Bookie software
Bookie software is the set of screens a bookie runs his players through: a site where they bet, and a back office where he sets their limits, watches the action and settles the week. Almost every local bookie rents it from a per-head shop rather than buying it, and the screens he will actually use every day are fewer than the brochure shows.
Two sites, one book
Whatever the package is called, it is two sites sharing one database. Your players see the first: a login, a board of lines, a bet slip, their balance and their open bets. You see the second, the agent's back office, which shows everything they did and lets you change what they can do.
People search for bookmaking software as if it were a program you install. It used to be, more or less, a desktop program and a phone. Now it is hosted. The per-head shop runs the servers, loads the lines, grades the tickets and keeps the site up, and you log in from a browser or a phone like your players do. That is what you're paying the head fee for, and what pay per head is covers the deal itself. This page is about the screens.
The player list
The first screen most agents open is the list of players. Each one has an account number, a password you hand him, a credit figure, a balance and a record of every bet. Here you open a new player, close one who stopped paying, and change his settings.
I'd spend time on this screen before signing with anyone, because it is where you do your real work. Can you see, on one line per player, who is up and who is down this week? Can you find the player who bet three times his usual size on Saturday without opening every account? A list that makes you click into each player to learn anything is a list you will stop reading by October, and a bookie who stops reading his players is running a book blind.
Limits
The settings are the bookie's risk management, and the software only enforces what you type in. The software operations page lists the usual ones: the credit limit, the maximum bet by sport and bet type, the settle figure, and switches for parlays, teasers, live betting and the casino.
What I'd test is how fine the controls go and how fast they work. Can you give one player $500 on an NFL side and $50 on a first-half line? Can you cut one man's live limit at halftime without touching anyone else's? Can you copy one player's settings onto a new one, so a friend he brings you starts on the same terms rather than the shop's default? The default is the setting I trusted least, because somebody else chose it for a player they have never met.
The reports
You settle from the weekly figure sheet, so it has to be the clearest page in the whole package. Each player's result for the week, what he owes or is owed against his settle figure, and the net for your book. Beside it sits the open bets report, which is the one I'd keep open on a busy Sunday: every ticket still pending, grouped by game, so you know what a single result will cost you before it happens. The exposure page explains why that number matters more than any other.
Then there is each player's history. Read it for the player who keeps taking the opening number and winning. That one isn't lucky, and the history is where you find him before he finds the rest of your bankroll.
If you have people bringing you players, the sub-agent screens let each of them see only their own group, and let you see all of them with each group's figures apart.
The cashier
Here the word means something different from what it means at a sportsbook. A per-head shop never holds your players' money, so the cashier in a bookie's back office is a ledger, not a bank. When a player pays you on settle day, you record it and his balance moves. When you pay a winner, the same. If some of your players are post-up (they hand you money before they bet), the cashier is where you credit it so the site lets them bet against it.
It sounds dull, and it is. It is also the only record you will have when a player swears he paid you $400 two weeks ago. I'd want every entry stamped with the date and who made it, and I'd make every entry myself on the day the money moved. The credit and collections page covers the money side of settling, which no software does for you.
Online casino and the rest
A lot of searches for bookie software are really about iGaming, which means the online casino sitting next to the sportsbook. For an agent the casino is usually an add-on to the package, often billed per player who plays it, and so are the racebook and live betting. Price each one by how many of your players would use it. The under $5 page works through how those add-ons move a cheap head price.
Choosing a package
Most shops offer a trial, so test the package from both chairs. Make yourself two or three player accounts, bet from your phone at a busy hour, then sit in the back office and change a limit, enter a payment and read the figure sheet at the end of the week. If you are weighing two shops, comparisons sets out how to put them side by side. If you are thinking past rented screens to a book of your own, sportsbook software and white label sportsbooks cover that.
Whether you may take bets at all depends on where you live, and a rented site based somewhere else doesn't change it. Nor does any of these screens pay a winner. Keep the money to cover a losing week before you open the first account.