Excel, a Google Sheet, a WhatsApp group or Row HQ: which one suits your club?
A club carrying school rowers, university rowers and seniors is really three timetables sharing one boathouse. Somebody has to know who is out, in what, and who owes subs. Each of the four tools below answers that, and each asks something different of the person keeping it right. Row HQ is aimed at the club where that person is running out of evenings.
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Which suits an Irish club?
For as long as a single person can hold the membership, the boats and the subs in their own head, a shared spreadsheet alongside a WhatsApp group does the job. The argument for Row HQ arrives when several coaches want boats, members expect to sign on from a phone, and the role changes hands at the AGM.
Weekly jobs across the four
Every row below stands for something clubs repeat most weeks. Capability is seldom the dividing line. The dividing line is the count of places a volunteer must open, and how the tool behaves when two people alter the same thing a minute apart. The WhatsApp column represents club communication, which Row HQ holds as notifications, news, member mail and chat.
| The weekly job | Excel spreadsheet | Google Sheet | WhatsApp group | Row HQ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Which boats are free | A tab per boat, brought up to date by whoever gets to it. Held on OneDrive or SharePoint it accepts two editors together, where a workbook circulated by email cannot. | A single shared tab, live to all who hold the link. A grid is what it stays, so the answer is only ever a date somebody entered. | The newest message on the subject is the answer. Everyone else scrolls the thread until they reach it. | The fleet behaves as a record rather than a grid. With booking enabled a member takes a slot, and the slot afterwards reads as taken. |
| Two bookings, one boat | Two members may save the same slot inside a minute. Version History records what altered, while a restore has to wait for co-authoring to finish. | Every change carries a name in version history, and restoring an earlier one is possible. That is a cure after the event, not a block on the second booking. | Two members lay claim to one boat for one outing. Somebody reading the thread later has to notice the clash. | A booking exists or it does not exist. The shared bookings board carries the full day in one view, with the coaching launches on it as well. |
| Changes to the crew list | The member rings the captain, and the captain opens the workbook to edit the row. | A member holding edit access corrects their entry from a phone, assuming the right entry can be found. | "Cannot make Saturday" sits in a thread already holding forty other messages. | Attending, declining and withdrawing are all taps, made in the app or through a browser. The change is held against the member rather than typed into a cell. |
| Making up crews | Last week's crew list is copied, pasted underneath, and the changed names typed over. | The identical copy and paste, only shared. Should two coaches work the same crew, one of them loses the edit. | Somebody drops the crew into the chat as text, which makes the crew whichever message is newest. | Crew templates, crew assignments held on the session, and a diagram showing the lineup in the boat. The picker for boat sets is filtered on skill level. |
| Access to the records | To hold the file is to hold everything inside it. Sharing a copy from the cloud confers read or edit rights over the entire workbook. | The roles are Editor, Commenter and Viewer, and protected sheets and ranges sit beneath those. Someone configures that sheet by sheet, then configures it again next season. | Post something and it is read by everyone in the group. | Owner, admin, coach and member is the position on day one. The owner then narrows what admins and coaches reach, on the permissions page. |
| Handover at the AGM | The file remains on the laptop of the captain going out of office, or buried in the mail they sent. | Ownership of the file may be handed over, presuming it crosses anybody's mind. | One group admin promotes the next. The history lives on in everybody's own handset. | A club account is not bound to a committee. Ownership is transferred; where the records live does not change. |
| Subs | A subs tab, reconciled by hand against the bank statement. | That same tab, shared out. Anybody able to edit one part of it is able to edit every part. | "Paid it Tuesday, sorry for the delay" posted in the group, and nowhere else. | Whatever a member owes, membership, session or event, appears on a single ledger. It is settled by card or bank transfer and then marked off. |
A rower cries off Saturday
An invented morning rather than a recorded one. The eight is booked for 08:30, a rower rings at 07:45, and the university crew has that same eight down for 10:00. Two problems inside three quarters of an hour. What separates the four is who learns about it, and who has to be chased.
Excel workbook
Open the workbook and make three edits: the member, the crew tab, the boat tab. Only then write the message, because an edit informs nobody. Where the workbook has been going round by email, part of the club is reading an older copy.
Google Sheet
Edit all three again, live to anyone with it open. The File menu carries an option to email the collaborators, and a name typed into a comment sends that person an email. Neither catches a rower already on the way in.
WhatsApp group
Posting it reaches all of them, the twenty not rowing this morning included. Tuesday's message about the university crew at 10:00 is forty messages back by now, and the spreadsheet still carries the old crew.
Row HQ
One tap from the rower's phone withdraws them. A seat opens up, a coach draws somebody off the crew list, and the clash surfaces on the bookings board with time left to act. Cancelling the outing sends the crew a phone notification and an email in its place, with nobody composing either.
When a spreadsheet still serves
Plenty of clubs never need anything else. Two boats, one squad, and a captain who could list every member from memory. Twenty people rowing and one volunteer holding it together all season means a shared spreadsheet answers quicker than any software. It costs nothing to open and only volunteer evenings to keep. Row HQ is free for clubs up to 20 active members, with paid bands above that, and the pricing page states what a club that size pays.
- Two boats, which puts availability inside anybody's memory.
- A squad small enough that one chat reaches everyone who needs it.
- One volunteer holding the admin, present from first outing to last.
- Subs paid in a single go, or no subs collected at all.
