Ask TurfWise
Ask questions in plain English from the top bar, Today or the phone app, answered from your own records, with how-to answers taken from these help articles
On this page
Ask TurfWise is the question box in the top bar and on your Today page — type a question in plain English and it answers from your club's own records, with links to the entries behind every number.
Included on Core and Premium
Ask TurfWise is free and available on every plan, including Core. It's also in the phone app.
Where do I find it?
There are three places:
- The top bar. The Ask TurfWise box is in the bar on every page. Click it, or press Ctrl + K (⌘ + K on a Mac).
- Today. Click Today in the top bar. Ask TurfWise is the first thing under the banner at the top of the page, in a dark tile.
- The phone app. See The TurfWise mobile app.
How do I ask a question?
Type your question
Click in the box and type, for example "How much holiday has Ewan got left?" or "Who's off tomorrow?".
Press Enter or click the arrow
The black arrow button sends your question, and the answer appears inside the card a moment later. If it's taking too long, click Stop.
Check the detail
Most answers show a headline, then up to six of the records behind it. Click one to open it in TurfWise — some take you to the record itself, others to the page where it lives. If there are more, you'll see how many, and a link such as Open the planner or Open stock takes you to the full list.
Tell us if it helped
Use the 👍 and 👎 under the answer. A 👎 sends us the question and the answer you saw, so a wrong or unhelpful answer gets fixed rather than missed.
Clear it
Click Dismiss when you're done.
Not sure what to ask?
Click one of the example questions under the box, such as Who is off next week? It goes into the box rather than being asked straight away, so you can change it first — in How much holiday does John have left?, put in the name of one of your own team — then send it.
What can it answer?
Ask TurfWise can answer these kinds of question:
- Holiday left — how much annual leave a named member of staff has left this leave year.
- Who's off — which staff are off on a day or over any period, such as "for the rest of this month" or "is Ewan off on Friday?". It covers holiday, sickness, TOIL and other absences. Requests still awaiting approval are listed separately and aren't counted as off.
- Machine faults — machines with open faults, including ones that are being worked on.
- Low stock — products at or below the reorder point you've set. Products with no reorder point aren't included.
- Overdue work — jobs past their due date, plus what's due today and anything blocked.
- Weather — your course's recorded weather for a day or a period: temperatures, rainfall, GDD and growth potential.
- Rainfall history — dates when a day's rainfall was above or below an amount you give in millimetres, across your records or a period you name.
- Your diary — what's in the diary for a given day, including calendar entries and notes.
- Budget — how much of this budget year's budget is left, which budget lines are over, and which have the most left. If you haven't set monthly budgets, it says so rather than inventing one.
- Spending — what you spent in a month or over several months, by budget category, using the same figures as the monthly spend page under Money.
- Invoices — posted invoices: how many, totals, VAT, totals by supplier, overdue invoices and the largest or most recent.
- Risk assessments — which are overdue for review and which are due next.
- Jobs — what's on for a day or a week, who's doing what, what's overdue, and when a job was last done (for example "when did we last verticut the greens?").
- Machinery — which machines are overdue or due a service (by date or meter hours, whichever comes first), open faults worst first, and when a machine was last serviced.
- Stock — how much of a product you have, what's at or below its reorder point, and what's going out of date.
- Purchase orders — what you've ordered and from whom, which orders are still drafts, and whether goods or an invoice have been recorded against an order.
- Spray records — when a product, a kind of product (such as fungicide) or an area was last treated, how often a product has been used, and which records are incomplete.
- Weather over a period — average, warmest and coldest temperatures, frosts, rain, growing degree days and growth potential for any past period.
- Hours worked — hours worked and rostered from the Time Clock, TOIL earned and taken, who was rostered but didn't clock in, and whether a week is ready for payroll. It never shows pay or rates.
- Disease risk — today's modelled risk for each disease, whether it's rising or falling and the days ahead — the same figures as the Course pages. It's a model, not a recommendation to spray.
- ET₀ — water lost to evapotranspiration against recorded rain over a period, and whether you're in deficit.
- Diary — what's in the diary for a day or a week, repeating entries included, and when something is ("when is the committee meeting?").
- Notes — open notes, the most urgent ones, notes past their date, and notes about an area or assigned to someone.
- Irrigation — when a surface was last watered and how much water went on, plus measured soil moisture and the driest holes.
- Projects — how your projects are going, which are behind, and when they're due to finish. Costs aren't included.
- Health & Safety — what the H & S Overview says: open incidents, any RIDDOR report due, COSHH gaps, overdue risk assessments and expired certificates. Managers only.
- How to use TurfWise — questions like "How do I book TOIL?" or "Where do I record a near miss?". See below.
Asking how to do something
Start your question with How do I, Where do I or How to, and Ask TurfWise looks for the answer in this Help Centre. You'll see From the help centre, a short passage copied from the best matching article, and links to up to three articles. Click one to open it at the right section. On the phone, the links are tappable too.
The passage is quoted word for word from the article. Nothing is made up or reworded. If no article is a good match, Ask TurfWise answers the question the usual way instead.
Premium features
If an article is about a Premium feature, its link says Premium. You can still read it on any plan.
Asking about other days
Where a question is about a day or a period, you can say it the way you normally would: today, next week, Friday, the rest of this month, August, or a date. Weeks run Monday to Sunday. Overdue work is always worked out from today.
Check which day the answer covers
The answer always says which day or period it covers. Read that to check it has understood you — especially for the older question types (holiday left, machine faults, stock, overdue work, weather and diary), which still only understand words like "today", "this week" and "last month".
Where do the answers come from?
Every figure comes straight from your own TurfWise records. Ask TurfWise never answers from general knowledge, and it never makes up a number. If it doesn't know, it says so rather than guessing.
Questions it recognises straight away are answered instantly. For other questions, TurfWise first looks up and works out the figures from your records itself: totals, what's left, who's off and so on. An AI model then picks which records to look up and writes the figures into a short answer. Before you see it, TurfWise checks that every number in the AI's answer appears in your records. If any doesn't, you get TurfWise's own plain summary instead.
The AI model is an open model run by Scaleway in Paris. It only sees the figures needed for your question, and only ones your role is allowed to see.
It respects your permissions
Ask TurfWise only answers what your role is allowed to see elsewhere in TurfWise. If you can't open staff records, for example, it won't tell you about someone's holiday. Private diary entries and private notes are only ever shown to the person they belong to, and someone else's sickness shows as "off" unless your role can see absence detail.
What if it can't answer?
You might see one of these messages:
- "I can't answer that one yet." — the question isn't about something Ask TurfWise covers yet. Questions like this are noted, and they help decide what Ask TurfWise learns next.
- "There's more than one… — which did you mean?" — two people share that name. Click the right one and it asks again with the full name.
- "I can't find anyone called…" — check the spelling, or try their full name. Only current staff are looked up.
- The question helper has reached its daily or monthly allowance — see below.
- The question helper is temporarily unavailable — try again shortly, or use the example questions.
Is there a limit?
The part that interprets unusual wording has a daily allowance for each person and a monthly allowance for each club. You won't normally get anywhere near it.
If it's reached, recognised questions — including the example questions and anything someone at your club has already asked in the same words — still work. Only brand-new phrasings have to wait until the allowance resets.
Tips for better answers
- Use names people are known by in TurfWise. "Ewan" works if there's only one Ewan; otherwise use a full name.
- Keep it to one question. "Who's off today and what's overdue?" is two questions — ask them one at a time.
- Say the period. "Weather last week?" or "Rainfall last month?" gets you a more useful answer than a bare "weather?". Weather answers come from recorded weather, so they cover days that have already happened.