Terms of Service

Last updated 23 October 2026

These terms govern your club's use of Bowls Captain, a web application for managing a lawn bowls club's weekly administration — availability collection, team selection, duty rotas, fixtures and league results. By activating a club account you agree to these terms on behalf of your club. If anything here doesn't sit right, contact us before relying on the app for your club.

Bowls Captain is provided by James Burridge, trading as Bowls Captain ("we", "us"). Your club is the customer ("you").

Accounts and access

A club account is accessed by individual captains and administrators using authenticated logins tied to their email address. Players log in via a one-click magic link sent to their registered email address. You are responsible for ensuring that the people you grant access to your club's account use it appropriately.

You must keep your login credentials secure and notify us promptly if you believe your account has been compromised.

Subscription and payment

Bowls Captain is offered on a paid subscription basis. Subscriptions are billed in advance, either monthly or annually, depending on the billing cycle you choose. We currently invoice clubs directly; where Direct Debit is offered instead, it is described below. The applicable price band and billing amount are set out in your subscription confirmation.

Price bands are based on the number of teams created in your club's account. Moving into a higher band (because you add teams) adjusts your price from the next billing date; moving into a lower band (because you remove teams) adjusts your price from the next billing date as well. The band that applies at each billing date is the one matching your team count at that time.

Where you pay by Direct Debit, payment is collected by GoCardless on our behalf via the Direct Debit mandate you authorised when subscribing. You will receive advance notice of any collection in accordance with GoCardless's standard advance notification. By authorising the mandate, you agree to GoCardless's own terms, which are presented during setup.

Prices may be changed on reasonable notice (at least 30 days written notice by email to your registered account address). If you do not cancel before the new price takes effect, continued use is acceptance of the revised price.

Free trial

Where a free trial is offered, it runs for 30 days beginning on the day your club account is activated. No payment is collected during a trial period, and no payment details are required to start one. To continue after the trial, you choose a plan and provide your club's payment details by contacting us at [email protected].

When the trial ends there is a grace period of 14 days, during which the app remains fully available. If your club's payment details have not been provided by the end of the grace period, your club's access to the app is suspended for all of its users, including players. We restore access as soon as they are provided. If they are not, your club's data is permanently deleted 30 days after the suspension (see Your data on termination below). We email your club's administrator before the trial ends and during the grace period.

A club is entitled to one trial. Registering a new account to obtain a further trial is not permitted.

Cancellation

To cancel your subscription, a Club Admin can use Request Cancellation on the Subscription & Billing screen (under Admin in the app), or you can email us at [email protected]. Either way, we are told of the request and can confirm it with you and handle any outstanding questions.

When you cancel in the app, the Club Admin chooses the last day of access (your access-end date): any day from today up to a year ahead, starting at the end of the free trial if you are on one. The app remains fully accessible until that date. No further payment is collected once cancellation has been requested, unless the date chosen is later than the end of the period already paid for, in which case we will contact you first. If you cancel by email instead, we agree the access-end date with you.

Your Direct Debit mandate will be cancelled as part of the cancellation process.

You may also cancel a mandate independently through your bank, but doing so without notifying us does not itself cancel your subscription; please contact us as above.

Non-payment

If a Direct Debit payment fails we will notify you and retry in accordance with GoCardless's payment retry rules. If the payment remains uncollected after retries:

• We will contact you to resolve the issue.
• Access to the app may be suspended until the outstanding payment is settled.
• If the matter is not resolved within a reasonable period, we may treat the subscription as cancelled from the date of the failed payment and apply the data-retention and deletion terms below.

A failed payment is not treated as a deliberate cancellation — we will always attempt to contact you before taking any action on account of non-payment.

Your data on termination

Your club's data is permanently deleted 30 days after the access-end date (whether through cancellation, non-payment, or suspension at the end of a free trial's grace period), and the app shows you the exact date when you request cancellation. We keep it longer only if an outstanding contractual or legal matter requires it, and for no longer than necessary.

Before the access-end date you can export your club's data in full from within the app (Club Data & Backups, under Admin). We strongly recommend doing this before your access ends if you wish to keep a copy. If your club's access has been suspended at the end of a grace period, email us and we will provide the export.

We do not retain your data beyond what is described here, and we do not sell it.

Acceptable use

Use the app for its intended purpose: managing your club's teams and administration. In particular:

• Do not attempt to access another club's data or any part of the service you are not authorised to use.
• Do not attempt to disrupt, reverse-engineer or overload the service.
• Do not input personal data about individuals without a lawful basis for doing so (see Data processing below).
• Do not use the service for any unlawful purpose.
• Where your subscription plan advertises unlimited teams, that means no fixed ceiling for normal club use. Creating teams in volumes inconsistent with genuine club administration is not permitted and may result in suspension.

We may suspend or terminate access for material or repeated breach of this section without refund.

Availability

We aim to run the service reliably on a reasonable-endeavours basis. There is no formal uptime guarantee. The service depends on third-party infrastructure (Google Cloud, Neon, Cloudflare, Resend, Anthropic, GoCardless) that is outside our direct control; an outage on their part can affect Bowls Captain. We will give reasonable advance notice of planned maintenance where practical.

Data processing

When your club uses Bowls Captain to store and process personal data about its members (names, email addresses, availability responses and so on), your club is the data controller and Bowls Captain is the data processor within the meaning of UK GDPR Article 28.

As processor, we:

• Process personal data only on your documented instructions (which are the normal operation of the app for the purposes you have set it up for).
• Ensure that people authorised to process the data are bound by an appropriate duty of confidentiality.
• Take appropriate technical and organisational security measures.
• Assist you in meeting your obligations under data-protection law, including responding to data-subject requests where those require our involvement.
• Delete or return personal data at your request on termination of the service.
• Make available information necessary to demonstrate compliance with Article 28 obligations.

The sub-processors we engage are listed in the Privacy Policy. We will give you reasonable notice before engaging a new sub-processor that processes your club's member data.

These processing terms form part of this agreement and constitute the written contract required by Article 28(3). Your club's obligations as controller include ensuring you have a lawful basis for collecting and processing your members' personal data and informing them of how it is used. The Privacy Policy is available at bowlscaptain.com/privacy.html and may be linked to or reproduced in your club's own data notices.

Liability

Bowls Captain is provided "as is." To the fullest extent permitted by law:

• Our total liability to you in any 12-month period is limited to the total subscription fees you paid to us in that period.
• We are not liable for indirect or consequential losses, missed fixtures, selection disputes, data loss caused by your own actions, or any loss arising from reliance on AI-generated suggestions.
• We are not liable for outages or failures caused by third-party services outside our control.

Nothing here limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud, or anything else that cannot be excluded by law.

Changes to these terms

If these terms change materially we will update the document version and date, and notify account holders by email at least 30 days in advance. If you do not cancel before the changes take effect, your continued use is acceptance of the revised terms. For non-material changes (such as corrections or clarifications) we may update immediately without notice.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. Any dispute that cannot be resolved informally will be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.

Contact

Questions about these terms: [email protected].