What Row HQ gives instead
The difference tells once the club no longer fits inside one person's head. Coaches queuing for the same boats. Juniors arriving with a parent who needs a login. Subs paid in thirty instalments. A committee replaced every autumn. Volunteer evenings then go on reconciling four separate records rather than on the river. Six features shoulder that work.
Sessions members put themselves down for
The week ahead is generated from recurring templates. Attending, declining and withdrawing are each a single tap in the Row HQ app, carried by both the App Store and Google Play, while session management holds the record of who came out.
Boats that hold their own bookings
The one fleet takes in club boats, boats owned by members, and the coaching launches. Booking by members is turned on club by club, and the club chooses which skill levels may take which boat.
A weekly reminder that goes by itself
One email reaches each member on a Wednesday. It sets out sessions due within five days, restricted to what that member is allowed to see and has yet to sign up for.
A page belonging to each member
In the member portal a member finds their own sessions, their own profile and their own payments. Nothing of anyone else's is within reach to overwrite.
Subs, session fees and entries on one ledger
Whatever a member owes is recorded in the same place. Settlement is by card or bank transfer, cash is written up by the treasurer, and the treasurer marks off whatever has arrived.
A handover that moves no files
The incoming captain is given the club account. The records remain where they are, and any admin is free to take them out as CSV.
Admin time after one move
Estimated from the 2025 move at Oundle Town Rowing Club, a club in England. These belong to that club and are not an average taken across clubs. OTRC put its admin at close to ten hours weekly beforehand, and about an hour once the move was done. The split underneath is theirs.
Attendance, weekly
A volunteer now reads taps instead of typing names into a grid.
Crew planning
Copying and pasting hands over to crew templates and crew assignments held on the session.
Total
Weekly hours the club itself says came back.
Migration and where records end up
From the point the files reach us, moving the data runs to one or two days. Oundle Town Rowing Club, which is in England, was running sessions on Row HQ a week after starting in 2025 and had everybody across within two weeks. Out of a spreadsheet come the membership and the fleet of boats. Past attendance is not something we undertake to bring.
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Member list and fleet come across
Send on the spreadsheet. A CSV import handles the member list and a second one handles the fleet. Boats are matched by name, which means a repeat import edits the boat instead of creating a duplicate.
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The spreadsheet carries on
No cut-over date is imposed on the club. Keep the spreadsheet in use while Row HQ is being tried.
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The roles are already built
Owner, admin, coach and member are in place before anybody logs in, and the owner may pull admins and coaches back from parts of it. No protected ranges to build again each season.
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Handover means a transfer
What passes to the next captain is the account itself. No file remains in the outgoing captain's possession.
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The records stay with the club
An active account holds on to all of it. Event RSVPs, session attendance, payments and the member list export as CSV at admin level, and the club entire exports as JSON at owner level. Following a closure the club has a stated period in which to return or take a copy, after which the data is removed. The terms carry the period.
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Data protection and GDPR
Under GDPR the club holds the controller role, not Row HQ. The club publishes its own versioned terms and privacy notice, each acceptance is recorded against a version, and member consent is tracked beside it. The owner sets, feature by feature, how far admins and coaches reach. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, and encrypted backups go off site daily. Every visit Row HQ support pays to a club is audited, and inside club chat there are member reports and an access log. A member may take their own data away or remove the account, and the owner may export the club entire.
The usual first week
Day 1: the files reach us
Send on whichever Excel and Google Sheets files the club runs on.
Day 2-3: the import
The membership and the fleet get mapped in, and anything that will not map is reported back.
Day 4: the club checks it
You read the data back, and the admin team is trained on a call.
Day 5: members are invited
Invitations or a join code go out, and the club is away.
Where else to read
Three feature pages go deeper: training sessions, the member portal and boat booking. The product itself is rowing club management software for Irish clubs, and the security page describes how member data is held.
What a club pays follows its member count, laid out on the pricing page, and the FAQ handles what committees ask partway through a move.
What committees ask us
Five questions turn up on nearly every call before a committee decides. Each answer restates, briefly, something already set out above or on the pricing page. Put anything else to us on a demo, and where a spreadsheet remains the better answer for your club you will hear that rather than a pitch.
What software should a rowing club use instead of a spreadsheet?
Club management software holding the weekly jobs together: session sign-up, the fleet, member records and subs. Row HQ is built for rowing, so boats, crews and skill levels belong to the record itself instead of sitting in columns somebody added to a grid.
Can a shared Google Sheet run a rowing club?
A small club, certainly. A shared sheet puts one live grid in front of everyone, with Editor, Commenter and Viewer access on it. The strain shows when two coaches work the same crew, when a member should see only their own entry, and when the file must change hands.
How long does migration from a spreadsheet take?
One to two days for the data, from the point the files reach us. The membership and the fleet come in by CSV. Oundle Town Rowing Club, which is in England, was running sessions a week after starting in 2025 and had everybody across within two weeks.
What happens to the data if a club stops using Row HQ?
It remains the club's. Event RSVPs, session attendance, payments and the member list export as CSV at admin level, and the club entire exports as JSON at owner level. After a closure the data is held 30 days to return or copy, then removed, as the terms carry it.
Does Row HQ import attendance history?
It does not. The membership and the fleet come across, and nothing further. Past attendance stays in the old spreadsheet, which most clubs keep as an archive. Attendance on Row HQ begins with the first outing the club runs on it.
Hold it against your spreadsheet
A demo is nothing more than a video call. Keep the club's own spreadsheet to hand and we will take the list above in turn. Should the spreadsheet still be the better answer for your club, you will hear that from us.