What's new
Everything we've built, freshest first. Updated as it ships.
Next up
On the bench right now, from the clubs and organisers using it. Not live yet - it moves into the list below the day it ships.
- Setting the handicap allowance is getting a bigger, clearer box, so 100% can never be mistaken for 10%.
- Take a photo moves above Add card photos, and the camera stays open so you can shoot one card after another without going back.
- Scanning a batch will show honest progress for every card, so a long read never looks like it has stalled.
- The checked, locked and still-checking counts on the results screen become buttons that take you straight to those cards.
1 September 2026
The leaderboard is four tabs, ready for the clubhouse screen
- The competition leaderboard is now four tabs: the team board (Four ball alliance on an alliance day), Individual stableford, Two clubs, and the competition sponsor.
- On the team board each group reads with its players beside it — Front 1, then the four names in draw order — and the groups still out on the course are listed underneath as “Still to come”, so the board looks like one list that fills in rather than one that is short.
- Two clubs is the twos club: it lists everyone who has holed a gross 2, with the hole they made it on — their actual score on the hole, not the net of it. A player who makes two of them in a round is on the list twice. Before anyone has one it says so rather than looking broken. The sponsor tab shows the competition sponsor, Infiniti.
- Switching is by tap for now. The boards rotating on their own comes once we know how long each should hold on screen.
31 August 2026
Every club keeps its own member list
- Members now belong to a club or society rather than to one shared list. Add a club on the Members screen, import its people, and nothing you do there touches another club's roster — no shared names, no cross-over in the draw.
- A competition says which club is playing it. The draw offers that club's members, and names read off the cards are matched against them and nobody else.
- Two clubs can now both have a John Smith. Until today the system allowed exactly one, anywhere.
- Short and misspelled names on a card are matched instead of asked about: Steven finds Stephen, Llew finds Llewellyn, and inside a drawn fourball even a two-letter scribble finds the one person it can be. Where two people genuinely fit, it still asks.
- Tell it once who a name is and it remembers for the rest of the competition. The same handwriting on a later card is linked without asking you again.
31 August 2026
The handicap on the card is the one you are playing off
- Under each player's initials the card now shows the handicap the competition is actually scored off. In a competition set to an 85% allowance that box reads the 85% figure, not the full handicap, so it matches the points on the holes below it. The full handicap and the allowance are on the tooltip, and tapping the box still edits the handicap read off the card.
- The points figure is back on every hole. It went away on 29 August, which left the amber mark standing on its own — and a mark that means “we read this differently to you” only reads that way while the holes it is not on are visible beside it.
- So the yellow background now means one thing and one thing only: on this hole, the points the golfer wrote are not the points the scores work out to. Everywhere else the figure sits there plain, and agreeing.
29 August 2026
The points come off the card
- The little green points figure that sat on every hole of the card is hidden. Checking a card is now about what the golfer wrote, with nothing on the cells that is not on the paper.
- Where the points the golfer wrote disagree with what the scores work out to, that hole still gets its amber mark, because catching those slips is the audit.
- The totals have not moved: OUT, IN and TOTAL with their points rows still sit at the foot of the card, with COMP PTS last.
26 August 2026
The club has an email address, and it answers from inside ScribbleScore
- Mail to iain@scribblescore.co.za now lands in an Inbox inside the admin. Read it, reply to it, or write a new message without leaving ScribbleScore — replies go out as the club, and thread properly in the other person's mail client.
- Replies and new mail can carry the club signature automatically, with a switch to leave it off for a quick note.
- Every message also forwards a copy to a backup mailbox, so nothing depends on any one system being up.
- There is a brochure for club visits at scribblescore.co.za/brochure — open it on a phone across the counter, send it after a meeting, or download it as a PDF.
12 August 2026
A new website, and a demo you can actually play with
- scribblescore.co.za is now a proper site: pages for how it works, what it costs, every competition format we score, and how your club's data is handled.
- There is an interactive demo you can run end to end without signing up. Read a card, settle the three exceptions on it, switch the format and the handicap allowance, and publish the leaderboard.
- The demo is not a video. The points, playing handicaps and countback figures in it are worked out by the same scoring engine that scores a real competition, on invented players, so the tie you see is separated on the back nine because the product decided it was.
