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Taking Entries Without a Spreadsheet
How to take entries for a golf event: a sign-up link, the fields you actually need, a field cap with a real waitlist, and why we do not touch your entry fees.
Open sign-ups for your event — free
Every organiser has run the same system at least once. A reply-all email, a sheet taped to the pro shop counter, and a spreadsheet you retype on Thursday night with a list of people who said “put me down” in the car park and have no idea they are supposed to confirm.
It works, in the sense that the event happens. What it costs is the whole week before the event, and it always costs it in the same four places: who is actually in, who is on the list twice, what size shirt they wanted, and who you are supposed to call when somebody drops.
Here is what registration needs to do so that week is quiet.
1. One link, and it is the only list
The single biggest improvement is not a feature. It is that there is exactly one list, it lives in one place, and everyone can see the same version of it. Not the sheet plus the email plus the three texts your treasurer got.
In Swilkin that is a sign-up link off the event, opening on your club’s own page — your colours, your logo, your event — rather than a form that looks like somebody else’s software. A golfer taps it, enters, and they are on the list. You look at the list, and it is the list.
2. Ask for what the event actually needs — and nothing else
Different events need different things. A member-guest needs the guest’s name and club. A scramble needs a team. A championship needs a tee preference and an index. A charity outing needs a shirt size and a dinner count, and does not care what anybody’s handicap is.
So the sign-up form is yours to build: the fields your event needs, each one required or optional — tees, handicap, GHIN number, shirt size, guest details, whatever the thing actually is. Every answer lands on the entry, attached to the player, and the whole roster exports to a spreadsheet when you need one for the caterer.
⭐ The rule worth applying while you build it: every field you add is a field 120 people have to fill in, and every optional field is one you will chase. Ask for what changes a decision. Leave off what is merely interesting.
3. A field cap with a waitlist that is real
“We’re full” is where most sign-up systems quietly fall over, because the interesting part is not the cap — it is the fourteen days afterwards, when three people drop and four more ask.
A cap with a waitlist means the order is decided once, in public, by when people signed up. Sign up after the field is full and you are told your position on the list rather than left wondering. When a golfer withdraws themselves, the longest-waiting alternate is moved up automatically and told — “you’re in, a spot opened up” — and nobody has to adjudicate a friendship over it.
⚠️ One limit, stated plainly: that promotion fires on a golfer’s own withdrawal. A seat you free up — taking somebody off the field yourself — does not promote the next alternate yet.
Alternates are a real status on the entry, not a note in a margin: an alternate is not carded and does not appear in the field, right up until they are.
That is also the honest answer to the question every committee asks: how do we decide who gets in? You decided already, when you set the cap. The list does the rest.
4. Real people, not anonymous entries
Every sign-up on Swilkin is a real, free account. That is a deliberate trade and it is worth being straight about both halves.
What it costs: one more step for the golfer signing up.
What it buys: no spam entries and no junk rows in your field; every player is reachable when the weather turns; and the scores are theirs from the first tee — which means the round lands in their record, their handicap-relevant history, their trophy case when they win it. An anonymous entry is a name on a board that belongs to nobody.
And it does not apply to everyone in the event. Teammates and guests can still be added by name — the captain of a scramble team enters the foursome, and the other three need nothing at all. (More on fields where half the players will never install anything.)
5. The honest one: we do not touch the money
Swilkin does not collect entry fees. It never holds, transfers or processes money — not for bets, not for entries, not for anything. There is no card form, no payout, no merchant account, and no cut.
You can state the entry fee — it sits on the event and shows up on your sign-up page as a plain row, Entry Fee $150, so nobody turns up surprised. What Swilkin will not do is take the card number.
If you are shopping for software specifically to collect $150 a head off 120 golfers, that is a real requirement and this is not the tool for that part. Most organisers running a club event, a league or a charity outing already have a way to take money — the club account, the pro shop, a fundraising page, cash at the first tee — and what they actually needed was the list, which is the expensive part to do by hand.
⚠️ What Swilkin does do with money is the arithmetic: the Calcutta and its payout board, the purse, side prizes, added money and expenses, so money-in matches money-out and it is published rather than announced. It does the math; your existing account moves the dollars.
6. Sign-ups are the start of the event, not a separate job
The reason registration belongs with the scoring rather than in a form builder is that the entry becomes the field. When sign-ups close, you already have the players, their tees, their indexes, their teams and their answers — so pairings, flights, a tee sheet and the boards are built from the list you already have, not typed in again.
That is the actual saving. Not the form. The fact that nobody retypes the form.
Where to start
Make the event, set the cap, pick your fields, share the link. If it goes badly you have lost ten minutes, and if it goes well you have got your Thursday night back.
Everything a club can run · running a weekly league · a charity scramble, start to finish · what it costs.