Collecting gate entry on game day, without the cash tin

Every weekend it's the same ritual: someone grabs the ice-cream container full of float, sets up a card table at the gate, and spends two hours making change. It works, more or less. But it's slow, it's risky, and by Monday nobody can tell you how many people came through. There's a better way — and it doesn't involve buying any new kit.

The problem with a cash tin on the gate

A cash tin feels simple, but it quietly costs your club in ways that don't show up on the night:

• You have to start with a float. Someone has to remember to get coins and small notes from the bank, and someone has to count it all back in afterwards.
• It's a theft and loss risk. A container of cash sitting on a table, moving between the gate, the car and someone's kitchen bench, is the easiest money in the club to lose or have walk off.
• It creates queues. Fumbling for change while a line builds up in the cold is nobody's idea of a good start to the day — and some of those people just give up and walk around the back.
• There's no record. You end the day with a pile of cash and a rough guess. No idea who came, how many were members, or whether the takings actually match the crowd.

The fix isn't a fancier tin. It's collecting the money before game day, and turning the gate into a quick check-in instead of a cash transaction.

Sell entry in advance

Instead of taking money at the fence, sell entry online ahead of time and let people arrive ready to go. Most clubs want a mix of options:

• Season passes for the regulars who are there every week — buy once, come all season.
• Multi-visit passes (say, a 5 or 10-visit book) for families who come often but not every round.
• Single tickets for one-off visitors and the big days.

With passes and events, members buy these in the app and the money is paid straight into your club's own bank account. No float, no tin, no change — and every sale is tied to the person who bought it. New to the idea? Our guide on how to use a club pass walks through it, and if you're not sure which product fits, membership card vs pass vs ticket lays out the differences.

Scan them in on game day

On the day, the pass lives in the member's app — and in their Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, so they can pull it up even without opening the app. At the gate, a volunteer simply scans the QR code to check each person in. Entries count down automatically, so a 10-visit pass drops to nine on the way through, and a single-entry ticket is done once it's used.

Because it's a scan rather than a sale, the queue moves at walking pace. No change to count, no card to tap, no cash to reconcile later — just a green tick and in they go.

No scanner to buy

Here's the part committees usually brace for: the hardware bill. There isn't one. The "scanner" is just a phone running DashLite, ClubApp's on-the-go admin app (currently iOS). Your gate volunteer opens DashLite, points the camera at the QR code, and that's the scan done — on their own phone.

You don't want to hand a volunteer the keys to the whole club just to work the gate, so a scanner-only login can be scoped to a single venue or event. They can check people in and nothing else. When the match is over, that's where their access ends.

Know exactly who came through

This is the quiet win. Because every scan is logged, you finish the day with a Pass Usage report — exactly who was checked in, when, and at which gate or event. That's gold for a committee: real attendance figures instead of a guess, and numbers you can show a council or sponsor.

If a volunteer scans the wrong person or double-taps by mistake, the entry can be undone, so the count stays honest. And if a pass needs to be cancelled — a refund, or someone who's moved on — it can be revoked so it won't scan again. To go deeper on tracking who turns up, see our club attendance check-in guide.

The bottom line

The cash tin isn't free — it costs you a float, a theft risk, a queue and your records. Selling season, multi-visit and single-entry passes in advance, then scanning people in from a volunteer's own phone, fixes all four at once. No hardware to buy, money straight to the club, and by full-time you know exactly who came through the gate.

Common questions

Do we need to buy a scanner to check people in at the gate?
No. A volunteer scans people in from their own phone using DashLite, ClubApp's on-the-go admin app (currently iOS). It uses the phone's camera to read the QR code on each pass, so there's no separate scanner hardware to buy or charge.

What stops the same pass being used twice?
Entries count down automatically as they're scanned, with built-in duplicate-scan protection and optional entry caps. If someone tries to use a single-entry pass again, or hands their phone back over the fence, the app flags it rather than letting them straight through.

Where does the gate money go?
Straight to your club. Passes and tickets are sold online in advance and the money is paid out into the club's own bank account — not a cash tin, and not held by a middleman. You get a clean record of every sale tied to the member who bought it.

Can we see who actually came through the gate?
Yes. Every scan is logged, so you get a Pass Usage report showing exactly who was checked in, when, and at which gate or event. It turns a day of guesswork at a cash tin into an accurate head-count you can rely on.