Organising group lessons and courses

What is a group lesson, and what is a course?

A group lesson is a shared lesson for several students at the same time, at one moment. In Golfly this is called an event.

A course is a series of two to twelve group lessons that you create in one go. Students sign up for the whole course, pay once, and receive a separate reminder for each session. You manage both via Admin → Lessons, tab Group lessons.

Creating a one-off group lesson

1. Go to Admin → Lessons, tab Group lessons.
2. Click New event.
3. Enter Title (NL), date, start time and end time. Optionally add a description.
4. Leave the switch Multiple lessons (course) off.
5. Enter Price per person (€).
6. Set Min. participants and Max. participants (1 to 20).
7. Optionally enter a Cancellation period (hours). This is how long before the start students can still cancel free of charge.
8. Optionally enter the EN translation by hand or let it be suggested via the translate button.
9. Click Save. The event appears on your public page straight away.

Creating a course (multi-day)

1. Go to Admin → Lessons, tab Group lessons, and click New event.
2. Enter Title (NL) (for example "Beginners' course May").
3. Switch on Multiple lessons (course).
4. Enter First lesson on and the default Start time and End time.
5. Choose Number of lessons (2 to 12) and Interval (weekly, fortnightly, etc.).
6. Golfly generates a list of sessions based on those settings. In the list you can change the date and time of each session before you save. Useful if session 3 falls on another day because of a public holiday.
7. Optionally give each session a Topic (for example "Chipping" or "Bunker shot"), up to 200 characters. If you leave it empty, that session simply shows the course title. If you work bilingually, each session also has an EN field, plus a button Translate topics that pre-translates all entered topics in one go.
8. Enter Price per person (€). This is the price for the whole course, not per session.
9. Set Min. participants and Max. participants for the course.
10. Optionally set a Cancellation period (hours). It applies from the first session.
11. Click Save. The course appears on your public page as one card, and in your booking calendar as a series of tappable tiles.

Moving a session or changing a topic

1. Go to Admin → Lessons, tab Group lessons, and open the course.
2. Under Sessions change the date, start time, end time or the Topic per session. (If you work bilingually, the EN field is here too.)
3. Click Save.

What happens on save depends on what you changed:

• Date or time changed: enrolled students automatically receive an email with the moved session.
• Only the topic changed: this is saved quietly, no email is sent. The new topic appears automatically on the course page and in the next session reminder.

If you leave a topic empty, that session falls back to the course title. You can adjust each session separately without the rest of the course having to be set up again.

Cancelling a whole course

1. Open the course via Admin → Lessons, tab Group lessons.
2. Scroll to Cancel course and click the button.
3. Confirm with Yes, cancel course.
4. Golfly cancels all sessions, emails everyone, and refunds the full registration fee to each participant who paid via Mollie. Open payment links expire.

If someone paid at the front desk, Golfly cannot refund that money: that payment does not run through Mollie. You settle that with the participant yourself.

You cancel a one-off event in the same way from its detail page.

Viewing sign-ups

1. Go to Admin → Lessons, tab Group lessons, and open an event or course.
2. For each sign-up you see the status: Confirmed, Payment outstanding, Cancelled or Refunded, plus the payment method and the sign-up date.
3. For a course you also see how many participants there are compared with the maximum, and whether the minimum has been reached.

Cancelling a sign-up as coach

If a participant no longer wants to take part, you cancel the sign-up on the course page.

1. Open the course and click Cancel sign-up next to the participant.
2. Read the confirmation: "Online payments are refunded; you settle payments made at the front desk yourself. Open payment links expire."
3. Click Yes, cancel.

Golfly applies the same rules as when the participant cancels themselves. Before the cancellation period, the full registration fee is refunded via Mollie; you see "The refund goes via Mollie." After the period, the participant receives a credit by email pro rata to the remaining sessions. If the participant paid at the front desk, the window shows how much you settle yourself. If the refund or the credit fails, the message says so straight away: then sort it out manually via Mollie or create a gift card yourself.

