Implementation
Changing the system that takes the money
It is the scariest thing a course does all year, and the fear is rational. So here are the phases, who owns what at each one, and the things we will not promise.
The phases
Five stages, each with an exit condition
- 1
Discover
Your current tee sheet, POS, website, data, domains and hardware are inventoried. Exit condition: a written scope you have read.
- 2
Configure
Courses, rate classes, green-fee rules, catalogue, users and payments are built; data is imported. Exit condition: the system reflects your operation.
- 3
Validate
Staff work a sandbox — test bookings, test sales, a practice close — and reports are reconciled. Exit condition: the numbers match.
- 4
Launch
A scheduled go-live on a chosen day with support and an escalation path. Exit condition: a real day closes cleanly.
And then: stabilise
Responsibility
Who does what, written down
Most implementations go wrong in the gap where each side assumed the other had it.
| Stage | You provide | Aced owns |
|---|---|---|
| Discover | Access to current systems, a data export, your rate structure, domain details and your go-live target. | The inventory, the written scope, and a named implementation contact. |
| Configure | Decisions — rate classes, categories, permissions, who gets a web login. | Building the configuration, importing the data, and flagging anything that will not map cleanly. |
| Validate | Staff time to work the sandbox and try to break it. | Test scripts, training, and reconciling the reports against your known numbers. |
| Launch | A chosen date, and staff on shift who have seen the system. | Coverage on the day, the escalation path, and fixing what surfaces. |
| Stabilise | Telling us what is still awkward. | A post-launch review of the first closes and the first Stripe reconciliation. |
What to have ready
Gathering these before discovery removes about a week of back-and-forth.
- A customer or member export from your current system
- Your item catalogue with costs, if you have them
- Your rate structure — every rate class and every rule, including the ones that only exist in someone's head
- Outstanding gift cards, store credit and house-account balances
- Who your domain is registered with, and who has access
- Your current contract's notice period and renewal date
- A list of the reports someone actually reads every month
Two things we will not promise
That everything migrates. Some data does not survive a move — partial history from a system that will not export it, reports whose definitions differ. Those are identified in discovery and written into the scope, not discovered in month two.
Implementation practice as of August 2026. Every schedule on this page is the one agreed in discovery, not an average.
Go-live
The first morning on the new system
Dated, rehearsed and staffed — with the fallback written down before you need it. A go-live that surprises anybody was planned badly.
Implementation questions
How long does implementation take?
We set a dated schedule with you during discovery, against your own season, and hold ourselves to it — rather than publishing a typical week count. Every course arrives with a different pile of data, a different season and different staffing, and a confident number that ignores all three is guessing at your expense.
Who does the work?
Aced configures the system and imports the data; you supply the exports, the decisions and the staff time for training and validation. The split is written into the scope document so neither side assumes the other is handling something.
Do we go live all at once?
Go-live is scheduled deliberately — usually on a quiet day, never on a Saturday morning — and is preceded by parallel testing in a sandbox with your real data. Nothing about the switch depends on staff learning the system on their first live shift.
What if something goes wrong on the day?
There is a named contact and support coverage on the go-live day, and the register keeps taking cash sales in cash-only offline mode if connectivity is the problem. Rollback contingency is agreed during discovery for the pieces where it makes sense.
What training do staff get?
Staff work a sandbox before go-live: test bookings, test sales, a practice close. The help center is public and searchable, so the reference material does not depend on remembering what was said in a session.
Start with discovery, not a contract
The first conversation is about your operation and your data. A written scope comes out of it, and only then does anyone talk about terms.