Improvements to the Rink Fees Module - Oct 2025

Bowlr's Rink Fees Module was released in late 2020 to help clubs reduce cash handling time, costs and errors and it has been successful at the clubs who have adopted the solution.

This year we are bringing improvements to the module:

1. Simplified overdrafts
2. Deduct other rink fees and other club fees from balance
3. Better email notifications & other small usability improvements and fixes

Simplifying the overdrafts

Here's a short video summary:

When we first introduced the Rink Fees Module, we designed an overdraft feature to give members some margin on their balances as they get used to maintaining an online balance, which help clubs operate smoothly.

An early design decision to prevent members with insufficient balance from booking Roll Ups created a problem with league matches.

We are now re-engineering the Rink Fees Module to remove the unnecessary complications for both clubs and members. There's optional info about these changes at the bottom of the page.

Key improvements:

• Overdraft limit for Roll Up Bookings: Clubs can now set how much overdraft members can have for Roll Up bookings (£0 to £1000) without affecting leagues.
• Simplified League Match Handling: Any member with an insufficient balance will become overdrawn if they participate in league matches, regardless of the overdraft set for Roll Ups. Members who go below zero will not be able to make Roll Up bookings until the owed balance is resolved.
• Single Balance System: There is now a single balance with correct totals and sums, providing greater transparency for both clubs and members.
• Credit Always Clears Overdraft First: When overdrawn members add credit to their balance, the credit continues to be first used to clear any overdraft first.
• On the system side:
  • The Balances page summary now shows the true Owed total
  • The Balances page has a balances column which will now show the real negative balances
  • The Balances page has a list of members and their balance, and it is sorted so that the member with the largest overdraft is shown at the top of the list.
  • An individual member's transactions table will display easier to read Amount and Balance columns. Which is more similar to a normal bank statement layout
  • The Rink Fee Transactions page now only initially shows the last 30 days, to keep page loading times quick, you can select a different date range if needed
• On the member portal
  • The My Balance page will lose the "Monies owed" section, and the main balance will become the true owed amount including unpaid league matches
  • The columns of the transaction history table have been reordered and renamed for easier reading
  • Clubs can now request a 4th top-up amount, to help clubs offer flexibility to members

When we update your club's system, there is nothing you need to do. However, members with Unpaid League Matches are likely to immediately have an overdrawn balance, as the unpaid matches get moved to their normal balance. Members will also need to be informed that Unpaid League Matches will now come out of their main balance.

Deduct from balance

We received feedback that some clubs were using the ability to Deduct credit from individual member's balances to charge members for fees Bowlr does not yet support (i.e. Friendly matches or join fees).

We were able to build upon this to make a full feature named Deduct from balance:

And below is a written explanation:

You simply select members from the list, then click Deduct from balance and you are able to quickly and easily apply those fees as deductions:

Members also receive an email notification which includes the details of the deduction clearly. Members will also see the Notes content when they view their own transaction history on the Portal.

Looking ahead

We know the Rink Fees Module is missing Competitions Rink Fees and we aim to release that upgrade by the end of the year.

We are at the planning phase of a new module which focuses on allowing members to automatically pay for club fees from their balance, further reducing cash handling time and costs.

Optional read - About the overdraft changes

When clubs chose to give members zero overdraft to prevent members with insufficient balance from booking Roll Ups, this created a problem with league matches when the players for a league match are confirmed through the iPad's Score Input or score cards. When members with insufficient balance played a league match, the system would not allow the member to be entered as a player for the match - creating inaccurate records since the member did actually play.

At the time, we thought it would be a sound solution to exclude Unpaid League Matches from a member's balance, so members could owe league match fees regardless of their balance. Like a separate overdraft just for leagues. Our original design solved the problem but in a complex way which caused confusion with balances and totals.