Membership and applications
Renewals, applications and a waiting list, with the club's own rules about who is eligible and in what order.
Case study — work in progress
ShootHQ: club administration that works at the range
A membership and operations system for UK shooting clubs — renewals, range bookings, rotas, attendance, qualifications and firearms-certificate records. Built mobile-first for volunteers and members, many of them over 50. This build is in progress.
Status: work in progress
Status: work in progress
ShootHQ is still being built and has not launched generally. There are no client numbers or adoption figures to quote. The pages below describe the problem, the scope and the engineering decisions, which are real and inspectable in the product itself.
The problem
Clubs run on volunteers and spreadsheets
A shooting club has to run memberships and renewals, a waiting list, range sessions and a range-officer rota, attendance, training and qualifications, safeguarding checks and firearms-certificate records. Most of that is done by a volunteer secretary, often across spreadsheets, paper folders and email threads.
The people using the system are at a range, on a phone, outdoors. Members skew older, so tiny targets, clever gestures and low-contrast designs are not a stylistic choice — they exclude people. Compliance records have to be right, and access to them has to be role-controlled.
Scope
What the portal covers
Range sessions and rotas
Session scheduling, range-officer cover and attendance, designed to be read and updated on a phone at the club.
Training and qualifications
Courses, competency records and the paperwork that supports them, kept with the member rather than in a filing cabinet.
Compliance and safeguarding
Firearm-certificate and medical records, role-gated access and an audit trail for the people who need one.
Decisions
Engineering for the worst connection in the room
No app store, no download
Members open it in a browser and add it to the home screen. There is no store account to create, no update to chase and nothing to install on a club laptop.
A booking is a booking
Range slots are first-come, first-served. When a phone is offline at the range, the booking waits and joins the queue when the signal returns — it cannot jump ahead of one already made.
Built for a weak signal
The parts a member uses at the range are designed to survive a dropped connection. A form that loses its contents on a bad signal is worse than paper.
Accessible by requirement
The audience skews over 50, so large targets, readable type, visible focus and plain language are built in from the start, not added at the end.
The benefit
What it means for the club
- Volunteers stop chasing paperworkMemberships, applications, rotas and attendance live in one place instead of across spreadsheets, paper folders and email threads.
- The range cannot be double-bookedA confirmed slot is confirmed. Two people cannot be given the same lane, and a queued request cannot quietly take someone else's place.
- Compliance records are findableFirearm-certificate and medical records sit with the member, visible to the roles that need them and not to anyone else.
- It works on the phone in the handNo separate app for members, no app store, and no assumption that everyone is at a desk.
Why it matters
The parts members never notice
Club software fails when it is attractive but wrong: a double-booked range, a lapsed certificate nobody flagged, a member locked out because a reset went to an old address. The effort goes into preventing those — a booking system that cannot double-book, a confirmation that cannot happen twice, and records only the right people can see.
None of that shows in a screenshot. It is the difference between a demo and something a volunteer can trust with the club's records.
See the build
See the build
ShootHQ is live as a work in progress at shoothq.co.uk.
- shoothq.co.ukThe product site.
- Manage by TextAnother build in progress, for cleaning firms.
- Talk to usDiscuss a member portal for your organisation.
Questions
The things people ask first
Is ShootHQ available now?
It is in build and not generally available. The site at shoothq.co.uk is live, and we will publish adoption details when there are real ones.
Can members book a range slot with no signal?
Yes. The booking is held on the phone and submitted when the signal returns. It joins the queue at that point, so an offline booking cannot jump ahead of one already made.
Does it need a fast connection?
No. Booking is the part designed to survive a weak signal at the range. The rest of the admin is done from a normal connection, and the pages are built to load quickly on a phone.
Who can see compliance records?
Access is role-based: the primary administrator, administrators and members see different things. Permission is checked whenever a record is opened, not just hidden from view.
Related
Let’s find out whether automation is the answer
Tell us what is slow, expensive or error-prone. We will tell you honestly whether we can help, what it would take, and roughly what it would cost — before anyone signs anything.