Excel, Google Sheets, WhatsApp or Row HQ for your rowing club?
Four tools, one set of Saturday jobs: who is rowing, which boat they are in, and who has paid. Each one asks something different of the volunteer keeping it up to date, and each one goes wrong in a different way. Row HQ is built for the club that has outgrown the first three.
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Which should a rowing club use?
A shared Google Sheet or a cloud-hosted Excel workbook plus a WhatsApp group works while one person holds the whole picture in their head. Row HQ earns its place once several coaches book boats, members sign up on their phones, and the job has to be handed on at the AGM. What changes is who does the updating.
Four tools, seven weekly jobs
Every row below is a job a club does most weeks. The difference is rarely whether a tool can do it at all. It is how many separate places the volunteer has to touch, and what happens when two people change the same thing within a minute of each other. The WhatsApp column stands in for club communication, which Row HQ splits into notifications, news, member mail and chat.
| Weekly job | Excel workbook | Google Sheet | WhatsApp group | Row HQ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Boat availability | A tab per boat, kept current by hand. On OneDrive or SharePoint two people can edit it at once; a workbook emailed round cannot. | One shared tab, live for everyone holding the link. Still a grid, so the answer is a date typed into the right cell. | Availability is whatever the last message said. Anyone checking scrolls back through the thread. | The fleet is a record rather than a grid. When the club turns booking on, a member takes a slot and the slot then reads as taken. |
| Booking conflicts | Two people can save the same slot in the same minute. Version History shows what changed, and restoring an old version waits until nobody is co-authoring. | Version history names each change and you can switch back to an earlier version. Nothing stops the second booking going in first. | Two members claim the same boat for the same outing. Whoever reads the thread afterwards has to spot it. | A booking either exists or it does not. The shared bookings board shows the whole day in one view, coaching launches included. |
| Attendance changes | The member tells the captain, the captain opens the workbook and edits the row. | A member with edit access can change their own row on a phone, once they have found the right one. | "Can't make Saturday" sits in the thread with forty other messages. | The member taps attend, decline or withdraw in the Row HQ app or a browser. The change is recorded against their name rather than typed into a cell. |
| Crew coordination | Copy last week's crew list, paste it, edit the names. | The same copy and paste, shared. Two coaches editing one crew write over each other. | The crew is pasted in as a message. The newest message is the crew. | Crew templates, crew assignments on the session itself, and a boat lineup diagram. The boat set picker filters by skill level. |
| Member access | Whoever has the file has the file. Sharing a cloud copy hands over edit or read access to the whole workbook. | Editor, Commenter and Viewer roles, plus protected sheets and ranges. Somebody has to set that up, sheet by sheet, and set it up again next season. | Everyone in the group sees everything anyone posts. | Owner, admin, coach and member are the default state. The owner narrows what admins and coaches reach on the permissions page. |
| Committee handover | The file is on the outgoing captain's laptop, or somewhere in their email. | Ownership of the file moves across, as long as somebody remembers to move it. | The group admin promotes their replacement. The history stays on members' phones. | The club account outlasts the committee. Ownership transfers and the records stay with the club. |
| Payment records | A payments tab, reconciled against the bank statement by hand. | The same tab, shared. Anyone who can edit it can edit all of it. | "Paid, sorry it's late" as a message on Tuesday night. | Membership, session and event fees run through one ledger, paid by card or bank transfer and marked off against the member. |
One rower drops out Saturday
An example, not a real incident. The eight is booked for 08:00, a rower texts at 07:10, and the same eight is already down for a learn-to-row session at 09:30. Two problems, and forty minutes before the boat goes out. Who gets told, and who has to be chased, is what separates the four.
Excel workbook
Open the workbook. Change the rower's row, change the crew tab, change the boat tab. Then write the message, because none of those edits tells anybody anything. If the workbook went round by email, three people are still reading the old one.
Google Sheet
The same three edits, live for anyone with the spreadsheet open. You can email the collaborators from the File menu, or leave a comment naming someone so they get an email. Neither reaches the rower already driving to the club.
WhatsApp group
Post the change and it lands with everyone, including the twenty members who are not rowing. Tuesday's message about the 09:30 session is forty messages back, and the spreadsheet still holds the old crew.
Row HQ
The rower withdraws on their phone. The seat comes free on the session, the coach fills it from the crew list, and the clash shows on the bookings board before the boat goes out. Cancel the outing instead and the crew get a phone notification and an email without anyone writing a message.
When a spreadsheet is enough
Plenty of clubs never need more. One or two boats, a squad small enough to fit in one chat, and a captain who knows every name. A spreadsheet costs nothing to open, and at that size it costs the volunteer very little time either. Row HQ is free for clubs up to 20 active members, with paid bands above that, and the pricing page has the figure for a club your size.
- One or two boats, so availability is a question anyone can answer from memory.
- A squad that fits in one chat, where everybody reads everything.
- One admin who never goes away during the season.
- No subs to chase, or subs that arrive as four bank transfers a year.
Where Row HQ earns its place
The moment the picture stops fitting in one head. More coaches than boats, juniors whose parents need a login of their own, subs arriving in thirty separate payments, a committee that changes every autumn. At that point the volunteer hours go on keeping four places in step rather than on rowing. Six features take that load off.
