Which tool should run your rowing program: Excel, Google Sheets, WhatsApp or Row HQ?
Three things have to be settled before anybody carries a shell down on a Saturday: which rowers are out, what they are sitting in, and whose dues are behind. A workbook, a shared spreadsheet and a group chat all get you there, and all three lean on one volunteer to keep them straight. Row HQ takes the leaning off that volunteer.
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What should a rowing program use?
A shared spreadsheet and a group chat hold up for as long as one person can carry the roster, the shells and the dues around in their head. Row HQ begins to pay for itself when two or three coaches want boats, rowers expect to sign up from a phone, and the job has to pass to whoever the board elects next.
The jobs a program repeats
Every row here is a job somebody repeats most weeks. Capability is rarely what divides the four. What divides them is the number of screens a volunteer has to open, and how each one behaves when two coaches change the same thing a minute apart. The WhatsApp column stands for club communication, which Row HQ breaks into notifications, club news, member mail and chat.
| Weekly job | Excel workbook | Google Sheet | WhatsApp group | Row HQ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Which shells are free | A tab per shell, typed up by hand. Kept on OneDrive or SharePoint it holds two editors at once, which is more than an emailed copy will ever do. | A single shared tab, live to everybody holding the link. Grid it remains, which makes the answer whatever date somebody last typed. | The last message is the answer. Anybody who missed it scrolls up the thread until they find it. | A fleet is a record, not a grid. Booking on, a rower claims a slot, and the slot then reads as claimed. |
| Two rowers, one shell | Both saves can land inside the same minute. Version History lists what moved, and a rollback waits for the last co-author to stop. | Version history names each change and an earlier one can be brought back. What none of that does is block the second booking. | Two rowers claim the same shell for the same morning. Somebody reading later has to notice. | Either the booking is there or it is not. A shared bookings board puts the day up in one view, coaching launches with it. |
| Changes to who is rowing | The rower calls a coach. The coach opens the workbook and retypes the row. | A rower with edit access fixes their own row from a phone, once they work out which row is theirs. | "Out Saturday, sorry" sits behind forty other messages in the thread. | In the Row HQ app or in a browser, the rower taps attend, decline or withdraw. It lands against their name, not in a cell. |
| Putting crews together | Copy last week down the spreadsheet, paste it, retype whichever names moved. | That copying and pasting, shared out. Put two coaches on one crew and the later save wins. | A coach pastes the crew in, so whatever went up last is the crew. | There are crew templates, the practice itself carries the crew assignment, and a boat lineup diagram draws it out. Skill level filters the boat set picker. |
| Who can see what | Hold the file and you hold every tab in it. A shared cloud copy carries read or edit rights across all of it. | Editor, Commenter and Viewer are the roles on offer, and there are protected sheets and ranges too. A volunteer builds that sheet by sheet, then builds it again next season. | Everybody in the group reads everything anybody posts. | Owner, admin, coach and member come as standard. From the permissions page the owner tightens what admins and coaches can reach. |
| Handing over to the next board | It is on the laptop of last year's treasurer, assuming they still have the laptop. | File ownership can be reassigned, if reassigning it occurs to anybody. | One group admin promotes the next. History stays on everybody's phones. | The club account outlives the board. Ownership passes on; the records do not move. |
| Keeping track of dues | A dues tab, checked against the bank statement line by line. | One tab, more hands. Edit rights cover the whole thing or none of it. | A payment request in the group chat, and "sent it Tuesday" for a receipt. | One ledger holds membership, practice and event fees. Cards and bank transfers both work, and each one is checked off against the rower who paid. |
An hour before Saturday practice
Invented, not a real morning. There is an eight booked for 8:00 am. A rower texts at 7:10 am. A learn-to-row group already has that same shell at 9:30 am. Two problems, fifty minutes, and four tools that differ mostly on who hears about it first.
Excel workbook
Open the workbook. Fix the rower, fix the crew tab, fix the shell tab. Now write the message, since not one of those edits has told anybody anything. Where the file went out by email, three people are working from last week.
Google Sheet
Three edits again, this time live to whoever has the tab open. From the File menu you can email the collaborators, and a comment that names a person emails that person. What neither does is catch the rower already in the car.
WhatsApp group
Post it and everybody reads it, the twenty who are not rowing included. The note about the 9:30 am group went out Tuesday and nobody will scroll that far, and the spreadsheet has yesterday's crew on it.
Row HQ
The rower pulls out from their own phone. A seat opens on the practice, the coach fills it off the crew list, and the clash is on the bookings board before the shell leaves the rack. Scrap the practice instead and every rower in the crew gets a push notification and an email, none of it typed by hand.
Where a spreadsheet still wins
Plenty of programs never outgrow that. Two shells, one squad, a coach who knows every rower by name. Where twenty people row out of the boathouse and the same volunteer handles admin from March through November, a spreadsheet costs nothing to open and very few volunteer hours to keep. Row HQ is free for clubs up to 20 active members, with paid bands above that, and the pricing page carries the number for a program your size.
- Two shells, so an availability question gets answered from memory.
- A squad small enough for one chat, where nobody misses a message.
- One volunteer on the admin, around for the whole season.
- Dues that show up once a year, or no dues at all.
