Your club runs on Excel, Google Sheets and WhatsApp. Should it run on Row HQ?
Share the boats with a school and the Saturday questions get sharper. Who is on the water, in which boat, and who is behind on subs. A workbook, a shared spreadsheet and a group chat each hold those answers somewhere, and each one relies on a volunteer remembering to move them. Row HQ is where clubs go when that stops working.
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Which suits a New Zealand club?
One person who can carry the whole club in their head makes a shared spreadsheet and a group chat perfectly workable. The case for Row HQ builds when a few coaches are booking boats, members expect to sign on from a phone, and the whole job passes to somebody else at the AGM.
The four on weekly jobs
Each row is one of those jobs. What splits the four is almost never whether the job can be done. It is the number of places a volunteer has to open, and what the tool does when two people alter one thing inside the same minute. The WhatsApp column is club communication, which Row HQ separates into notifications, news, member mail and chat.
| Weekly task | Excel file | Google Sheet | WhatsApp group | Row HQ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What is off the rack | One tab per boat, typed up as things change. Sitting on OneDrive or SharePoint it holds two editors at a time, which a workbook going round by email will never do. | A shared tab, live to everybody with the link. It is a grid all the same, and a grid answers with whatever was last typed in. | Whatever the last message said is what is free. Anybody who missed it goes back up the thread. | A fleet is a record instead of a grid. Booking on, a member takes the slot, and the slot reads as taken from then on. |
| Clashes | Two people save the same slot a minute apart. Version History carries the change, and a restore has to hold until the co-authoring stops. | Version history names the changes and an older version can come back. None of that stops the second booking going in. | Two members put a claim on one boat for one morning. Somebody has to read back and catch it. | A booking is either there or it is not. The shared bookings board puts the day up in one view, coaching launches too. |
| Who is turning up | The member tells the captain, who then opens the workbook and edits a row. | Edit access lets a member fix their own line from a phone, provided they can work out which line is theirs. | "Out on Saturday, sorry" goes in behind another forty messages. | A tap records it, in the app or the browser: attending, declining, withdrawing. It sits against the member, not in a cell. |
| Crew selection | Copy last week, paste it in, type over the names that moved. | Same copying and pasting, shared. Two coaches on the one crew, and the second save wipes the first. | The crew is typed straight into the chat, so the last one posted wins. | Crew templates, crew assignments sitting on the session, and a lineup diagram of the boat. Skill level filters what the boat set picker shows. |
| Who can edit what | Whoever holds the file holds every tab in it. Share a cloud copy and you have shared read or edit rights over the whole thing. | Editor, Commenter and Viewer roles, along with protected sheets and ranges. Someone sets that up sheet by sheet, and again the next season. | Post it in the group and the group has read it. | Owner, admin, coach and member is where it starts. The owner narrows down what admins and coaches reach, on the permissions page. |
| Passing it on | The file is on the laptop of the captain who has just finished, or lost in their email. | The file can change hands, when it occurs to someone. | The group admin promotes the next one. The history stays on the phones. | The committee changes; the club account does not. Ownership moves across and nothing leaves with the outgoing lot. |
| Subs and fees | A subs tab, worked by hand off the bank statement. | Same tab, wider audience. There is no handing over one column while holding back another. | "Put it through last night" in the thread, and nothing anywhere else. | The three kinds of fee, membership, session and event, sit on the same ledger. Cards and bank transfers both land there and get marked off. |
A rower pulls out early
Invented, not a real morning. The four is booked for 06:30, a rower messages at 06:05, and a school crew has that same four down for 08:00. Two problems and twenty-five minutes to sort them. Which tool tells people, and which leaves somebody to be chased, is the whole difference.
Excel file
Open the workbook. Edit the member, then the crew tab, then the boat tab. Write the message after that, because those edits tell nobody a thing. Where the file has been going round by email, part of the club is on an old copy.
Google Sheet
The same again, live to whoever happens to be in it. The File menu emails your collaborators, and a comment with somebody's name in it will email that person. Neither reaches the rower halfway to the shed.
WhatsApp group
Post it and the whole club gets it, the twenty who are not rowing included. The message about the school crew at 08:00 went out on Tuesday and is well up the thread, and the spreadsheet has not caught up either.
Row HQ
The rower takes themselves off, on the phone. That seat opens up again, a coach pulls somebody in from the crew list, and the clash shows on the bookings board before anybody carries a boat down. Cancel the session instead and a notification lands on each crew member's phone with an email behind it, nothing written by hand.
When a spreadsheet does enough
Not every club needs more than that. Two boats, one squad, and a captain who knows the lot of them. Where twenty people row and one volunteer keeps the admin going right through, a spreadsheet opens faster than a login and costs nothing but volunteer hours. Row HQ is free for clubs up to 20 active members, with paid bands above that, and the pricing page shows what a club your size pays.
- Two boats on the racks, so nobody needs a system to tell them what is free.
- One chat that covers the squad, read by everybody in it.
- A volunteer on the admin who is not going anywhere this season.
- Subs that arrive in one go, or a club that does not charge them.
Where Row HQ adds more
Once the club is too big for one head. Coaches wanting boats at the same hour. Juniors whose parents need their own login. Subs turning up in thirty payments. A committee that changes at the AGM. Volunteer time then goes on holding four lists against each other, and none of it goes on rowing. Six features take that on.
