Help & FAQ

After signing up, you'll be guided through a short setup wizard: choose your sport, enter your club name, and add your own name. That's it — you'll land on your club dashboard ready to go. The whole process takes under a minute.

Members can log in and use Bowlside themselves. Once you invite them, they get their own account where they can view draws, propose and confirm match dates, enter results, make rink bookings, and manage their profile — no admin needed for day-to-day activity.

Go to Members → select any member → Send invite. They'll receive an email with a link to create their account and join your club. You can add members manually first (with just a name), or import a list from CSV, and invite them all at once.

Yes — Bowlside is a web app that works on any device. There's no separate app to download; just open bowlside.com in any browser on a phone, tablet, or desktop.

Yes. Go to Members → Import and upload a CSV file. The expected columns are: first name, last name, email, member number, gender, and role. Email is the only required field — everything else is optional.

Admins can manage the full club: add and edit members, create competitions and rink blocks, approve bookings, award walkovers, and access billing. Members can participate in competitions, book rinks (roll-ups and friendly matches), submit results, and manage their own profile.

Yes. You can promote any member to Admin from their profile page in the Members section.

Bowlside supports knockout draws (with seeding), round-robin groups, sections formats, and one-day competitions. Leagues with multi-season management are also available. You can configure sets or ends scoring, handicaps, and gender eligibility per competition.

Once you've added entries, go to the tournament's Draw tab and click Generate Draw. Bowlside will create the draw based on your chosen format, optional seeding, and handicap settings. You can also run a live draw if your club prefers to draw in front of members.

Yes. On the tournament overview page, click Share and toggle the public link on. Anyone with the link can view the draw and results without an account. Useful for noticeboards, club websites, or sharing on WhatsApp.

Either player in the match can enter the result. The other player is then asked to confirm it. If there's a dispute, an admin can step in to resolve it or award a walkover.

Once a draw is generated, players are notified of their match. Either player proposes a date; the other accepts or suggests an alternative. The whole conversation is threaded in the match detail page so there's a clear record. Admins can see all pending scheduling across the club from the dashboard.

Yes — members can book rinks for roll-ups and friendly matches directly from the Rink Booking page. Bookings show up on the shared calendar immediately. Admins can book any type (including league fixtures and club competitions) and can block rinks for maintenance.

Roll-up, Friendly Match, Club Practice, League Fixture, Club Competition, and National / County. Members can book roll-ups and friendly matches. All other types require admin access.

Yes — admins can create weekly or fortnightly recurring bookings (for example a standing morning roll-up). Recurring series can be cancelled as a whole or from a specific date onwards.

Yes. There's a Kiosk mode accessible at /kiosk, designed to be left open on a shared screen at your clubhouse. It shows the day's rink bookings without requiring anyone to be logged in.

Yes — every new club gets a full year on the Club plan completely free, with no card required. You get the entire product for twelve months to run a whole season on it. After your first year you can subscribe to keep Club, or move to the free Starter plan forever — either way your data is never deleted.

As your free year nears its end we'll email you. You can subscribe to Club (£240/year, or £24/month) to keep everything, or do nothing and move to the free Starter plan. Starter keeps unlimited members, fixtures and availability, one active competition, one league, and rink booking for one green — enough to run a club's day-to-day, forever, for free.

Club is free for your first year, then £240/year (or £24/month). On top of everything in Starter it adds the treasurer & payments module, unlimited simultaneous competitions, multiple greens and leagues, automated availability and payment reminders, and priority support. Billed annually or monthly, cancel any time.

Yes — the Circuit plan (from £600/year) connects multiple clubs in a league, district, or county, with self-updating league tables, county competitions and selection, and association-wide announcements. Get in touch via the Contact page to set one up.

Go to Settings → Billing and click Cancel subscription. You'll keep Club plan access until the end of the current billing period. Your club data is not deleted when you cancel — you'll simply revert to the free tier limits.

Yes. Cancelling or downgrading doesn't delete any of your club's data. Your members, competitions, and booking history are all retained. If you'd like to export your data, contact us at support@bowlside.com.

Bowlside runs on Supabase (database and authentication) hosted in the EU, and Vercel (web hosting). We do not sell your data. See our Privacy Policy for full details of all data processors.

No — Bowlside requires an internet connection. It's a cloud-based web app, so all data is live and shared across your club in real time.

Click 'Forgot password' on the login page and enter your email address. You'll receive a reset link within a couple of minutes. Check your spam folder if it doesn't arrive.