but the prepaid payment is kept. The golfer reads the rule before paying. | OpenTeeSheet behaviour, pinned by automated tests: cancel-policy-realdb.test.ts, cancel-booking.test.ts |
| An optional whole-dollar no-show fee: the golfer sees the amount and agrees before paying, and it is charged once only when the door lock reports the code was never used. If that signal is unavailable the booking waits for you to confirm; it is never a guess. | OpenTeeSheet behaviour, pinned by automated tests: no-show-fee-realdb.test.ts, no-show-fee-unit.test.ts |
| Digital waivers are versioned and accepted before payment and before any door code; each acceptance records the time, IP, version and a hash of the text, and you can export them. | OpenTeeSheet behaviour, pinned by automated tests: waiver-realdb.test.ts |
| Stripe says a card refund shows up as a credit about 5 to 10 business days later, depending on the bank, and that its processing fees from the original payment are not returned. | Stripe docs: refund and cancel payments (read 2026-10-18) |
4. The door, if nobody will be on site
| Fact | Source |
|---|---|
| Each paid booking gets its own door credential, opening 10 minutes before the start and ending with the session, sent by email (and text if you turn it on). | OpenTeeSheet behaviour, pinned by automated tests: booking-finalize.test.ts, door-access-realdb.test.ts |
| Door systems with an adapter: Kisi, RemoteLock, Seam, igloohome and Salto KS (Salto is tested against Salto's published request shapes, not yet against a live Salto site). Schlage and Yale locks are reached through Seam or RemoteLock. | OpenTeeSheet behaviour, pinned by automated tests: lock-kisi.test.ts, lock-remotelock.test.ts, lock-seam.test.ts, lock-salto.test.ts, lock-provider.test.ts |
| If a lock refuses a code for a paid booking, you are emailed and texted, and a backup code made in advance can go to the golfer instead of a dead end. | OpenTeeSheet behaviour, pinned by automated tests: lock-failure-unattended.test.ts, lock-backup-realdb.test.ts |
5. Memberships and packs
| Fact | Source |
|---|---|
| Monthly memberships billed through Stripe subscriptions to the venue, with included hours. The hours reset only when a month is actually paid, and a member can cancel without calling anyone. | OpenTeeSheet behaviour, pinned by automated tests: memberships-realdb.test.ts, membership-claims-gate.test.ts |
| Member pricing next to walk-in pricing: a member rate applies only once the golfer proves they own the member's email. | OpenTeeSheet behaviour, pinned by automated tests: member-pricing-realdb.test.ts |
| Prepaid packs of sessions or hours (punch cards), bought through the venue's Stripe account and drawn down per booking; a booking the balance cannot cover is refused. | OpenTeeSheet behaviour, pinned by automated tests: packages.test.ts |
| A membership cannot go on sale until the venue can be paid for it. | OpenTeeSheet behaviour, pinned by automated tests: memberships-realdb.test.ts |
6. Your booking link, everywhere golfers look
| Fact | Source |
|---|---|
| A one-line snippet puts the booking page inside your own website. | OpenTeeSheet behaviour, pinned by automated tests: embed.test.ts |
| Two-way Google Calendar sync: a league night or private event in your Google calendar closes that bay to online booking, and live bookings show in Google (never a door code). | OpenTeeSheet behaviour, pinned by automated tests: calendar-sync-realdb.test.ts |
| OpenTeeSheet is $149 a month for up to 4 bays and $249 for unlimited bays, with no commission on any booking and a 14-day free trial. | OpenTeeSheet behaviour, pinned by automated tests: marketing-claims.test.ts |
What OpenTeeSheet does not do
It does not switch bay power, simulators or launch monitors on and off (it reports whether each bay's PC is alive and alerts you after 15 minutes of silence). It does not sell or license simulator software: check that your launch monitor's licence covers paying customers before you open (see the launch monitor guide). We have not yet published a run of 100 consecutive paid bookings against a real lock; the door behaviour above is pinned by tests with the lock vendors' APIs faked.
The week before opening
- Book and pay for one session yourself on your phone, at your real prices. Check the email, the door code, and that the code stops working after the session ends.
- Cancel a test booking outside your window and one inside it, and check what the refund and the bay look like.
- Read your launch monitor's commercial terms: some home-use units and software are licensed for personal use only.
- Run your numbers through the calculator with a low utilisation first. If break-even needs more hours than your town can fill, fix the plan before the fit-out.
Related
- Refunds and No-Shows With No One on Site
- Smart Locks for an Unmanned Golf Sim Studio
- Commercial Use Terms: TrackMan, Uneekor, SkyTrak
- Golf Sim Studio Costs and Revenue: Published Numbers
- How do I stop no-shows and walkouts at my golf sim studio?
- Will the door open for a paid booking when nobody is on site?
- Is door access on the base plan, or does the price grow with every booking?
- What each lock does when the internet is down
- All guides and tools
Run the studio with nobody at the desk
OpenTeeSheet takes the booking, the payment and the door code, with zero commission. $149 a month for up to 4 bays, $249 for unlimited, 14-day free trial, no card to start.
Start your 14-day trialSources
- Stripe: pricing, read 2026-10-18
- GolfSim.co report on indoor golf venues (AB Newswire, 2026-07-13), read 2026-10-18
- Stripe docs: refund and cancel payments, read 2026-10-18