System update and feedback please - a message from FCLGA President Marina

As we are fast approaching the end of another year, I thought I would drop a quick note to keep you advised on the key activities of your County Committee during the “off-season”. Those of you who attended the Prizegiving and AGM at the end of October, will recall I noted that the County would be moving to a new IT membership and competition platform ahead of the 2024 playing season and we are well advanced with the planning of that move. The benefits for the County committee (and in particular the Treasurer & competition convenors) in terms of improved administration functions are significant and fortunately also come with no financial cost. In addition we hope that for all members they will also see benefits from moving to a new system, with an improved process for collection of annual subscriptions, competition entry and most importantly automatic returns of scores from all qualifying competitions to the CDH (which is a function that we have not had available to us for the last 2 seasons).

We intend to hold a number of training sessions (both in person and online) during February to focus on ensuring that everyone is clear and comfortable with how to pay their annual subscription and how to enter the competitions that are scheduled for 2024. We recognise that a number of you traditionally pay your subscription at this time of year and are grateful for your patience in waiting on us having the new system set up – we currently estimate that invoices will be issued in late January and we will ensure that we provide clear instructions and training detail as to how these should be paid.

The new platform is provided by Scottish Golf and is accessed via their APP or website – we hope that the vast majority of playing members will already have a login to one of these systems, as it is where your handicap information is stored. For anyone that hasn’t registered with Scottish Golf for a player account, then please take a look at the instructions here and proceed with setting it up in advance of our training sessions being delivered. Should anyone experience any difficulty in getting set-up then please contact Karin or Lorraine who will be happy to assist. Please email fclgaweb@googlegroups.com and either Karin or Lorraine will come back to you.

More information will follow in early 2024 and members of the committee will be available to support this transition in the months that follow. Please look out for further communication during January which will include an option to sign up to attend a training session in February, well in advance of the 2024 season getting underway. Future communications are likely to be sent from the new system and will have a different look, but please don't delete it as suspicious! The new sender address will be Fife County Ladies Golf Association (no-reply@scottishgolf.org), you may wish to add this to your contacts, which will help make sure messages come to your inbox.

In addition at the AGM I mentioned that we were looking to issue a survey to obtain feedback from you all and I am pleased to be able to share with you the first of these surveys here, which is around website use. We are keen to understand what works well on the current website, what could be better and any other feedback you may have, this is important, as we have the opportunity to move the website to the new system and want to take advantage of a fresh start to bring you relevant content. You'll also see a section covering the AGM and dinner, we are keen to understand if there is a better time of the week for it to be held.

As we are already committed to a 2024 fixture list we have focused the topic of this survey on wider membership services and we plan to issue a second competition focused survey in the Spring of 2024. We would encourage you to complete this survey and provide us with your honest feedback!

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Marina

President

How to set up Fife County Golf Association on Club V1

As explained in previous posts, from the Spring Meeting this year onwards, Club V1 will be used to administer the full process including entries. In order to enter competitions, member will need a 'Howdidido' Passport account, which must be linked to Fife County Golf Association. 

🚩 If you have previously used Howdidido or Club V1 for your home (or away) competitions, you will probably already have an account and can therefore skip this step in the process.

🚩 If you have NOT previously used Howdidido or Club V1 for your home (or away) competitions, you will need to register for an account. When completing this, please ensure you use the email address previously provided to FCLGA, this will be the same one to which you should be receiving FCLGA updates.

🚩 If you have not previously provided an email address, or have changed email address, please get in touch by clicking here and confirm your full name, CDH and preferred email address. You will not be able to link to Fife County Golf Association if your email address is missing or does not match the address we have for you.

🚩 Step by step instructions are available by following this link

If you have not been receiving emails from Fife County Golf Association (fifecountygolfassociation@hdid.co.uk) advising of website updates and other County news, it may be due to your email address either being incorrect or missing, in which case, please get in touch so we can correct this.

Lorraine Morrow will be at Aberdour golf club on Sunday 26th of March (the day of the President's Cup) to support anyone that needs help with setting up any of the steps above, or if you have any questions about the changes being implemented. Alternatively, if you have any issues or questions relating to setting up on Howdidido / Club V1, get in touch

Note that the Spring Meeting (23rd April) will be visible in Club V1 from the 20th of March, entries will open on the 23rd March and close on April 16th.

FCLGA move to digital

As with most organisations, your committee at FCLGA are looking to modernise our processes to make payments, competitions and communication as easy as possible for everyone. You will no doubt be aware we have had a significant churn on the committee, and the manual ways of working has meant that it's been quite onerous for key roles which has no doubt played a factor in this churn. If we are to stop losing committee members and take the strain off those volunteering to support Fife County, making the tasks easier is essential. Two main areas creating a great deal of work are those associated with payments, specifically dealing with cash and cheques, and also the administration of competitions, which historically has allowed paper entries, emails, as well as an online form. 

To address these 2 areas in the short term, we are aiming to implement the following:

• Payments should be completed via BACS as standard. If there are extenuating circumstances where this is not possible, we are happy to discuss and look for alternative routes, while ensuring no additional work is required for the committee. 
• Competition entries and their end to end administration will move to Club V1 / HowdidIdo. Most of your home clubs have moved to Club V1 or an equivalent app / online entry, which assisted in keeping us safe during the peak of Covid, meaning we did not need to enter clubhouses and handle paper forms. By moving competition entries to the Club V1 platform, there is considerably less effort required for adding players, completing draws, entering results and communicating throughout the whole process. Given we are well into February and the President's Cup will be open for entries shortly, we are aiming to have this in place from the Spring Meeting, which will allow members to get prepared, with instructions and help being provided shortly.

We hope you can appreciate the reasons for making these changes and how they will ensure that FCLGA will be run as a modern organisation, and can help us by supporting these changes. There will no doubt be further changes in the future, which will be communicated in due course.