An API lets one system ask another for data or make a change, such as checking a tee sheet or creating a booking. A webhook works the other way round: the booking system pushes a message to a web address you choose the moment something happens, such as a booking or a cancellation. Most clubs need both, and the real work is deciding which events matter, keeping the messages secure and making sure a duplicate or late message never puts a member on the wrong tee time.
This guide is written for club managers, secretaries and the volunteer who ends up looking after the club’s IT. You do not need to be a developer to follow it. You do need to know what to ask of a supplier and what a developer must get right.
TL;DR
- An API is a request you make when you need something. A webhook is a notification you receive when something happens. Tee-time integrations normally use both.
- A webhook should tell your system to look, not be the final word. Fetch the current booking state before you email a member.
- Secure every endpoint: HTTPS, signature checks, duplicate handling and a log of every event.
- Start with a short list of events (booked, changed, cancelled) and the minimum member data needed for each.
- BallChute is built for fair, high-demand tee-time releases and works alongside your membership system, with integration options for Intelligent Golf. We have a 14-day free trial.
Table of Contents
- API or webhook: what each one does for a tee sheet
- Which booking events a tee-time webhook should send
- Why a webhook should prompt a lookup, not settle the answer
- Securing a webhook endpoint
- Testing, retries and failures
- Configuring a webhook and connecting it to the API
- What to check before going live
- Why the booking moment matters more than the plumbing
- Try BallChute at your club
- FAQ
- Sources
API or webhook: what each one does for a tee sheet
The difference is who starts the conversation.
With an API, your system starts it. It sends a request when it needs data or wants to act, and the booking system responds. This is the pull model: the client asks, the server answers. On a golf tee sheet, that means things like “show me every slot on Saturday” or “create this booking for this member”.
With a webhook, the booking system starts it. It sends an HTTP request to an endpoint you have set up in advance whenever an event occurs, such as a booking, a cancellation or an account update. You do not ask. You are told.
A useful comparison is the pro shop phone. An API call is you ringing the shop to ask whether the 8.40 is free. A webhook is the shop ringing you the instant someone cancels it.
| API | Webhook | |
|---|---|---|
| Who starts it | Your system | The booking system |
| Best for | Looking up availability, creating or changing a booking | Reacting to bookings, changes and cancellations as they happen |
| Timing | You choose | The event decides |
| What your side must run | A client that holds credentials and respects rate limits | A public web address that can verify and answer quickly |
| Typical club use | Pulling a tee sheet into a members’ app or noticeboard | Updating a membership record or sending a confirmation when a booking lands |
The practical burden also differs. With an API the club holds the credentials, chooses the timing and handles pagination and rate limits. With a webhook the club exposes a public URL, must authenticate traffic it did not start, and has to answer quickly under load it does not control. That second list is why webhooks look simple in a demo and cause trouble in the real world.
Which booking events a tee-time webhook should send
Keep the first version small. A club does not need forty event types. It needs the ones that change what a member, a starter or a competition secretary does next.
The core events
- Booking created. A member or group has secured a slot. Useful for confirmations and for marking the slot as taken in any other system.
- Booking changed. The time moved, a player was added or removed, or the group size changed.
- Booking cancelled. The slot is free again. This matters most for popular times, because a cancelled slot may need to go back to a queue rather than to whoever clicks first.
- Release opened or closed. For clubs that release tee times in batches, a signal that a booking window has started or ended helps committees follow what is happening.
The data each event should carry
Send an identifier for the event, an identifier for the booking, the tee time, the number of players and a member reference. Leave out anything you do not need. Names, email addresses and phone numbers are personal data under UK data protection law, so the less that travels in each message, the less you have to protect and explain. If a receiving system needs more, it can look the booking up through the API using the booking identifier.
That design, a light notification followed by a lookup, is the pattern most developers settle on, and the next section explains why.
Why a webhook should prompt a lookup, not settle the answer
Bookings change state repeatedly. A group of four becomes three. A time moves by ten minutes. A deposit or fee is recorded. Purple’s venue-integration guide advises that a booking webhook tells you to look but should not be the last word on what the booking now is, and that you should fetch the current state through the API before sending anything guest-facing. The same logic protects a golf club: you do not want to remind a member about a tee time they have already given up.
In practice:
- The webhook arrives saying booking 1042 changed.
- Your system records it and acknowledges receipt.
- A background job asks the API for the current state of booking 1042.
- Only then does it send the email, update the record or print the starter’s sheet.
This also copes with messages arriving out of order, which networks occasionally do.
Securing a webhook endpoint
An endpoint that accepts booking events is a door onto your member data. Four habits keep it shut.
Use HTTPS
Use HTTPS endpoints when payloads contain sensitive data, because HTTPS encrypts requests in transit. For a golf club, treat every payload as sensitive, because member references and tee times together say a good deal about people.
A valid certificate matters here. If your receiving service runs on Kubernetes, trust errors are a frequent cause of failed deliveries, and a walkthrough of unknown authority certificate errors shows how to track them down so that retries do not pile up.
Verify the signature
A webhook endpoint must verify signatures, tolerate duplicate deliveries and log every event for later reconciliation, because the source will fire again whether the receiver is ready or not. A signature proves the message came from your booking system and was not forged or altered. Ask your supplier how they sign messages and which secret you use to check them.
Developers should note one detail. Verification works best when the raw request body is read before any JSON parsing, so the signature matches byte for byte. Parsing first can change the bytes and cause valid messages to be rejected.
Handle duplicates
Processing should be idempotent: track each unique event identifier and ignore later deliveries of the same one within the retry window. Without that, a retried “booking cancelled” message could free a slot twice or send a member two emails.
