Excel, Google Sheets, WhatsApp or Row HQ: what should a rowing club run on?
A season that runs from ice-off to Thanksgiving does not leave much room for admin. Yet somebody still has to know who is rowing, which shell they have, and whose dues are outstanding. A workbook, a shared spreadsheet and a group chat each answer that a different way. Row HQ answers it for the club that has run past the first three.
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Which should a Canadian club use?
While one person can hold the roster, the shells and the dues between their ears, a shared spreadsheet and a group chat will carry a club through a whole season. Row HQ pays off later, when several coaches book shells, members want to sign up from a phone, and the job has to change hands at the AGM.
The four across a normal week
Below is a row for each job a club repeats most weeks. Very little of it comes down to whether a tool is capable. It comes down to the number of places a volunteer has to visit, and to what the tool does when two people change one thing within the same minute. The WhatsApp column covers club communication, which on Row HQ is notifications, news, member mail and chat.
| Job | Excel workbook | Google Sheet | WhatsApp group | Row HQ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Finding a free shell | Every shell gets a tab, updated by whoever remembers. Hosted on OneDrive or SharePoint it takes two editors at once, which is more than a workbook passed around as an attachment can offer. | A shared tab, live to anyone holding the link. Being a grid, it answers with the date last typed into that cell and nothing more. | Availability equals the newest message about it. Everyone else scrolls until they find that message. | A fleet is a record, where a tab is a grid. With booking switched on, a member takes the slot and the slot then reads as taken. |
| Two crews, one shell | Nothing prevents two saves of the same slot a minute apart. Version History shows what moved, but a restore has to wait for the last co-author to close it. | Changes are named in version history and an earlier version can be restored. Restoring after the event is not the same as preventing the second booking. | Two members claim one shell for one morning. It falls to whoever reads the thread next to spot it. | The booking exists or it does not. A shared bookings board holds the entire day in a single view, coaching launches with it. |
| Changes on the day | The member calls the coach, the coach opens the workbook and edits their row. | Edit access is enough for a member to correct their own row from a phone, assuming they can find which row is theirs. | "Sorry, out this morning" arrives in a thread that already holds forty messages. | Attend, decline and withdraw are each a tap, in the Row HQ app or on the web. The change attaches to the member instead of to a cell. |
| Setting the crews | Last week gets copied, pasted below, and the names that changed get retyped. | Copy and paste again, this time shared. One crew edited by two coaches ends up written over. | A coach pastes the crew into the group. The crew is therefore the latest message. | There are crew templates, crew assignments attached to the practice, and a boat lineup diagram. Skill level filters what the boat set picker offers. |
| Who sees what | Hand over the file and you have handed over everything in it. A shared cloud copy carries read or edit rights across the workbook. | Roles run Editor, Commenter and Viewer, with protected sheets and ranges underneath. Building that is manual, sheet by sheet, and it gets built again the following season. | Anything posted in the group is read by the whole group. | Owner, admin, coach and member are the starting point. What admins and coaches can reach is narrowed by the owner on the permissions page. |
| Board turnover | The workbook lives on a laptop belonging to a board member who has just finished, or in their sent mail. | The file can change owner, provided someone thinks to change it. | A group admin appoints the next one. Message history sits on each member's own phone. | The club account carries on past the board. Ownership moves. Nothing else has to. |
| Dues records | A dues tab, reconciled against the bank statement one line at a time. | The identical tab, shared out. Edit access to any of it is edit access to every part of it. | "Sent it Tuesday, sorry" as a message, with nothing written down anywhere. | Membership, practice and event fees share one ledger. Card and bank transfer both feed it, and every payment gets marked off against a name. |
A drop-out before Saturday practice
This one is invented rather than recorded. An eight is booked for 7:00 am, a rower texts at 6:20 am, and the same eight is already promised to a learn to row group at 8:30 am. Two problems, forty minutes, and four tools that handle them very differently.
Excel workbook
Open the workbook and make three edits: the rower, the crew tab, the shell tab. Write the message afterwards, since an edit tells nobody anything. Where copies went out by email, several people are working from an older one.
Google Sheet
Those three edits again, live to anybody with the tab open. Collaborators can be emailed out of the File menu, and a comment naming someone emails that person. The rower already halfway there gets neither.
WhatsApp group
One post reaches everybody, including the twenty who are not on the water this morning. Tuesday's message about the 8:30 am group is forty messages up, and the crew on the spreadsheet has not changed.
Row HQ
The rower withdraws from their phone. That seat reopens on the practice, the coach fills it from the crew list, and the clash appears on the bookings board with time to spare. Cancel the practice instead and a phone notification and an email reach the crew without a message being written.
When a spreadsheet still fits
Small clubs get by on one for years. Two shells, a single crew, and a coach who knows everyone. Twenty members, one volunteer doing the admin from ice-off to the last row of the fall, and a spreadsheet serves that club faster than software would. It costs nothing to open, only volunteer hours. Row HQ is free for clubs up to 20 active members, with paid bands above, and the pricing page prices a club your size.
- Two shells, which means availability is common knowledge rather than a lookup.
- A crew list short enough for one chat that everybody actually reads.
- A single volunteer on admin who is around for the whole short season.
- Dues arriving as one payment a year, or a club that charges none.
