🏠 Dashboard

The Dashboard gives you a live overview of your club — bookings, members, rota and match results in one place. All metrics are cached so the page always loads instantly.

Setup Wizard

A 🧭 Setup Wizard button appears in the top-right of the dashboard header while required setup steps are incomplete. Click it to open the guided setup. The button disappears automatically once all required steps are done — the wizard remains accessible via Settings → System → Setup Wizard.

KPI Cards

Four sections of metric cards — Rink Bookings, Membership, Volunteer Rota, and Friendly Matches. Each card shows a key number and a sub-label. Cards with an actionable issue show a coloured alert banner with a direct link to the relevant screen.

Click a number to see the detail behind it. For most figures — today’s bookings, players, guests, active/lapsed members, renewals due and unfilled rota slots — clicking the number opens a pop-up listing the exact records it counted, so you can reconcile a figure at a glance. This is why “Today’s Bookings” can read higher than the day grid shows: the grid groups several bookings together, but the number counts each one.

The pop-up shows the records as a table with column headings, and includes Print and Export CSV buttons so you can print the list or open it in a spreadsheet. In the booking pop-ups you can also click any row (marked with a ↗) to open that individual booking record — showing the date, time, rink, who booked it, the named players and their arrival ticks, status and any notes — with a link through to the bookings grid. Close a pop-up with its × button or by clicking the dark background.

If all cards in a section are hidden by your filters, the entire section header is hidden automatically.

Customising the layout

• ↑ ↓ Move sections — every section header carries a pair of arrows, and every section is movable: the KPI groups, the Bookings Breakdown charts, the weather, the Till & Shop and the club news all sit in one list, so any of them can be moved anywhere on the page — the weather can go at the very top and the charts at the very bottom if that suits you. The arrows grey out only at the true top and bottom of the dashboard, the moved section is scrolled back into view, and the order is saved per user.
• ⠿ Drag cards — drag by the ⠿ handle to reorder within a section. Order is saved per user.
• ☰ Choose Cards — show or hide individual cards within each section.
• Columns 2–5 — pick how many columns fit your screen width.
• × Hide a section — every section header carries a small × beside its arrows. Press it and the section goes, whichever section it is: a KPI group, the breakdown charts, your favourite pages, the weather, the till, arrival checks, maintenance, the news or a panel of report charts.
• ↩ Bring it back — whatever you have hidden is listed in a Hidden bar at the foot of the dashboard. Press a name there and it returns to its place. Hiding with no way back is a trap rather than a preference, so nothing can be hidden without appearing there.
• 👁 Zeros — when active, hides every card whose value is 0 across all sections.
• 👁 No Data — when active, hides every card showing — (not yet calculated or no records).

📊 Panels of report charts

Any report that draws a chart can be shown on the dashboard. Charts sit in panels of up to three — three is where a chart is still readable across a row, and past that each one is a thumbnail nobody can read.

• ⚙ on the panel header — choose which charts appear on that panel. A chart already on another panel is listed greyed, saying which panel it is on, rather than left off as though it did not exist.
• ＋ on the panel header — add another panel. It appears immediately, empty, with its own header and its own place in the order; press its ⚙ and choose the charts for it. Six panels — eighteen charts — is the most a dashboard will take.
• Remove this panel — inside the ⚙, on every panel including an empty one. Removing a panel does not delete the reports; it only takes the charts off the dashboard.
• ↑ ↓ and × — each panel moves and hides on its own, like any other section.

Put on the dashboard on a report does the same thing from the other end: it drops the chart into the first panel with room, and starts a new panel when the existing ones are full. Taking it off again closes the panel if that was its last chart.

A panel needs something to show, so the ＋ appears only once at least one report draws a chart. A chart needs a grouped report — build one, give it a chart in the report builder, and it becomes available here.

Per-card ⚙ settings

Every card has a small ⚙ icon in the top-right corner. Click it to open that card’s settings:

• Hide when zero — hides only this card when its value is 0
• Hide when no data — hides only this card when its value is —
• Alert threshold — shows an amber alert banner on this card when its value exceeds the number you set (e.g. alert when Lapsed Members exceeds 2)

All preferences are saved per user, so each admin can have their own layout.

Breakdown charts

The Bookings Breakdown section — normally below the KPI cards, though like every section it can be moved anywhere with its ↑ ↓ arrows — shows bar charts of bookings by rink and by day of week. Use the period pills — This Week, Last Week, This Month, Last Month, This Quarter, This Year — to change the date range. The charts reload instantly without refreshing the page.

📰 Bowls News

A live news feed shows articles from Bowls England, World Bowls, BBC Sport and other sources in a horizontal card grid. Click ⚙ Display to set columns, article count, summary lines and image size. Click 📡 Sources to choose which feeds appear.

Common questions

Why can't some members see the Rota tab?

The Rota tab in the members’ app is only shown to club volunteers (anyone with the volunteer role, rota-management rights, or an existing rota assignment). Ordinary members don’t see the tab or rota data at all — the restriction is enforced on the server, not just hidden in the app.

Why are some cards showing —?

Metrics have not been calculated yet, or no data exists for that metric. Click 🔄 Refresh Now to run a full recalculation.

How often do metrics update automatically?

Metrics are cached and auto-refreshed every hour. Click 🔄 Refresh Now to force an immediate recalculation at any time.

The breakdown charts show the same data whichever pill I click — why?

This usually means the demo data or real bookings all fall within the same period. Try “This Year” — if your bookings are mostly in the current month, other periods will legitimately show no data (📭 No bookings in this period).

Can different users have different dashboard layouts?

Yes. Card order, column count, hidden cards, hidden sections, zeros/no-data toggles, and per-card settings are all saved per WordPress user. The chart panels themselves — which charts are on which panel — are the club’s, shared by every administrator; whether you can see a panel is yours.

How do I hide a section, and how do I get it back?

Press the small × beside the ↑ ↓ arrows on the section header. It goes at once, and its name appears in the Hidden bar at the foot of the dashboard — press the name there to bring it back. This works on every section, your favourite pages and the chart panels included, and what you hide is yours alone: other administrators still see it.

I hid the favourite pages panel and it came straight back — why?

That was a fault, fixed in 10.48.0. Favourite pages, arrival checks and maintenance were the three sections that were saved as hidden and then drawn anyway. Update to 10.48.0 or later and the × works on all of them. If it still returns after updating, the page is being served from a cache — reload with Ctrl+F5 (⌘+Shift+R on a Mac).

How do I add another panel of charts to the dashboard?

Press the ＋ on any chart panel header, beside the ⚙ and the arrows. A new empty panel appears straight away; press its ⚙ and tick the charts you want on it. Three charts to a panel and six panels in all. If you cannot see a ＋ at all, no report draws a chart yet — add a chart to a grouped report in the report builder first, and the Report charts panel will appear on the dashboard offering to show it.

Why can I only tick three charts on a panel?

Three across a row is where a chart is still readable. A fourth makes each one a thumbnail, and a dashboard of unreadable charts is worse than one with two good ones. Add another panel with the ＋ for the rest.

A chart I want is greyed out in the panel picker.

It is already on another panel — the note beside it says which. A chart belongs to one panel and no other, because the same figure appearing twice on one dashboard is how two people end up comparing a number with itself. Take it off the panel it is on and it becomes available here.