What a program gains instead
It arrives the day no single person can hold the whole program. Coaches outnumbering shells. Juniors whose parents want a login of their own. Dues landing in thirty pieces. A board that turns over yearly. Volunteer hours then go on holding four records level with one another, not on coaching. Six features carry that load instead.
Practices rowers put themselves down for
The week ahead is built out of recurring templates. One tap in the Row HQ app marks a rower as attending, declining or withdrawing, and that app is on the App Store and on Google Play. Practice scheduling then holds the record of who showed.
A fleet that records its own bookings
Club shells, member-owned shells and coaching launches all live in the fleet. Whether members can book at all is a club setting, and skill levels decide which boats they may take.
A weekly nudge nobody has to send
Each Wednesday one email goes to each rower. On it are the practices they are able to see over the following five days, minus the ones they already signed up for.
Every rower gets their own page
The member portal gives a rower their practices, their profile and their payments. Nobody sits one cell away from wiping somebody else.
Dues, practice fees and entries together
One ledger takes all of it. Cards and bank transfers both work, cash gets recorded by hand, and the treasurer checks off whatever has arrived.
The next board inherits the account
The club account moves to whoever picks up the role. Records belong to the program, and any admin can pull them out as CSV.
Where the hours went
Estimated from the 2025 switch at Oundle Town Rowing Club, which is an English club. The numbers belong to them and are not an average of anybody. OTRC counted roughly ten hours of admin a week before the switch and about one hour after it, and the breakdown underneath is their own.
Attendance each week
Nobody retypes a name. The taps are already there to read.
Total
Hours a week handed back at that one club, on its own estimate.
The migration and what follows
The move itself is a day or two, counting from when the files reach us. Oundle Town Rowing Club, an English club, ran its first sessions on Row HQ a week after starting in 2025, and everybody there was across in under two weeks. Out of a spreadsheet come the roster and the fleet. What we will not promise is attendance history.
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The roster and the fleet come over
Hand us the spreadsheet. One CSV import covers the member list, a second covers the fleet. Shells are matched on their name, so a repeat run edits the shell rather than adding a twin.
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Keep the spreadsheet running
No cut-over date gets forced on anybody. Run both while the coaches make their minds up.
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Roles are there on day one
The four roles, owner, admin, coach and member, are live from the start, and the owner may tighten what admins and coaches can reach. Nothing to rebuild every season.
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Handover is a transfer
The club account passes to whoever is elected next. Whoever is leaving walks away with no copy on a laptop.
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The records belong to the program
Nothing is discarded while the account is open. An admin downloads members, payments, practice attendance and event RSVPs in CSV form, and the owner can lift the entire club out as JSON. Once a club closes its account there is a window to reopen it or take a copy; after that window the data goes, on the terms published.
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Data protection and control
Control of the data sits with the club, which is the controller, not Row HQ. Every club writes its own versioned terms and privacy notice, and the version each person agreed to is recorded. Member consent is tracked. The owner decides, feature by feature, what admins and coaches reach. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, and encrypted backups go off-site daily. Support entering a club is audited, and chat inside a club holds member reports plus its own access log. A rower can pull their own data down or close their account, and the owner can export the entire club.
What the move looks like
Day 1: files over to us
Email whichever Excel and Google Sheets files the program is running on.
Day 2-3: the mapping
The roster and the fleet get mapped in, and anything that refuses to map comes back to you in a list.
Day 4: your read-back
You check the data against what you sent, and the admins get trained on a call.
Day 5: rowers get invited
Invitations go out, or a join code, and the program is live on it.
Where to read more
Boat booking, practice scheduling and the member portal each have a feature page of their own: boats, practices and the portal. Behind all three sits rowing club management software for US programs.
Member count sets the bill, worked through on the pricing page. The FAQ deals with mid-move questions, the security page with member data, and the Oundle Town RC case study with how one English club found the change.
What programs ask us first
These come up on almost every call before a program moves. Each answer is the short form of something written out above, or on the pricing page. If the question your board has is not here, ask it on the demo call, and we will say plainly when a spreadsheet is still the better tool.
What software should a rowing program use instead of a spreadsheet?
Club management software that puts the weekly jobs in one place: practice sign-up, the fleet, rower records and dues. Row HQ is written for rowing, so shells, crews and skill levels are part of the record instead of columns a volunteer added to a grid.
Can a shared Google Sheet run a rowing club?
For a small program, it can. A shared sheet hands everybody one live grid, with Editor, Commenter and Viewer access. It breaks down when two coaches edit one crew, when a rower should see only their own row, and when the file has to change hands.
How long does migration off a spreadsheet take?
One to two days for the data, counting from when the files reach us. The roster and the fleet come in by CSV. Oundle Town Rowing Club, an English club, ran its first sessions a week after starting in 2025 and had everybody across inside two weeks.
What happens to the data if a program stops using Row HQ?
The records belong to the club. An admin exports members, payments, practice attendance and event RSVPs as CSV, and the owner lifts the whole club out as JSON. Once an account closes the data is held 30 days for reopening or export, then deleted, on the terms published.
Does Row HQ import attendance history?
No. Members and the fleet come across, nothing else. Old attendance stays in the spreadsheet, which most programs keep as an archive. Attendance inside Row HQ begins with the first practice the program runs on it.
Bring your spreadsheet to a demo
A demo means a video call. Have the program's own spreadsheet open in front of you and we will take the jobs listed above in order. Where a shared sheet is genuinely doing better, we will point at that row and say so.