Budget in rounds, then in dollars
A golf budget that starts from last year’s revenue line inherits last year’s weather. We build the plan from operations up instead: tee-sheet capacity per day, an assumption for playable days by month, the member-versus-public mix, and revenue per round across green fee, cart, shop and food and beverage. Dollars fall out at the end, in three weather bands rather than one brave number.
Each band comes with pre-agreed moves — the marketing push, the labour trim, the maintenance that can slide a month — so a wet June triggers a plan instead of a meeting. That model is the first deliverable of a Fractional CFO engagement, and the monthly review then measures rounds against the playable days the month actually offered, which separates weather from lost demand honestly.
The tee sheet is perishable inventory
An unsold Tuesday 7:40 slot expires like an empty hotel room, while Saturday morning sells itself at almost any price. Yield work uses the utilization history in the tee-sheet system to price public rounds by day and daypart, to set twilight and shoulder-season rates from data rather than tradition, and to decide how far ahead peak times should be bookable at all.
The membership file belongs to the same math. An unlimited-play membership sells certainty, and every member round in a peak slot displaces a public green fee, so membership pricing gets tested against what the displaced rounds would have earned — and against the renewal cash it delivers in winter, when the course needs money most. Outings sit in between: a Monday shotgun that fills a day the sheet would have wasted is priced on entirely different logic than one that consumes a peak Saturday.
Two fleets, one capital plan
Carts earn revenue; turf equipment protects it. Both go onto a multi-year replacement schedule so no single spring demands three mowers and forty carts at once. On the cart fleet, lease-or-own is run as cash math in both directions: leasing keeps the fleet current at a flat seasonal cost, owning tends to win when utilization is high and the club will run carts well past the battery replacement cycle. The tax treatment differs too — lease payments deducted as paid, an owned fleet claimed through CCA.
When the plan calls for borrowing, the package matters as much as the purchase. Walla Assaf came to public practice from banking and corporate finance, so Business Financing Advisory builds projections in the shape a credit file expects, and a compilation engagement puts the statements in the form the lender’s committee actually reads.
The winter runway and the numbers on the board
The season’s cash has to cross the closed months, so we carry a rolling 13-week cash view through the winter: insurance, property tax, the salaried core and early agronomy spending on one side, renewal receipts on the other. Renewal pace gets tracked weekly against last winter, because it is the earliest signal the model receives — arriving in January, while there is still time to act on it.
| Number on the board | The question it answers |
|---|---|
| Rounds played vs playable days | Did we capture the demand the weather allowed, or lose it to price and pace of play |
| Revenue per round, all in | What a golfer is worth across green fee, cart, shop and food and beverage |
| Member renewal pace | Next season’s cash, visible months before the season starts |
| Labour cost per round | Whether the seasonal ramp is scaled to play or to habit |
| Banquet and outing backlog | The booked, weather-resistant share of the year ahead |
| Weeks of winter runway | Whether the float reaches opening day without touching the operating line |
None of this needs a new system. Every number comes out of the same ledger the monthly bookkeeping already closes, which is why CFO work sits naturally on top of a clean accounting file.
Cadence and scope
The rhythm is monthly: a short reporting pack, a working session, decisions recorded, and the model updated for what the sky actually did. Quarter by quarter, actuals reset the weather bands, so the plan gets less wrong every year it runs. Fall is the natural start — the budget gets built before renewal invoices go out, and the capital plan before winter equipment orders are placed. For courses and ranges across the GTA, scope and fee are set out in writing after a free 15-minute discovery call.
