Bookings + roster
Open sessions, recurring series, payment tracking and a full roster in one place — with parents booking and paying direct, no intermediary.
About
RinkHQ started because UK junior ice-hockey coaches were spending too much time managing admin — and paying commission on every booking for the privilege. We thought that was wrong.
The problem
Before RinkHQ, the typical UK junior ice-hockey coach was juggling three or four tools just to run a private lesson programme: a booking site that skimmed 5–10% per transaction, a spreadsheet for the roster, WhatsApp for chasing payments, and a group chat for the roster notes their booking platform couldn't store.
Commission on every booking
General booking platforms skim 5–10% of every lesson. On a £30 session booked 20 times a week, that's £300–£600 a month straight to a platform that didn't do the coaching.
Payment chasing in WhatsApp
Without a proper reference system, coaches were left tracking who paid via message threads and manual spreadsheet updates — slow, error-prone, and not sustainable at scale.
Medical info buried in emails
Critical information about skaters — allergies, conditions, emergency contacts — lived in onboarding emails, not where a coach could find it at the rink between drills.
No rinkside tool
Booking confirmations didn't translate into a usable rinkside view. Coaches needed a separate run-of-show, printed or retyped, for every session.
What we built
RinkHQ puts bookings, roster, medical flags, payment tracking and the rinkside run-of-show into a single, purpose-built tool for UK junior ice-hockey coaches.
Open sessions, recurring series, payment tracking and a full roster in one place — with parents booking and paying direct, no intermediary.
The same card you use on the dashboard opens on your phone between drills — who's in, who's paid, and any medical flags surfaced at the top.
Parents pay coaches direct, four ways. RinkHQ never holds or skims the payment. The 0% stance isn't a trial — it's the model.
EIHA licence and DBS details on public profiles, manually reviewed before a coach can take bookings, and severity-flagged medical notes so what matters is unmissable.
Why 0% commission
UK junior ice-hockey coaches mostly aren't running six-figure academies. They're experienced players and former juniors giving the next generation a proper start on the ice. They charge what the rink will bear and work hard to keep lessons affordable. Taking a percentage of every booking on top of that seemed wrong from day one.
So RinkHQ doesn't. Parents pay coaches direct — by card via Stripe, bank transfer, cash or PayPal. RinkHQ never touches the money, never takes a cut, and never will on the core booking and roster product.
The difference
Money goes direct from parent to coach. RinkHQ never holds or processes the payment.
Built for UK ice hockey
Most booking platforms were built for tennis academies or fitness studios and bolted on sports support as an afterthought. RinkHQ is purpose-built for the UK junior ice-hockey coaching structure — EIHA coach licences, DBS checks, rink codes, multi-day camps, public waitlists and safeguarding-first medical notes are all first-class features, not footnotes.
EIHA licence + DBS on profiles
Coaches declare their credentials, manually reviewed before they can take bookings — so parents know who they're booking with.
UK holiday-aware series
Generate a 6- or 8-week block and mark off your rink's closure dates. Parents see the actual session dates, not generic week numbers.
Rink-code admission
Admit parents to your rink by code, email invite or approval — not a public link anyone can find.
Multi-day camps
Camp booking with a public waitlist when spots fill. The intake form collects everything you need before day one.
Who's behind it
RinkHQ is an early-stage product, built by people who care about UK junior ice hockey. We're not a VC-backed growth machine — we're working closely with coaches to make sure the product earns its place in their workflow.
From the founder
Hi, I’m Wayne — a hockey parent first. My son Matt skates for the Sutton Sting U16s and my daughter Rebecca for the Sheffield U12s, so our weeks revolve around the rink: early practices, away games, and all the off-ice bits in between.
Keeping two skaters organised is hard enough. Watching their coaches do it — for a whole squad, on top of actually coaching — I realised the admin was ten times worse for them. Bookings buried in DMs, payments chased by text, registers on scraps of paper. There had to be a better way.
So I built RinkHQ: to help coaches get the most out of their most valuable resource — ice time — by taking the booking, the roster, the reminders and the money off their plate, while keeping parents like me properly in the loop.
Wayne · Founder, RinkHQ
If you're a coach who wants to try RinkHQ, or you have feedback on the product, we'd genuinely like to hear from you.
On your terms
Free to start, no card, 0% commission — and a small team that reads every email.