The course figures at the top of the page

At the top of the course page is a figures block with four tiles:

• Occupancy: active participants compared with the maximum.
• Paid: the amount that has come in. If participants paid by several routes (for example online and at the front desk), the breakdown appears below.
• Outstanding: what is still open. It turns orange as long as it is not zero.
• Attendance: the percentage present across the lessons you have ticked off. If you have not yet ticked off a lesson, "Nothing recorded yet" appears instead of a percentage.

Below that you see how many sign-ups there are per source: booked yourself on your site, via a payment link, at the front desk or via a follow-up email.

Everyone who can sign in to your admin sees these figures. If your club works with ClubDesk, only the club administrator sees the figures there; a planner does not.

Registering a participant yourself

You can put someone directly on a course, for example when they are standing at the front desk or calling:

1. Open the course and click Sign up a participant.
2. Enter name and email address (phone is optional). If the client already exists, Golfly recognises them by email address and no duplicate profile is created.
3. Choose the payment: Paid at the front desk (the sign-up is immediately marked paid) or Send payment link (the participant receives the link by email and pays themselves).

The option Send payment link only exists if you have connected Mollie. If emailing the link fails, or the participant has no email address, the screen says so honestly and you can copy the link and share it yourself. On a full or completed course the register button disappears.

Payment links per participant

Each sign-up that is still awaiting a payment link has a Payment link button. It opens a window that fetches the current status from Mollie:

• Open: you see the link itself, with a copy button and the final expiry date.
• Paid: the link has since been paid; refresh the page for the new status.
• Expired or replaced: the link is no longer valid. A new link replaces it.

With Email again you send the link once more. If the link is dead, Golfly first creates a fresh link for the same amount and emails that. If an email has already been sent, the window first asks whether you want to send it again, so that nobody is pestered twice. If the participant has a phone number, a button Share via WhatsApp appears after sending, with a ready-made message.

If the participant has no email address, the button is called Create payment link, or Create new link if the previous link has expired. You get the fresh link on screen and share it yourself.

Marking a sign-up as paid

If someone settles at the front desk after all while their sign-up is still open, click Mark as paid on that sign-up and confirm. The sign-up is marked paid and the participant receives the standard confirmation.

Be careful with an open online payment or payment link: Golfly closes that payment where it still can, but if the participant nevertheless pays it at home, a second payment comes in. You see that in Mollie and under your payments, and you then have to refund it yourself. On a cancelled course there is nothing left to confirm; the button does not appear there.

Recording attendance per lesson

Each session on the course page has an expandable block Attendance. In it you tap per participant Present, Absent or No-show. Tapping the same choice again clears the record, so "not yet recorded" remains a real state. Next to the button you see per lesson how many participants you have already ticked off, counted over the participants who are still on the course.

What you tick off here feeds the attendance percentage in the figures block and the attendance on the client page.

Intake and advice per participant

If a participant fills in the intake questions after booking, the column Intake shows their handicap band (with the date filled in when you hover over it) and their goal in their own words.

In the column Advice you set where each participant stands: Completed, Ready for follow-up or Needs extra attention. It is saved straight away per row. You see this advice back on the client page, and under Messages you can filter on it if you want to email a course group in a targeted way.

The golf journey on the client page

Open a client via Admin → Clients and, as soon as they have ever taken part in a course, you see their golf journey: the progression of their handicap band, and per course the status, source, attendance, their goal and your advice. If the latest advice on an ongoing registration is Ready for follow-up, the client page carries the marker Ready for a follow-up offer. Handy for seeing who you could offer a follow-up course to.

The waitlist

If no group training is scheduled, your group lessons page is not empty. Visitors see a field where they can leave their email address, plus a button to message you if they want to come with their own group.

Anyone who signs up immediately receives a confirmation and appears in your client list as a lead. If someone signs up twice, it remains one sign-up and one email.

When you schedule a training afterwards, no message goes out automatically. Go to Admin → Messages, choose the target group Group lesson waitlist, write your message and send it. That way you first see how many people it is and you decide the wording yourself.

