An invoice for a pitch nobody used
Your club does not own enough pitches. The juniors play on council pitches in the park, the under-9s and under-10s use a school field, and winter training happens on a 3G pitch at a leisure centre. Each has its own booking process: the council's lettings office by email, the school's business manager by phone, the leisure centre through an online system. Coaches book what they need.
In February, the council invoice arrives covering three months. It lists bookings the treasurer does not recognise, including a Sunday pitch for a team that folded before Christmas. Meanwhile, the under-12s turned up to a council pitch to find another club using it, because the booking confirmation went to a coach who left in the autumn.
Why pitch hire gets out of hand
- Bookings are made by several coaches with several providers, and no one person sees them all.
- Confirmations sit in personal inboxes.
- Season-long block bookings carry on after a team folds, merges or changes its home ground.
- Invoices arrive in arrears, covering many dates, and are checked against memory.
- Cancellations for bad weather may or may not be credited, depending on each provider's terms.
What the muddle costs
Paying for slots you did not use, sometimes for months. Missing credits for weather cancellations. Teams turning up to a pitch someone else has, then having to play elsewhere or not at all. And the treasurer's evenings spent reconstructing which team booked what, from coaches who do not remember.
Pitch hire is often one of the largest costs a community club has, after affiliation and referees, so errors here matter.
Relationships with providers suffer too. A council lettings officer who gets three different coaches from the same club asking about the same pitch, or a school business manager who is never sure who to call when the field is closed for an event, starts to see your club as hard work. When pitch space is tight, and it usually is, being the club that is easy to deal with counts for something at allocation time next season.
A hire log tied to teams and fixtures
We build a simple hire log, used by coaches and the treasurer, that ties every booking to a team, a slot and a bill.
- Every provider (council, school, leisure centre, 3G operator) is set up with its booking method, contact, rates and cancellation terms.
- Coaches record a booking request in the log; the fixture or pitch secretary places or confirms it with the provider, so one person owns the relationship.
- Each booked slot is linked to a team and, where relevant, a fixture, so a slot with no fixture or no team shows up as spare.
- Provider confirmations are forwarded to a club address and attached to the slot; an AI model can read the dates and times from the email for a person to confirm.
- When a fixture is called off, the linked hire slot is flagged for a credit request under that provider's terms.
- When an invoice arrives, its lines are matched to logged bookings; unmatched lines, missing credits and slots for folded teams are listed for the treasurer to query.
| Check | What it catches | Who acts |
|---|---|---|
| Slot with no team | Bookings for folded or merged teams | Pitch secretary cancels |
| Two teams on one slot | Double bookings | Pitch secretary rearranges |
| Invoice line with no booking | Charges you did not make | Treasurer queries |
| Weather cancellation with no credit | Missing credits | Treasurer requests one |
| Coach left the club | Confirmations going nowhere | Contact changed to the club address |
How the season runs afterwards
Coaches see which slots their team has, where, and when. The pitch secretary sees the whole club's hire in one view, including spare slots that another team could use. The treasurer checks each invoice against the log in one sitting and sends a single query email listing anything that does not match. When a team folds, its bookings are cancelled that week, not discovered in the spring.
Does your pitch hire look like this?
- Several coaches book pitches directly with different providers.
- Booking confirmations go to personal email addresses.
- Invoices are checked against memory.
- You have paid for a slot no team used.
- Weather cancellations are not always credited.