Cobalt club software, reviewed alongside Benvo

Cobalt is a product division of Computer Software & Solutions International, LLC (CSSI), a software company founded in 1991 and based in Boca Raton, Florida. CSSI entered club management in 2016, and Cobalt says it has worked with private clubs since then. Its website footer reads "Powered by CSSI".^{[23][20][21][1]}

Stephen Bruno (CEO) and Abhinav Dave (President and CTO) lead both Cobalt and CSSI, which also runs a technology centre in Hyderabad, India, and earlier ran VUE Software, an insurance platform later acquired by Vertafore.^[3][22][23]

Cobalt keeps property records beside members, with renewals, property sales and leasing for residential clubs, automated monthly statements and electronic gift certificates. A built-in CRM tracks prospects, and marketing adds email analytics, dynamic groups and geo-fenced push notifications.^[11][15]

Benvo keeps member records with tiers and a full lifecycle, and reception scans the member's QR card at the door. Chloe runs renewals with invoices, reminders and lapse after a grace period, requests such as freezes wait for a person, and Insights scores each member from 0 to 100 for churn risk.^[54]

Cobalt also runs court lotteries, skill-based games and pickleball clinics, and a spa, salon and fitness module with therapist schedules, commissions through retail POS and prices by membership tier.^[18][7]

Benvo Facilities has a golf tee sheet and a standing times lottery. Courts use fair booking rules, open matches by level, ladders and leagues; treatments are matched to a room and a therapist; classes have rosters, packs and waitlists. Benvo has no GHIN, Golf Genius or Tag Marshal link and does not run tournaments.^[56][63]

Cobalt takes dining reservations with an optional dining lottery and editable floor plans, and shows preferences and allergies to servers. Its banquets module adds a BEO builder, recurring events, deposit tracking, POS charges to events and revenue dashboards by event type.^[9][14][12]

Benvo imports the floor plan from an architect's DXF, PDF or image file up to 25 MB, and the host stand seats walk-ins with a suggested table. Events have a waitlist with 24 hour offers, online ticket sales and a door scanner. Proposals carry versions, an online signature, a deposit schedule paid online and a function sheet.^[57][58][53]

Cobalt's overnight rooms module handles room combinations, live housekeeping status, folio billing and a night audit, and reports ADR, RevPAR and length of stay.^[13]

Benvo runs a room rack with member rates and group blocks, a front desk with ID registration and split bills, a housekeeping board with inspections, and a night audit with a city ledger. Dinner can be charged to the room, rooms sell through Benvo's own booking engine, and the channel manager connects to Booking.com, Expedia and Agoda.^[59]

Benvo has no general ledger of its own. It posts POS daily sales, hotel end of day and loyalty liability to Xero as journals, syncs with QuickBooks Online and NetSuite, and exports approved hours, tips and commissions as a file for your payroll provider.^[53]

Each club chooses KPay, Adyen or Stripe for online and in-person card payments, and Benvo shows the pros and cons of each; a paid custom option connects any provider with a compatible API. Members pay statements and invoices by card in the app or from a pay link, and card fees are charged by the club's own processor, with nothing added by Benvo.^[53]

Cobalt Engage, on iOS and Android with a matching portal, books dining, events, tee times, the golf lottery, courts, fitness and spa, shows and settles statements and holds a directory, guest cards and e-signature. Its AI Concierge books tables, orders food through the POS and calls for a golf bag or the car from valet.^[5][4]

Benvo's members app runs on iOS and Android and also installs from the browser. Members carry a card in Apple or Google Wallet once the club adds its wallet credentials, book tables, events and facilities, view and pay statements and chat with Chloe and the team.^[55] Chloe handles requests, renewals and bookings, Zack briefs managers, Emma answers enquiries and Elia plans offers, each within the approval level the club sets.^[61]

Cobalt offers customisable analytics on usage, spend, membership, retail and reservations, natural-language reporting since June 2023 and banquet dashboards.^[8][26][12] Benvo's report builder takes up to four measures and two breakdowns, schedules reports and answers questions in plain words; group reports show totals per currency, and Zack writes the Home brief and a weekly owner digest.^[62]

Cobalt names six links: Golf Genius, Tag Marshal, USGA GHIN, Zoom, Elavon and Apple Wallet. It says it does not rely on third-party integrations for core functions such as accounting or CRM, and we found no public API or accounting sync.^[6][9][11]

Benvo connects to Xero, QuickBooks Online and NetSuite, to KPay, Adyen or Stripe for card payments and to Apple and Google Wallet for cards, and takes sales from another till through a POS webhook. It has no public API and no app marketplace.^[63][53]

Cobalt's 2022 launch release cites a "dual-encrypted database" (a vendor claim), its privacy policy puts hosting in the United States, and we found no named security certification on its public pages.^[23][17]

Benvo isolates each account with forced row level security, can require two-factor sign-in for the whole team, limits sessions to five devices and keeps an audit log and change history. Support access is granted by the club, time limited and recorded.^[64]

Cobalt describes 24/7 support from a US-based team, business analysts who run implementation and training, hands-on training for spa staff, and banquet tools that upload menus, documents and future events.^{[2][19][7][12]} Benvo works to a 14 day switch plan, charges no setup fee, and takes support tickets from inside the product.^[52][66]