Ice time, test sessions and coach billing — one system.

What is figure skating club management software?

Figure skating club management software is the front office for a club that owns almost nothing physical: not the rink, not the coaches, just the ice it buys, the programs it runs on that ice, and the records that prove who has passed what. In ClubHelix that means the whole ice calendar in one facility booking view, learn-to-skate blocks run as term programs with levels, caps and waitlists, self-serve skating club membership with online payment, test sessions and the spring ice show run as ticketed events, and a member record that survives the next committee handover.

Skating clubs go looking for software at a predictable moment: when the ice invoice arrives and nobody can say, hour by hour, who was on it. That is not a bookkeeping problem. It is an admin problem wearing a bookkeeping costume.

Ice time scheduling across freestyle, squad and learn-to-skate hours

Your club buys hours — allotted by a city parks department at one rink, contracted commercially at another — and every one of them is billed whether twelve skaters show up or two. Put the entire ice year in a single booking calendar so freestyle and patch ice, development squad sessions, learn-to-skate blocks and off-ice conditioning all sit on one grid that coaches, skaters and the board can read without a group chat.

Sell access the way your club actually prices it: session passes and punch cards for freestyle, a term fee for squad ice, block fees paid upfront at intake. Take attendance on every session, not only the ones you already worry about — once you can see Thursday freestyle running at half capacity all term, you can merge it, move it, share it with a neighbouring club or hand the hour back before the next contract is signed. That is what turns "the ice is expensive" into a decision.

Test sessions, entries and the results the record depends on

A test session is the most administratively demanding day a skating club runs, and the one skaters plan their year around. Publish it as an event with a hard entry deadline and online payment, so the entry list closes when it closes and the treasurer is not chasing payments the week the panel travels. Eligibility — membership current, affiliation paid, prerequisite levels held — is checked against the member record rather than reconstructed from memory, and the running order is built by level and discipline with resurface breaks scheduled in from the start.

Test day itself runs on volunteers: registration desk, music check, locker rooms, ice marshal, hospitality for the officials. Publish each of those as a named slot on a volunteer roster and let people claim their own, so the test secretary sees the gaps two weeks out instead of at seven on the morning of. Results go back onto each skater's record the same week, where they belong — level, discipline, date and result held by the club, not in a coach's notebook.

Coach billing, ice levies and screening currency

Most club coaches are independent professionals, not employees, and a private lesson on club ice is two transactions happening on the same forty minutes: the coach sells the lesson, the club sells the ice. Charge for the second one explicitly — a per-lesson ice levy or a flat seasonal access fee — and invoice it on a schedule rather than settling up in the parking lot. If the club charges nothing, general members are quietly subsidising private lessons, and eventually someone works that out.

The other half of the coach relationship is compliance. Background screening, abuse-prevention training and current governing-body membership all expire, and the club is generally the party expected to have verified them before anyone steps on club ice. Record each one against the coach with its expiry date in accreditations, and filter for what lapses before the season starts. When the rink closes for plant failure at six in the morning, broadcasts reach every affected family at once, with push notifications for members who have installed the club app.

Learn-to-skate intakes and the conversion to membership

Beginner blocks are the funnel and the club's whole growth story. Run four fixed intakes a year as term programs with per-level caps, waitlists and card payment at sign-up, open the next block in week six while the child is still mid-block and enjoying it, and give the graduation offer a link a parent taps beside the boards rather than a form somebody keys in later. Membership itself is self-serve, with your own categories and fees, and a register that shows at a glance who is paid up.

The board's questions get answered from reports instead of a spreadsheet rebuilt each August: how many graduates became members, what a test session cost against what it took, whether the ice show covered the ice.

A skating club website families can actually use

Families searching for beginner classes want four things — dates, price, what to wear, and a way to pay without emailing anyone. Build a site that answers all four with the page editor, in club colours, updated by whoever is on the board this year rather than a developer. Start from the template gallery or open the live demo to see the skater-facing side. ClubHelix runs skating clubs in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, the US, Canada, Ireland and South Africa.

Free figure skating club software to start

Every club starts on the free plan, with no time limit on it. Paid plans add the features a growing program needs — each carries a 14-day free trial, bills on a 28-day cycle and cancels any time; current tiers are on the pricing page. Program fees, test entries, session passes and ice show tickets settle directly into the club's own Stripe account — ClubHelix never holds your funds — and the platform fee is never surcharged to your skaters.

Before the next intake

Import the member list you have, put one learn-to-skate block and one test session through the system, and judge it on whether the ice invoice reconciled. Talk to us if you would like a hand with the setup, and for the wider picture — intakes, test days, coach agreements and splitting ice cost — read the full guide to running a figure skating club.