Where Row HQ pays off
The gain arrives when no one person can hold the club any more. Coaches outnumber the shells. Juniors arrive with parents who want their own login. Dues land in thirty pieces. The board changes each year. From then on the volunteer hours go into keeping four records in agreement, not into rowing. Six features carry it instead.
Practices members put their own name to
Recurring templates lay out the week ahead. Attending, declining or withdrawing takes a single tap in the Row HQ app, carried by the App Store and by Google Play, and practice scheduling records who actually came down.
Shells with a booking history
Club shells, member-owned shells and coaching launches share one fleet. Whether members book for themselves is set per club, and the club decides which skill levels can take which shell out.
A reminder that sends itself
Wednesday brings each member one email. It carries the practices due within five days, limited to those the member can see, minus the ones already signed up for.
A record each member owns
Through the member portal a member sees their own practices, their own profile and their own payments. There is no neighbouring row to overwrite by accident.
Dues and fees on one ledger
Membership dues, practice fees and event entries are recorded together. A member pays by card or by bank transfer, cash is written in by hand, and the treasurer marks off whatever has arrived.
A handover with no file attached
The club account is transferred to the incoming board member. Records do not leave the club, and any admin is able to export them as CSV.
Admin time won back
Estimated from the 2025 move made by Oundle Town Rowing Club, which is an English club. The figures belong to that club and are not an average across clubs. Admin there was about ten hours a week beforehand and roughly one hour a week afterwards. Where those hours sat is broken out below.
Attendance
A grid full of typed names becomes a list of taps to read.
Crew planning
Manual copying becomes crew templates and crew assignments attached to the practice.
Total
Weekly hours recovered at that club, by its own reckoning.
The migration and the records
Hand the files over and the data move is a one to two day piece of work. Oundle Town Rowing Club, in England, had sessions running on Row HQ a week after it began in 2025, with the full membership across within two weeks. What imports from a spreadsheet is the member list and the boat fleet. Attendance history is not promised.
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Member list and fleet import
Pass us the spreadsheet. There is a CSV import for members and a separate one for the fleet. Because shells are matched by name, a repeat import updates the shell rather than creating a duplicate.
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The spreadsheet stays open
No cut-over date is imposed. Keep running the spreadsheet while the club tries Row HQ out.
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Roles arrive built
Owner, admin, coach and member are present from the opening day, with the owner free to restrict where admins and coaches can go. Protected ranges never need rebuilding.
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Handover means a transfer
The account passes to the next board member to hold the role. The person handing over is left with no copy at all.
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The records belong to the club
An open account keeps its history. CSV covers members, payments, practice attendance and event RSVPs for any admin, and JSON hands the owner the whole club at once. Closing an account starts a countdown during which the club can be brought back or copied out, and the terms state how long that runs before deletion.
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Data protection after the switch
The club, not Row HQ, controls the data. Terms and privacy notices are the club's to publish, versioned, with acceptance recorded per version and member consent tracked alongside. The owner sets what admins and coaches can reach, one feature at a time. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, and encrypted backups leave the server daily. Support access by Row HQ into a club is audited, and club chat carries member reports and a log of who read what. Any member can take their own data or delete their account, and the owner can export the whole club.
A move, week one
Day 1: hand over the files
Send through the Excel and Google Sheets files in use today.
Day 2-3: the import runs
Members and fleet get mapped into Row HQ, and we report back on anything that would not map.
Day 4: your review
The club reads the data back, and the admin team is trained on a call.
Day 5: members join
Invitations or a join code go out and the club begins using it.
Read further about Row HQ
Detail on boat booking, training sessions and the member portal lives on the feature pages. All of it together is rowing club management software for Canadian clubs, and the security page explains how member data is held.
The pricing page works the cost out from member numbers, while the FAQ deals with what a board asks during a move.
What a board asks first
Boards put the same handful of questions to us before they commit. Each answer below is the short form of something set out further up, or on the pricing page. Anything missing is worth raising on a demo call, and where a spreadsheet is still the better fit for your club we will say so.
What software should a rowing club use instead of a spreadsheet?
Club management software that keeps the weekly jobs in one system: practice sign-up, the fleet, member records and dues. Row HQ was written for rowing, so shells, crews and skill levels sit in the record itself rather than in columns a volunteer added to a grid.
Can a shared Google Sheet run a rowing club?
A small club, yes. A shared sheet puts one live grid in front of everyone, with Editor, Commenter and Viewer access. It gives way once two coaches edit a single crew, once a member should see only their own row, and once the file has to change hands.
How long does migration off a spreadsheet take?
One to two days for the data, from the point the files reach us. Members and the fleet import by CSV. Oundle Town Rowing Club, in England, had sessions running a week after it began in 2025, with the full membership across within two weeks.
What happens to the data if a club stops using Row HQ?
It stays the club's. CSV covers members, payments, practice attendance and event RSVPs for any admin, and JSON hands the owner the whole club at once. After an account closes the data is kept 30 days to reopen or copy, then deleted, as the terms state.
Does Row HQ import attendance history?
No. The member list and the fleet import, and nothing beyond that. Past attendance stays in the old spreadsheet, which most clubs keep as an archive. Attendance on Row HQ begins with the first practice the club runs on it.
Bring the spreadsheet to a call
A demo runs as a video call. Open the club spreadsheet alongside it and we will work the list above from top to bottom. If the spreadsheet turns out to be the better fit for your club, expect us to say that.