Sessions members sign themselves up to
Recurring templates generate the week ahead. A member attends, declines or withdraws in one tap in the Row HQ app, which is on the App Store and Google Play, and session management keeps the record of who came.
Boats with a booking record
The fleet holds club boats, member-owned boats and coaching launches. Booking is a club setting, and the club decides which skill levels can take which boat.
One reminder that goes out on its own
Every Wednesday each member gets one email listing the sessions in the next five days that they can see and have not signed up to.
A portal per member
The member portal shows one member their own sessions, profile and payments. There is no row next to theirs to overwrite.
Subs and fees in one place
Subs, session fees and event entries land in the same ledger. Members pay by card or bank transfer and the treasurer marks off what has arrived.
Handover without a file
Ownership of the club account transfers to the next captain. The records stay with the club and any admin can export them as CSV.
Admin hours back at OTRC
Estimated savings based on Oundle Town Rowing Club's move in 2025. These are one club's own figures, not an average. OTRC put club admin at around ten hours a week before and about one after. The split below is where they reckon those hours went. Your club will differ.
Weekly attendance
From typing names into a grid to reading what members have already tapped.
Total
Hours a week back at OTRC, on their own estimate.
Migration, handover and your data
Data migration takes one to two days once we have the files. Oundle Town Rowing Club was running its first sessions on Row HQ within a week of starting in 2025, and everyone had moved across inside two weeks. Row HQ imports the member list and the boat fleet from a spreadsheet. Attendance history is not something we promise to import.
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Members and fleet imported
Send the spreadsheet. Row HQ has a CSV import for the member list and one for the boat fleet. Boats match on name, so a second import updates the boat rather than duplicating it.
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Run it alongside the spreadsheet
Keep the spreadsheet going while the club tries Row HQ. Nothing forces a cut-over date.
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Roles come ready
Owner, admin, coach and member exist from the first day, and the owner can narrow what admins and coaches reach. No protected ranges to rebuild each season.
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Handover is a transfer
Ownership of the club account passes to the next captain. The outgoing one keeps nothing on a laptop.
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The records are the club's
Attendance and payments are kept for as long as the club account is active. An admin can export members, payments, session attendance and event RSVPs as CSV, and the owner can take the whole club as JSON. Close the account and the data is kept for a set period for reactivation or export, then deleted, as the terms set out.
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Data protection after the move
Under GDPR the club is the data controller, not Row HQ. Each club publishes its own versioned terms and privacy notice and keeps a record of who accepted which version. Member consent is tracked, and the owner sets what admins and coaches reach, feature by feature. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, with daily encrypted off-site backups. Row HQ support access to a club is audited, and club chat keeps member reports and its own access log. Members can download their own data and delete their account, and the owner can export the whole club.
A typical move
Day 1: send the files
Email the Excel or Google Sheets files the club runs on now.
Day 2-3: we import
We map the member list and the fleet into Row HQ and tell you what did not map.
Day 4: you check it
You read the data back and we train the admin team on a call.
Day 5: invite members
Invites or a join code go out and the club starts using it.
Where to read more
Row HQ is rowing club management software for UK clubs. The feature pages go into detail on boat booking, training sessions and the member portal. The Oundle Town RC case study has the club's own account of the move, and the security page sets out how member data is held.
The pricing page shows what a club of your size pays, and the FAQ covers the questions that come up during a move.
Questions clubs ask first
These are the questions clubs put to us before they move. Each answer is the short version of something set out on this page or on the pricing page. If your club has a question that is not here, a demo call is the place to ask it, and we will tell you when a spreadsheet is still the better answer.
What software should a rowing club use instead of a spreadsheet?
Club management software that covers the weekly jobs in one place: session sign-up, the boat fleet, member records and subs. Row HQ is built for rowing, so crews, boats and skill levels are part of the record rather than columns somebody added to a grid.
Can a shared Google Sheet run a rowing club?
For a small club, yes. A shared sheet gives everyone the same live grid, with Editor, Commenter and Viewer access. It starts to hurt when two coaches edit one crew, when a member should see only their own row, and when the file has to be handed on.
How long does migration from a spreadsheet take?
Data migration takes one to two days once we have the files. Row HQ imports the member list and the boat fleet by CSV. Oundle Town Rowing Club was running its first sessions within a week of starting in 2025, and everyone had moved across inside two weeks.
What happens to the data if a club stops using Row HQ?
The records belong to the club. An admin can export members, payments, session attendance and event RSVPs as CSV, and the owner can take the whole club as JSON. Close the account and the data is kept for 30 days for reactivation or export, then deleted, as the terms set out.
Does Row HQ import attendance history?
No. The member list and the boat fleet come across, and nothing else. Attendance history stays in the old spreadsheet, which most clubs keep as an archive. Attendance in Row HQ starts from the first session the club runs on it.
Test us against your spreadsheet
A demo is a video call. Bring the spreadsheet the club runs on now and we will go through the jobs on this page one at a time. If a shared sheet is still the right answer for your club, we will say so.