Sessions members sign on to themselves
Recurring templates put the week up. A tap does attend, decline or withdraw inside the Row HQ app, which you get from the App Store or Google Play, and session management holds who actually came down.
Boats that carry their own bookings
One fleet holds the club boats, the member-owned ones and the coaching launches. Member booking is switched on or off per club, and the club sets which skill levels are allowed each boat.
A weekly email nobody writes
Wednesday, one email per member. On it are sessions due inside five days, only the ones that member can see, and only the ones not yet signed on to.
One member, one view
What a member sees in the member portal is their sessions, their profile and their payments. There is nothing of anybody else's to type over.
Subs, session fees and entries together
One ledger takes all three. Payment comes by card or bank transfer, cash is written in by hand, and whatever has landed gets marked off.
A handover with nothing attached
The club account goes over to the next captain. Records stay where they are, and any admin can take them out as CSV.
Hours one club saved weekly
Worked out from Oundle Town Rowing Club and its 2025 move. That is an English club, and the numbers are its own rather than any sort of average. Admin ran at roughly ten hours a week there beforehand, and about one hour a week afterwards. The breakdown underneath is the club's own.
Attendance each week
Reading back taps takes less time than typing a grid of names.
Crew planning
Copying last week is replaced by crew templates and crew assignments that sit on the session.
Total
What one club says it got back, week in week out.
Migration, and who keeps what
One to two days is what the data move takes, once the files are with us. Oundle Town Rowing Club, an English club, had its first sessions on Row HQ a week after it started in 2025, and the whole membership was across inside two weeks. What comes in from a spreadsheet is the membership list and the boat fleet. History of attendance is not something we take on.
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Members and boats come in
Send the spreadsheet over. Members come in through one CSV import and the fleet through another. Boats are matched on name, so importing again updates a boat rather than adding another.
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Leave the spreadsheet running
Nothing sets a cut-over date. Let the spreadsheet run on while the club has a look at Row HQ.
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Roles are ready to go
The roles are already there: owner, admin, coach, member. The owner decides how far admins and coaches get, and nothing needs setting up again every season.
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A handover is a transfer
The club account goes to the next captain. There is no copy left behind for the person standing down.
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The records stay the club's
Nothing is dropped while the account is live. Session attendance, event RSVPs, the member list and the payment history all come out in CSV for any admin, and an owner can take the club whole in JSON. Close it down and there is a period, stated in the terms, to reopen or copy the data before it is removed.
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Data protection once you shift
Data control rests with the club, not with Row HQ. Each club publishes versioned terms and a privacy notice of its own, the version a member accepted is recorded, and member consent is tracked with it. The owner decides feature by feature how far admins and coaches get. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, and encrypted backups leave the server every day. Every time Row HQ support goes into a club it is audited, and club chat holds an access log and the member reports both. Members take their own data out or delete the account entirely, and the owner can export the club whole.
What a shift looks like
Day 1: files across
Email through the Excel and Google Sheets files the club is on now.
Day 2-3: it gets imported
The member list and the fleet get mapped in, and anything that would not map comes back to you.
Day 4: eyes on the data
The club reads the data back and we take the admins through it on a call.
Day 5: the squad gets asked in
Out go the invites, or the join code, and the club gets on with it.
Further reading on Row HQ
What this is, in one line: rowing club management software for New Zealand clubs. There are feature pages for the member portal, for training sessions and for boat booking, plus a security page about member data.
Cost follows member numbers, which the pricing page shows, and the FAQ takes the questions that come up mid-move.
Questions clubs put to us
Five questions come up on nearly every call before a club shifts. Each answer here is the short version of something already on this page, or on the pricing page. Anything else is worth raising on a demo, and if a spreadsheet is still doing the job for your club we will say that.
What software should a rowing club use instead of a spreadsheet?
Club management software that keeps the weekly jobs in one place: session sign-on, the fleet, member records and subs. Row HQ is built around rowing, so boats, crews and skill levels are part of the record rather than columns added to a grid.
Can a shared Google Sheet run a rowing club?
For a small one it can. A shared sheet gives the club a single live grid, with Editor, Commenter and Viewer access. It gives out when two coaches edit the one crew, when a member ought to see only their own line, and when the file has to be passed on.
How long does migration off a spreadsheet take?
One to two days for the data, once the files are with us. The membership list and the boat fleet come in by CSV. Oundle Town Rowing Club, an English club, had its first sessions a week after starting in 2025, and everybody across inside two weeks.
What happens to the data if a club stops using Row HQ?
It stays the club's. Session attendance, event RSVPs, the member list and the payment history all come out in CSV for any admin, and an owner takes the club whole in JSON. Close it down and the data is held 30 days to reopen or copy, then removed, as the terms state.
Does Row HQ import attendance history?
No. The member list and the fleet come in, and nothing else does. Old attendance stays in the spreadsheet, which most clubs keep as an archive. Attendance on Row HQ starts with the first session the club runs on it.
Try it on your spreadsheet
Demos run on a video call. Open whatever the club is using now and we will work down the list above, item by item. If the sheet is doing the better job here, we will say that instead of selling round it.