Compliance-grade club admin for range and facility.

What is clay target club software?

Shooting clubs carry more paperwork than most, and clay target club software exists to carry it properly. In ClubHelix that means an accreditations register tracking firearms licences, range officer tickets and first-aid certificates with expiry dates; structured incident reporting that produces a permanent, auditable record; facility booking so members book range time online; a shoot calendar of events members can RSVP to; and memberships paid online through the club's own Stripe Connect account, with digital waivers signed at joining. One platform, one member record, and compliance you can point at.

Licences, incidents and the audit trail

The register shows who is current and who lapses next, so rosters and line calls are made on facts rather than a filing cabinet and a prayer. Range officer tickets, first-aid certificates and licences all live against the member, with expiry dates visible before anyone steps on the line. And when something happens — an incident or a near-miss — it goes into a structured, timestamped report that keeps a permanent record designed to stand up to scrutiny, not a paper form in a drawer.

Range bookings, shoot days and rosters

Facility booking maps your ranges into clash-proof time slots members book online, with optional fees paid through Stripe at booking time. Monthly shoots and championships publish as events with RSVPs and paid nominations, and the results go up on the site by grade as a news post the same evening — scores that used to be chalked up on the day and gone by Monday. Volunteer rostering covers range officers, scorers and concession stand for each shoot: shifts published in advance, claimed by qualified members, gaps visible before the day instead of begged for at the monthly meeting.

Stands booked by the shooter, paid at the range office

A range isn't a tennis field. A trap layout or a bank of stands takes several shooters at once, and what the club needs to know is how many are coming, whether a junior is among them and who's paying. Facility booking models that directly. Set a layout up as a shared resource with a capacity in shooters — eight on the line, say — and each booking takes one or more places: a member books a place for practice, a squad of five books five, the grid shows "3 of 8 left" until it reads "Full", and a ninth shooter is refused rather than squeezed onto the line. Price it per shooter per session, with a member rate and a visitor rate, and the arithmetic is on the booking page before anyone pays.

The comments box is where this earns its keep. Label it "Anything we should know?" and shooters tell you "bringing a junior, will need a coach on the line", "first visit, need to hire a gun", "left-handed, please keep stand one free". Comments are private to the club and sit beside the booking in the admin, where the range officer reads them before the session — and can search them ("who mentioned a junior?").

Payment is by card at booking or at the range office. Set the layout to pay at the venue, write the instructions ("pay at the range office before you shoot — EFTPOS or cash"), and the booking confirms straight away with what's owed. The Bookings admin shows an Owed at the venue total, Mark paid records each payment with a receipt, and Download CSV gives the treasurer the filtered list. Venue-settled bookings need no payment provider connected, and money the club records itself carries no platform commission. Admin blocks hold places, or the whole layout, for the monthly shoot and coaching days, and a closure takes it off the grid for maintenance. The guide to sharing a facility between bookings walks through the capacity setup, and taking payment at the venue covers the office side.

A clay target club website in step with the range

The public site runs on the same platform as the bookings and the shoot calendar, so dates, results and joining information stay current without anyone retyping them. Build it with the page editor — club history, fields directions, new-shooter information — from the template gallery, and walk through the live demo to see a complete club site. Your state association or national body sets the rules of the discipline; your site is where members find how your club meets them.

Free clay target club software to start

Every club begins on the free plan, and it stays free for as long as you use it — there is no time limit. Paid tiers carry a 14-day free trial, bill on a 28-day cycle and cancel any time; current inclusions are on the pricing page. Membership and nomination money settles directly to the club's own Stripe account — ClubHelix never holds funds, and the platform fee is never surcharged to your members.

Bringing the paperwork across

Start with the member list and the licence expiry dates — the register pays for the setup effort the first time it flags a lapse before a shoot. ClubHelix runs clay target and shooting clubs in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, the US, Canada, Ireland and South Africa. Talk to us about moving across, or read the full guide to running a clay target club — compliance, range operations, shoot programs and the board year.

What to compare before you commit

Clay target clubs carry an administrative load most sporting clubs never see: licence and permit records, safety officer rosters, ammunition and target sales, and results that have to reach every shooter before they get home from a squadded shoot day.

What a clay target club actually pays

The free plan has no time limit and covers a club with a member list, a calendar and a public site. Paid plans start when money moves — memberships, shoot entries, targets and ammunition.

The economics here are unusual: most clubs take more across the counter on a shoot day than they do in annual dues. Compare platforms on the transaction fee and on whether shop sales are included, not on the subscription tier alone. Current pricing is on the pricing page; paid plans carry a 14-day free trial, bill on a 28-day cycle, and the platform fee is never surcharged to members.

A shoot day that starts on time

1. Take entries online in the week before, paid at entry. The morning queue disappears.
2. Publish squads the night before so shooters arrive knowing their time.
3. Sell targets and ammunition through the shop, so the takings reconcile automatically instead of being counted twice.
4. Get every score card to one scorer as each round finishes, so the grade results are ready to publish before the last squad has packed up.
5. Push the results out the same evening via broadcasts — the single highest-value thing a small club can do for retention.

Common questions from clay target boards

We shoot several disciplines. Can one system hold them all? Yes — one member list, with each discipline's shoots published with their own entries, grades and results.

Do visitors need a membership to enter a shoot? No. Visitors can enter and pay online without joining, which is how most clubs recruit.

Can we record licence expiry? Yes, with warnings before the date rather than a discovery at the gate.

What about youth? A junior member carries a guardian contact who receives comms and pays.

Does this replace our scoring software? No, and it is not meant to. Scoring a squadded shoot and keeping the season aggregate stay with the system your discipline already uses. ClubHelix takes the nominations and the money beforehand and publishes the results afterwards — the part that usually lives on a clipboard.

The complete guide to running a clay target club covers the wider operational and safety job.