- Every capability on the site says whether it runs today or is set up for your club during implementation, so nothing reads as available when it is not.
- The privacy, terms and support pages are reachable again. They had been linked from the footer while returning a not-found page.
11 August 2026
Cards come back quicker
- A four ball card now takes about 45 seconds to read instead of about 70. On a field of 30 cards that is roughly twelve minutes back.
- We moved the reading onto a different engine and checked it against every card we have already verified by hand. It got 357 of 360 scores right, against 356 for the engine it replaced. We moved back on 20 August: the two are a single cell apart on that sample, and the older engine turned out to be better at knowing when it was unsure, which matters more than the cell.
- A very busy card used to be able to run out of room part way through and come back as a failure you had to retry. That has stopped happening.
- Nothing changes in how you use it. Same photo, same review screen, same leaderboard.
9 August 2026
Scanning no longer gets stuck on the last step
- A card could sit on "Adding up the points" and never move on, even though it had been read properly and was waiting for you.
- Reading a card happens on our side and takes about a minute. If your phone locked, your signal dipped, or you switched apps while it worked, the answer could go missing on the way back, and the screen had no way of finding out.
- The scan screen now checks with us rather than waiting to be told, so a card that has finished shows up as finished within a few seconds. No more reloading the page to see where you got to.
- It also fixes the version of this where it told you the upload had failed, offered you a retry, and the retry left it spinning. Neither of those was ever costing you a card, only the ability to see it.
8 August 2026
A team competition tells you when it can't produce a team board
- Pick a team format — four ball alliance, two ball alliance, combined stableford — and it needs a draw behind it. Without one there are no teams, so the team leaderboard can only ever be empty.
- It used to be empty with no explanation, which you'd discover at prize giving. Now the competition screen and the leaderboard both say so, and link straight to the draw.
- Playing better ball and someone isn't in a pair? We name them, because their scores are counting towards nothing.
- Choosing the format now tells you up front that the draw is part of the setup.
8 August 2026
Far fewer questions on a card we read properly
- We were asking you to check scores we had actually read correctly. On one real card that meant eight questions where one was warranted. That's fixed.
- The cause: when the second look came back with nothing to add, we treated the silence as a disagreement and marked a perfectly clear score as doubtful. Silence now counts as nothing learned, and the first reading stands.
- We've also separated two different judgements. Looking at a square again is cheap, so we still do it readily. Stopping you to ask is expensive, so it now happens only when the reading is genuinely uncertain rather than merely less than perfect.
- Anything the card itself makes doubtful still comes to you: a crossed-out score, a total that doesn't add up, a missing number. Those checks are untouched.
- On the website, the explainer no longer prints subtitles on top of the words already in the video, and going full screen no longer crops the edges off.
7 August 2026
The explainer is a real video now
- The 50-second explainer on the homepage is proper footage of the app doing the job, start to finish: set up the competition, play, photograph the cards, check the exceptions, publish the leaderboard.
- It has sound, so it waits for you to press play rather than starting on its own, and it downloads nothing until you do.
- Captions are on by default, and the full script is still written out underneath for anyone who would rather read it.
7 August 2026
Your member list, and a draw that matches itself to the cards
- New Members screen: import your club or society list straight from your own system's CSV export. We look for names and handicaps, and if you import the same file again next month we update people rather than duplicate them.
- New draw screen on every competition: pick who's playing from your member list, tap Deal into fours, and move anyone who's in the wrong group. Nothing is saved until you say so, so you can shuffle the fourballs as much as you like.
- Each group gets a number. Write it on that group's scorecard and we read it off the photo and file the card under the right players.
- The scan screen now tells you which groups you're still waiting on, by number, so you know exactly how many cards are still out on the course.
- Missed the number, or the pen went through it? Pick the group by hand on the card screen.
- Handicaps come off the member list every week, so nobody plays off last season's number.
- On a phone you can now swipe up through a scorecard screen with your finger anywhere on the photo. Tap the expand button for the photo on its own, full screen, where pinch and double-tap zoom belong.
- The review screen gives the question far more room on a phone, with a tap to trade height between the photo and the question.
- Undo a check and the card no longer sends you into an empty review screen that says everything is already checked. It takes you to the card, ready to check again.
