In-Round Basics

What happens during a FOREPAID round — score entry, advancing holes, multi-phone sync, and Russ.

Picking a game mode

The Home screen has three ways to start playing, depending on what you’re doing today:

• New Round — you’re the host. You pick the course, the foursome, the tees, and the wagers. The other players join via push notification or join code.
• Join with Code — someone else set up the round and gave you a 4-digit code. Enter the code, you’re in.
• Play Solo — solo practice round, no foursome, no wagers required. See Solo Practice Modes below for the details.

Entering scores

On the Score Entry screen, each player has a card with their name, par for the hole, and a +/- stepper. Tap + until you reach their score for that hole. The card colors automatically — eagle gold, birdie green, par neutral, bogey orange, blowup red.

Every player on the round gets their own card on the screen. You can enter your own score or anyone else’s — whichever phone is handy.

Advancing to the next hole

Once all scores for the current hole are entered, tap Next Hole (the green button at the bottom). This advances every phone on the round to the next hole. If anyone hasn’t entered yet, the button is grayed out until they do.

At the turn (after hole 9) and at the end (after hole 18), Russ fires a turn report and a round wrap before advancing.

Multi-phone sync — everyone’s on the round

Every player on the round sees the same state in real time. When one phone enters a score, it appears on every other phone within a second. When one phone taps Next Hole, every phone advances. Russ chirps fire simultaneously across every phone.

Russ during the round

Russ chirps after every hole where someone did something notable: a birdie, a bogey, a snowman, a press, a skin won. He calls names (“Bryan, that’s a birdie”) and reads the wager state (“Closes the front nine 2 up”). At hole 9 he files a turn report. At hole 18 he calls the round wrap.

Russ is controllable: the host can pick the trash-talk level (Friendly, Spicy, Nuclear, or Uncensored) at round start and change it mid-round from the ••• menu. Any phone can mute Russ on its own device without muting him on the others. See About Russ for the full breakdown.

The mid-round menu (•••)

The ••• menu in the top-right of the Score Entry screen has everything you might need mid-round — live scorecard, declare a press, see the standings sheet, mute Russ, switch the trash-talk level, view the GPS, see who’s up.

See In-Round Menu for the full walkthrough of every item.

Cart phones & shared scoring

If you’re sharing a cart and only one phone is on the round, that’s fine — enter both players’ scores from the same device. FOREPAID tags every score with which phone entered it (the “entered_by” field), so the audit trail is clean.

If a player’s phone is dead or off-course, you can mark them as a ghost player for the round and enter their scores yourself.

Score corrections

Made a mistake? Tap any prior hole on the scorecard to re-enter that score. FOREPAID recomputes the round live — standings, skins, presses, the whole settle math.

If the round is already in the settle phase, edits trigger a “Scores changed — re-confirm” banner on the host’s phone so the ledger can’t be locked in with a wrong number. See The three post-round phases for details.

Score conflicts — when two phones disagree

Because any phone in the foursome can enter any player’s score (the Model 5 architecture — flexible scoring with attribution), it’s possible for two phones to submit different numbers for the same hole + player at the same time. When that happens, FOREPAID flags it as a conflict rather than silently picking a winner.

What you’ll see

• A small warning icon appears next to the conflicting score on every phone in the foursome.
• The hole is treated as unscored until the conflict resolves — the round can’t advance past it.
• The standings sheet shows the hole as pending; money math holds until the number is final.

Who resolves it

The score-owner (the player whose score it is) has final say. Their phone gets a resolve sheet listing the conflicting values; they tap the right one and the conflict clears for everyone.

If the score-owner isn’t on the round (cart phone, ghost player, dead battery), the host can resolve it on their behalf. The audit trail records who resolved each conflict.

Solo practice modes — Play Solo & GPS Only

Not every round is a foursome with money on the line. FOREPAID has two solo modes you can use any time:

Play Solo (solo round, no money)

Pick a course, start a round, track your score solo. No foursome, no wagers, no subscription required to start one of these. Optionally turn on Russ as opponent — you set Russ’s handicap; he plays a net match against you with realistic chirps when you do something good or bad.

Useful for: a quick after-work nine, practice rounds before a tournament, learning a new course, playing alone when your usual foursome can’t make it.

GPS Only (no scoring, just distances)

Open FOREPAID for the GPS view only — no scoring, no scorecard, no wagers. Walk the course, get distances to the green and hazards, drag-to-measure any shot. The fastest way to use the app when you’re playing with a non-FOREPAID group and just want the yardages.

See the GPS feature tour for what you can do on the GPS screen itself.

Leaving and rejoining mid-round

You can close the app at any time during a round and come back later — the round state is persistent. When you open the app, you land back on the round at whatever hole the foursome is on.

If you lose connection (no signal at a remote course), FOREPAID queues your score entries locally and syncs them when signal returns. Other phones in the foursome see the updates as soon as you’re back online.