The question sounds simple: how many staff does the club need on a Friday night, and is the table at the back worth keeping? Most billiards owners answer from instinct — "the outside tables seem busier", "it probably picks up around eight". Instinct is usually right about the direction but wrong about the size, and when you are staffing shifts or scrapping a table, being wrong about the size costs real money. The data that answers it is already in the software; most people simply never open the right screen.
The per-table report: every table shows up, including the ones nobody touched
Ordersys has a revenue by table screen. Pick a date range and the table lists every table not yet deleted — a table with no invoices in the period still appears, with a zero. That detail matters: a report that only lists tables with revenue means the owner never sees the dead ones.
Each row separates table time, goods (drinks, food), combos, surcharges, discounts, tax, amount collected and debt still outstanding. Click a column heading to sort, so finding the table at the bottom of the list takes one click. Besides grouping by individual table, you can group by table type — pocket, carom, three-cushion — to compare whole categories rather than single tables.
To see which table runs at which hour, open the per-table detail
Pick a table (or a table type) and open the detail: the software returns the list of that table's invoices for the period, ordered by time. Each row carries the invoice time, the ticket code, table time, goods, surcharge, discount, amount collected and amount still owed. Reading the time column shows straight away which part of the day that table is concentrated in — and counting the rows gives the number of sessions in the period.
To be clear and avoid wrong expectations: the software does not draw a ready-made "table openings per hour band" chart for each table. It gives you a detail table with timestamps, and splitting it into hour bands is something the owner reads off or exports and groups. For a club with a dozen or so tables, looking at a two-week period is enough to see the pattern.
Three charts that help you read the hours
| Chart | What it tells you | Caveat |
|---|---|---|
| By hour (0–23) | Which hour of the day sells the most goods | Counts items sold, not table openings |
| By weekday (Mon–Sun) | Which day of the week carries the most | Lets you compare individual items against each other |
| Revenue by table | Which tables carry revenue and which lag | Zero tables do not appear on the chart — check the table list |
Put together, these three answer the original question. The hourly chart gives the heavy hour band for the club, the weekday chart gives the heavy day, the per-table list gives the heavy spot. Add the per-staff and per-shift reports and you also know who is on the floor when it is busy.
What to do once you have read it
- Staff by the real numbers. Only the hour band that carries most of the revenue needs a full team; a thin band can run with one person on duty.
- Put promotions where the gaps are. Pricing by hour band is already configured in the software, so discounting a quiet hour does not mean adjusting each invoice by hand.
- Deal with the lagging table. A table that stays low over several periods usually suffers from seating, lighting or walkways, not from the table itself. Move it and measure another period.
- Compare like with like. Do not compare a carom table with a pocket table, and do not compare a tournament week with an ordinary one — split by table type and pick matching periods.
One small tip: fix your review period at 2 or 4 weeks. Daily figures jump around with the weather and holidays; quarterly figures flatten every difference away.
A billiards club is not short of data, only short of the habit of opening the report before deciding. Every table opening is already a row with a time, a table and an amount — the owner just has to pull it back up and read it. Have a look at the Ordersys billiards club management software and the free 7-day trial, so you can run a full two weeks and read the reports on your own club's numbers. Two related articles: selling play-time combos and setting prices by hour band, drawing customers in the morning hours and measuring the result.
Ordersys times every table automatically, switches table lights, takes drink orders at the table and reports revenue per shift.
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