Tear this apart. Just seems like the club should be making more money than it is. But maybe this is normal. Not sure if this is nearly enough info but worth an ask!
by ThetaForge
Tear this apart. Just seems like the club should be making more money than it is. But maybe this is normal. Not sure if this is nearly enough info but worth an ask!
by ThetaForge
33 Comments
Looks like you need to ask the breakdown for Other Expenses as it’s the outlier here
Yup my inner accountant immediately wants a breakdown of “other expenses” lol. Especially when comparing YoY it seems a little high
What is “Other” in the 2025 report. It was $316K
A 210k jump in “other expenses” needs to be looked at.
“Other expenses” went up by 200k year over year. There lies the issue. I’d be really intrigued to know if they would be transparent and provide exact details on that line item.
What does the asterisk in other expenses give you? You cut it off
Payroll of $157K? How many employees? Seems very low.
the thing that stands out is the “other expenses”. See if you can dive into that
With the low payroll roll line, “other expenses” could be 1099’ers?
You have “improvements to 19th hole deck” in the future plans but no financial documents on how food and bev is performing? Is there no food and bev?
For what it’s worth, the goal of an equity club should be to run at exactly $0 in profit. If they make a ton of money, they should be reducing dues to equity members so that they aren’t, as long as cash reserves are healthy. There’s no purpose to an equity club actually making money. The members are the owners so any profit distribution back to ownership should just be done by making dues cheaper. Most clubs run as non profit entities anyway so they can’t dish out profit distributions.
Someone is improving their lie with that “Other” line.
Other expenses needs to be explained and also why expenses have been increasing more so than they should be. Net income is declining.
Tha payroll is insanely low. I’m curious how many pros you have on staff and how many employees the course has. Most private clubs I’ve worked at pay the head pro somewhere around that total number
What are other expenses? Most of the expense lines are actually trending down. Then the other line explodes the budget.
Slipping “Other” in there is hilarious.
What are your dues each month? This has to be the cheapest club I’ve ever seen.
Doesnt seem ridiculous, just a simple request for other exp reconciliation on a yoy basis should be fine. Cant imagine club house will fabricate shit tbh.
Saw the title and genuinely thought you had spreadsheets for how much you had spent on clubs lol
The club’s mortgage should be paid off relatively soon. That frees up over $100k a year.
No one is addressing OPs question, just the Other expense which they would have detail to with the *.
OP – what do you mean by making more money? Revenue or net income? I assume the club is private, and so they would balance the budget to break even or a small profit to put in the coffers. Their only revenue is your dues and members paying for events.
My club is full and stopped taking new members. To keep up our spend without initiation fees, all of our annual dues go up.
I’m confused by a lot of this.
Where are food and beverage sales? Shouldn’t there be pro shop sales as well? The payroll is ridiculously low, that’s like 3 full time employees for the year.
The other income and other expense lines are jumping hugely from 2024-2025 so not sure what those are for. How have utilities managed to go down over the last 2 years whereas every utility company I know has been raising rates?
As others have said, ask for a breakdown on the other expenses. That’s a huge jump without much detail.
Costs on EVERYTHING skyrocketed the last few years. No surprise to me that expenses jumped. Would be curious to know what falls into other. Food was super expensive this year if there is any kind of bar/grill. Supplies in general were super expensive. Tariffs were hard on businesses operating this last year.
What the hell is the $200k in other expenses? Nearly every other expense category besides grounds and salaries has decreased.
The fact that the clubs liabilities exceed their assets is concerning.
DID THE “OTHER EXPENSES” CURE CANCER?!
Where is the Food & Bev revenue? Where is the Pro Shop revenue?
I don’t know if the club is being mismanaged or the bookkeeping is being mismanaged, but something is fishy here. When any entity, a person/family/for profit business/social club/country club, is in a difficult financial position you must understand and measure your highest areas of cost (what sort of return is generated by the expenses) and revenue (how do we protect and grow what brings in money).
Food & Bev is generally a high margin area (3rd behind dues/initiation fees and operations like cart/greens fees), as is the Pro Shop. I don’t see either listed as a line item and there’s no way they can fall into the “Other” category if that total was $322 in all of 2024.
Finally, how is the club generating revenue when the course isn’t or can’t be played? Having an event venue revenue model is crucial as are member-based events in the evenings and during the winter.
Only cutting costs is the beginning of a death spiral for any entity. Find ways to grow revenue first.
The only oddity here is the 2025 Other Expenses jump which they’ve starred so I’m certain there’s a note on those documents to explain it.
Looks like they run a tight overall surplus. If they have these plans for capital improvements then they have to be funded somehow. So that typically always is fee increases
M&A professional here. I head up the business valuation practice.
In my 20 years at the firm, we’ve valued about 15 golf courses. None of them make much money and some of them were losing money. In almost every case, the land would be worth more getting developed. In some cases, the land is zoned in such a way it can’t be developed.
Anyways, these financials are on par with what I’ve seen for all the other courses in terms of revenue and profitability, give or take. This one is a bit smaller than most but not all.
I’m a bit surprised expenses didn’t go up more with the inflation we’ve seen. Everyone is harping on the other expense but given the * it was a footnote somewhere in the report that we weren’t able to see.
Where are the salaries of the GM and head pro classified? That payroll number would be enough for maybe the office staff but that’s about it.
Edit: my question might be answered in this chain here as someone asked a similar question https://www.reddit.com/r/golf/s/MRIpsmwgLs
It’s a small amount in the grand scheme, but what at the 10k of credit card fees and the 16k of credit card spend?
I don’t know how things work I’m the US, but for me on a personal level if I pay my CC bill each month I have zero fees for the year so is the club late on paying bills and wasting 10k each year??? Maybe there are corporate fees, if you’re but with 60% in fees on every your purchase with the CC that’s quite the waste (in my opinion).
Who has the club credit card and what are they using it for that amounts to 16k? Maybe it’s small miscellaneous ad-hoc items which wouldn’t fit in an existing category, but if it does then it should be classified correctly.
Too many and the large of amounts to be deemed Other. Ya, gonna need a break down
If they attempted to do a balance sheet it wouldn’t balance based on this presentation.
39k for bathroom flooring?