Keep a log
Record every event received, when it arrived and what your system did with it. When a member says they never got a confirmation, the log settles it in minutes.
Testing, retries and failures
A club should test an integration the way it will really be used: on a busy release morning, not on a quiet Tuesday.
Acknowledge fast, work later
The acknowledgement, a 2xx status, should be sent immediately, with the heavy business logic kept in a separate asynchronous queue so slow processing does not trigger needless retries. If your endpoint takes thirty seconds to update a spreadsheet before replying, the sender assumes failure and sends the message again.
A simple test plan
- Happy path. Make a test booking, change it, cancel it. Confirm each event arrives once and is logged.
- Duplicates. Replay the same event twice. Confirm nothing is processed twice.
- Bad signature. Send a message with the wrong secret. Confirm it is rejected.
- Downtime. Switch your endpoint off for a few minutes, make bookings, then switch it back on. Confirm missed events are delivered or can be reconciled through the API.
- Busy release. Simulate a burst of bookings arriving together and check nothing is dropped or reordered into a wrong state.
Use a test or sandbox set-up where one exists, so no real member receives a test email.
Configuring a webhook and connecting it to the API
The detail depends on your supplier, so treat this as the general shape rather than a recipe for any one product. Most booking systems that offer webhooks let an administrator register a destination address in an admin screen and choose which events to send, and many allow each webhook to be switched on or off. Developer documentation for one such booking system, for example, describes creating, updating, deleting and toggling webhooks from the admin interface under Settings, though every vendor differs.
The general sequence is:
- Decide the outcome you want, such as “mark a slot as taken in the membership record”.
- Choose the events that serve it and the least data needed.
- Stand up an HTTPS endpoint that verifies, logs and acknowledges.
- Register the endpoint with the supplier and note the signing secret.
- Write the follow-up step that calls the API for current state.
- Run the test plan above before any member relies on it.
If nobody at the club wants to run an endpoint, an integration layer can take that work on. Such middleware can handle authentication, data transformation, identity matching, retries, rate limits and logging, and smooth over differences between vendors. Whether you use one or build your own, the checklist is the same.
What to check before going live
- Who owns it. Name one person at the club and one at the supplier who will act when something fails.
- Member identity. Confirm how a booking is matched to the right membership record. Duplicate or misspelt names are the commonest source of errors.
- Data protection. Know what personal data moves, where it is stored and for how long. The Information Commissioner’s Office is the body to consult for the club’s obligations.
- Failure plan. Decide what happens when the endpoint is down: queue, retry, or reconcile from the API at the end of the day.
- Rollback. Keep a manual route, such as the emailed or downloaded tee sheet, so play is never held up by software.
- Release-day load. If you open popular slots at a set time, test at that time of day with realistic numbers.
Our guides on integrating booking with a membership system, adopting a golf booking system and migrating between booking systems cover the club-side planning around all this.
Why the booking moment matters more than the plumbing
Integrations keep records tidy, but they cannot fix the thing members complain about: popular tee times vanishing in seconds. Real-time notifications simply tell your other systems about the scramble faster. They do not make it fairer.
Our view
We built BallChute around one problem: when a popular release opens, the fastest finger wins and everyone else feels shut out. An online waiting room lets members join a queue and take their turn at choosing, so nobody has to compete on clicks. Each club sets its own rules and time limits, which means the committee decides what fair means at its club.
We also think software for a club should respect the systems the club already has. BallChute is not a replacement for your membership or competition management platform. It is focused on fair, high-demand releases, and we offer integration options for clubs on Intelligent Golf. Our aim is that members, including those less confident online, get an orderly chance to choose, and that officials end up with completed tee sheets they can download or have emailed, without chasing anyone.
Before wiring anything together, get the booking moment right. Plumbing can then carry a result that members already trust.
Simon
To see how queued, turn-based booking works in practice, read our guide to turn-based tee booking, or our piece on how a fair club queue works from the member’s side.
Try BallChute at your club
BallChute gives your club a configurable waiting room for busy releases, member verification, group selection and tee sheets that arrive by download or email. The Standard plan is £29 per month or £290 per year per club. The Intelligent Golf plan, for clubs using that membership system, is £35 per month or £350 per year per club. You can try it free for 14 days with no automatic fees afterwards.
See the plans and start a trial on the BallChute site, or read about fairer releases for Intelligent Golf clubs.
FAQ
Do I need a developer to use webhooks at my golf club?
To receive webhooks directly, yes: someone has to build and maintain an endpoint that verifies, logs and acknowledges messages. If you have no technical volunteer, ask your supplier or an integration provider to handle it. You can still own the decisions about which events matter and what data may travel.
Is a webhook better than an API for tee times?
Neither is better, because they do different jobs. A webhook tells you something happened, and an API lets you check the current state or make a change. The most reliable set-ups use a webhook as the prompt and the API as the source of truth.
What happens if my endpoint is offline when a booking is made?
The sender will usually try again, which is why duplicate handling matters. Do not rely on retries alone, though. Reconcile against the API at set intervals so any missed booking or cancellation is caught and corrected.
Does BallChute replace my membership system?
No. BallChute is focused on fair, high-demand tee-time releases and works alongside the membership and competition platforms your club already uses. We offer integration options for clubs on Intelligent Golf, and you can try the service free for 14 days.
Sources
- Webhook vs API for Venue Integrations: A Practical Guide
- Webhook Security Vulnerabilities Guide
- Webhook receiver recipe
- Certificate Signed by Unknown Authority in Kubernetes: Fixes