Frequently asked questions

What happens if the course does not reach the minimum?

Golfly handles that automatically; you do not have to do anything manually. As soon as the cancellation period for the first session has passed and the minimum has still not been reached, Golfly cancels the whole course. The same applies to a one-off group lesson that does not reach its minimum.

You are warned in advance. If registration closes within three days and the course is still below the minimum, you receive one warning by email and as a notification: "Course below minimum, registration closes in 2 days", with the count (for example 1 of 3) and the moment registration closes. You then still have time to phone people, lower the minimum or cancel the course yourself. That warning appears daily around 09:00, only for courses that are not yet closed.

In that cancellation three things happen automatically:

• Refund: each participant who paid via Mollie receives the full registration fee back. A front-desk payment does not run through Mollie; you settle that yourself.
• Email: each participant receives an email that the course is not going ahead, with the refunded amount in it.
• Notification: you receive a notification that the course has been cancelled, with the number of sign-ups compared with the minimum.

So you do not have to press Cancel course yourself for this scenario. That button is there in case you want to call off a course for another reason.

What does a student get back if they cancel a course?

It depends on when they cancel:

• Before the cancellation period: full refund via Mollie, if they paid via Mollie. If they paid at the front desk, the confirmation says so honestly and you settle it between you.
• After the cancellation period: a credit in the form of a gift card, pro rata to the remaining sessions. The credit is valid for 12 months and can be used for any lesson or course on your site.

This prevents a no-show just before the start from wrecking your whole course, while the student is still treated fairly.

What does the student see on their side?

For a course they see one card with all sessions and the price for the whole series. After signing up they receive one confirmation email with a calendar file (.ics) containing all sessions at once. For each session they receive a separate reminder one day before.

If you have given a session a topic, you see it back in three places: on the public course card for that session, in the session list of the confirmation email, and as the line Topic in the relevant session reminder. In your own calendar that session then shows "Course: Topic" instead of only the course title. Sessions without a topic show the course title everywhere.

Can I still change an existing event or course?

You can always change the title, description and translations. You change the date, time and topic of a separate session via the course detail page. If a date or time is changed, enrolled students are automatically emailed; a changed topic is saved quietly (no email). If you leave a topic empty, that session falls back to the course title. Once there are sign-ups on a course, price, capacity, cancellation period and coach are fixed; you can still change the title, description, colour and location. For a one-off event you can change the price, but it then only applies to new sign-ups.

Coaches on a course

On the courses page is the card Coaches: the names of the people who teach at your place. A name here is only a credit on a course, not a sign-in and not its own calendar. With the photo button next to a name you choose a photo (JPEG, PNG or WEBP, up to 5 MB); it then appears with the course on the club's booking page, next to the name. Without a photo, initials are shown. If a coach leaves, you set them to inactive: they disappear from the selection list, but ongoing courses keep the credit.

Can I give each week its own topic or theme?

Yes. For a course each session has an optional field Topic (up to 200 characters), for example "Putting", "Chipping" or "Bunker shot". You fill it in when creating the course, and you can change it later on the course detail page. If you leave it empty, that session simply shows the course title, so existing courses change nothing unless you enter a topic yourself.

A topic entered appears on the public course card, in the confirmation email and in the session reminder, and in your own calendar as "Course: Topic". If you work bilingually (International Unlock), you also enter an EN topic per session, or have them all pre-translated at once with the button Translate topics.

What is the difference between a course and separate events?

A course is one booking for several lessons, with one price and a guaranteed place for the whole series. Separate events you can offer as an open drop-in. For a series of lessons where the same group comes back every week, a course is always better.

What is the difference between a course and a single lesson?

A single lesson is one-to-one between you and a student, booked via Admin → Lessons, tab Lesson types. A course and a group lesson are with several students at a fixed moment. Single lessons are booked at available moments in your calendar; group lessons and courses have a fixed date that you set.

Related

• Setting your availability
• Creating and managing lesson types
• Managing clients
• Sending messages to client groups
• Managing gift cards
• Multilingual content with the AI translate button