5 August 2026
The website now says who ScribbleScore is for
- The homepage leads with who we serve: golf clubs, societies and golf-day organisers. Golfers never need a second app.
- Pricing is public. Society and golf day tiers from R550, club tiers from R1,750 a month, and every recurring tier has an annual option at 12 months for the price of 10.
- A 60-second explainer walks the whole journey from handwritten card to published leaderboard, with on-screen captions and a written transcript.
- A new section explains how ScribbleScore sits alongside the official handicap system rather than replacing it.
- Every example screen on the site now uses clearly labelled demo data.
- You can book a founding pilot straight from the homepage.
2 August 2026
Fewer questions, and the points are on the card
- Your points are now written on the card itself: every hole shows what it scored, and the total sits under the grid. No need to go looking for them.
- The card also shows the handicap each player is actually playing off, so a round off 85% adds up in front of you.
- If you haven't set the course up, we now take the par and stroke index straight off the card instead of asking. We only ask when you did set a course and the card disagrees.
- Players written on the card get added to the competition automatically, handicap and all. You only get asked when a name is genuinely unclear or could be two different people.
- Once a card is checked there's a button straight to the leaderboard.
1 August 2026
Alliances by name, and a course that knows its stroke indexes
- The format list now says what you actually play: Four ball alliance and Two ball alliance (better ball), alongside individual and combined stableford.
- Playing off 85%? Tap it. Handicap allowance has one-tap buttons for 100%, 95%, 90% and 85%, and every point is worked out off the cut handicap.
- Know the course? Load the Pearl Valley layout in one tap and every hole arrives with its real par and stroke index, instead of a card full of par 4s.
- Change the format, the allowance or the holes after cards are already in, and the leaderboard now redoes itself straight away.
- Scan scorecards has moved to the top of the competition screen, where your thumb already is.
- A fresh coat of paint: ScribbleScore is now tournament green from the website through to the scoring screens.
9 July 2026
The card knows its course
- ScribbleScore now reads the printed par and stroke index rows off every card, not just the handwriting.
- If they don't match your course setup, you get one quick question at review time: use the card's layout, or keep yours.
- One tap fixes the whole course and every point is worked out again on the spot.
- Handy when a competition was set up in a hurry and the card knows the course better than the setup does.
9 July 2026
Settings, invites and one-tap sharing
- New Settings page: tell us your name and the app greets you properly.
- Set a 6-digit PIN in Settings and skip the emailed code next time you sign in.
- Prefer scoring in the evening? Dark mode is in Settings too. The app stays light unless you switch it.
- Invite fellow organisers and scorers by email, straight from the Users page.
- Add ScribbleScore to your phone's home screen and it opens like a proper app, with its own icon.
- One-tap sharing: send the final results to WhatsApp or anywhere else, right from the leaderboard.
- First time in? A friendly nudge asks what to call you, once, and never again.
- Friendlier signposts if you ever follow a link to a page that isn't there.
9 July 2026
Sharper on your phone
- No more surprise zoom: tapping any field on your phone keeps the page exactly where it was.
- Leaderboard now lives in the menu - one tap from anywhere, straight to the current round's standings.
- The big camera button sits front and centre on your phone: scan a card from wherever you are.
- Past rounds has its own home - every published leaderboard, newest first.
- Sign-in and invitation emails now carry the ScribbleScore mark.
- Share the site anywhere and a proper preview card shows up, scribbles and all.
8 July 2026
ScribbleScore is born
- Sign in with a 6-digit email code - no passwords to remember.
- Create a competition in under a minute: name, date, course, 9 or 18 holes, and your format (individual Stableford, better ball, alliance or combined).
- Set up the course card: par, stroke index and distance for every hole, with a check that stops two holes sharing a stroke index.
- Add your players and fourballs, with handicaps - or leave them out and let the scorecards introduce them.
- The reading engine: photograph a handwritten scorecard and ScribbleScore reads the names, handicaps and hole-by-hole scores itself.
- It works out all the Stableford points from the gross scores - the handwriting is only ever cross-checked, never trusted for arithmetic.
- Anything it isn't sure about gets flagged for a quick check - you only ever look at the scribbles, not every number.
- Live leaderboard with proper countback (back 9, back 6, back 3, last hole) and a public results page you can share.
- Scan button front and centre on your phone - straight from the 18th green to the leaderboard.