Player & Admin Guide

Part one — players

1Join your team

Two ways in — with the invite link, or with just the code:

1. With the link (easiest): tap the invite link your organiser shares. It opens the app with the invite already loaded — sign in with your mobile number or email (one-time code, no passwords), and the invite is still there waiting: you'll see "You've been invited — check your name and tap Join." One tap and you're on the team.
2. Without the link: signed in on your own at sessivo.com.au → Open app? No problem — the Teams screen always shows Join with a code. Type the short code from your organiser's message (it's included alongside the link, e.g. 7KQ2FA) and tap Join team.
3. Clubs may require the admin to approve you first — you'll see "waiting for approval" until they do.

You never join a session — sessions come with the team. The moment you're a member, every poll, session and tournament the admin creates simply appears on your Home tab, and votes sync live to everyone's phones.

Make it feel like an app: iPhone — Share button → Add to Home Screen. Android — browser menu → Add to Home screen / Install. You stay signed in.

2Vote on the weekly poll

• Each session starts as a poll with one or more time options. Tap I'm in on the times you can make — one tap, done.
• When enough people are in (the quorum), the session confirms itself and everyone sees the locked time and venue.
• Can't make it after all? Open the session → Drop out. Life happens — better than a no-show.
• Haven't voted? Expect a friendly nudge — the app shows organisers who it's still waiting on.

3On the night

• Matchups: if your organiser posts rounds, you'll see courts like "Court 1: you + Amara vs Priya + Kenji" — built so games are even and bench time rotates fairly.
• Log games (if ratings are on): session → Games → ＋ Log game → pick who played whom, who won, optional score. Two taps per game keeps the ladder honest.

4Your grade

• Every logged game feeds your rating — the same maths chess uses — shown as the club grades you know: A+, A, B+, B, C+, C, D.
• Everyone starts as a B. Your first 10 games show provisional while the app figures out your level.
• The Team tab ladder has All games / Singles / Doubles chips — your singles and doubles form are tracked separately.
• Some teams show the full ladder, some only your own grade, some keep grades hidden entirely and just use them to balance teams — that's a team setting.

Play in mixed, men's or women's rounds? Set your category once: Settings → My category. It's optional — everything else works without it.

5Paying your share

• After a session is played, costs (court fee, shuttles) are split and the Money tab shows exactly what you owe and to whom — usually one transfer, not five.
• Pay the person the way you always do (PayID, bank transfer, cash), then tap I've paid. They tap Received ✓ and the ledger closes.
• One-tap PayID: add your PayID once in Settings → My PayID. Anyone who owes you then sees 💸 Pay $14 → your PayID on the transfer — tap copies it, they pay in their bank app, then tap I've paid. Sessivo still never touches the money.
• In treasurer-mode clubs everything points one way: you pay the treasurer the session fee, and any prepaid top-up sits as credit that's used up automatically.
• Bring a guest? Add them by name to the session — their share is tracked against you until it's marked collected.

6Announcements

Anything your organiser broadcasts — "courts changed to 8pm", "finals draw is up" — appears as a 📣 banner on your Home tab and on the session or tournament it's about.

Part two — admins & organisers

1Create the team

1. Open the app → Create a team → pick a preset: Friendly (invite link admits instantly, anyone can organise) or Club (join requests need your approval, destructive actions restricted to leads/admins).
2. Every preset choice is just a starting point — change anything later in Settings.

Where your admin role lives: on the team, not on your phone or sign-in method. Creating a team makes you its admin; sign in with the same mobile or email on any device and your teams and roles follow you — no link or code needed for your own teams. One account can be admin of one team and an ordinary player in another. One catch: mobile and email sign-ins are two separate accounts — always use the one you created the team with.

2Invite people

• Team tab → Copy invite link → paste into your group chat. Teammates tap it, sign in, they're in. The message includes the short code too — anyone who signs in without tapping the link just types it under Join with a code.
• Club preset: joiners queue as Join requests at the top of your Team tab — Approve or Decline.
• Regenerate the code any time (New code) — old links stop working.

3Sessions that run themselves

• Poll: Home → new session → 📊 Poll → up to 5 time options, quorum, venue. Players vote; at quorum it confirms itself; polls close on deadline even if nobody opens the app (a server-side clock does it).
• ⚡ Quick session (no poll): already know who's playing — a club night where people just turned up? Home → new session → ⚡ Quick → tick the players, set courts (and players per court), time and venue → Start session. It's created already confirmed with everyone marked in; log costs after you play and the split is between exactly those players. Guests can still be added on the session.
• Weekly: Team tab → ＋ New weekly session → day, time, venue, quorum. Each week's poll then creates itself. Clubs with courts booked a term ahead: set Plan ahead (1–6 weeks) to keep several weeks of polls open at once.
• Sessions auto-mark played a few hours after start time; you can also do it manually, add notes, or cancel (costs already paid get split fairly).
• Venues: save each venue's booking link and phone — confirmed sessions then show Book the court ↗.

4Fair matchups on the night

1. Open the confirmed session → Games → ⚖ Pick / shuffle teams.
2. Set courts and format (Doubles or Singles). For doubles, pick the Doubles type: Open, Mixed (one man + one woman per pair), Men's or Women's.
3. Optionally 🔒 lock a pair that wants to play together, then Suggest matchups. Ratings balance the games; the bench rotates so nobody sits out twice. Shuffle again re-rolls; Copy for group chat shares the round.
4. Prefer full control? Manual (pick) lets you assign every court yourself.

Mixed/men's/women's rounds need players marked M/F — the small button on each Team-tab member row, or players set their own in Settings. Unmarked players simply sit out gendered rounds (the app tells you who).

5Ratings & grades

• Turn on per team: Settings → Player ratings. Visibility: full leaderboard / own grade only / silent (hidden, still balances matchups).
• Grades map from the rating: A+ ≥1375 · A 1305 · B+ 1235 · B 1165 (everyone starts here at 1200) · C+ 1095 · C 1025 · D below.
• The ladder's All / Singles / Doubles chips re-rank from only that format's games.

6Money — friendly groups

• Log expenses on the session (court fee, shuttles) as whoever paid. At settle time the app computes who owes whom with the fewest transfers, atomically, server-side — no double-charging even if two people settle at once.
• Each transfer: payer taps I've paid, receiver taps Received ✓. Expenses are voidable with a full audit trail; the ledger exports to CSV.
• Guest shares (at your guest rate) are tracked against the member who brought them.

7Money — treasurer mode (clubs)

1. Settings → Money handling → Treasurer → choose the treasurer (defaults to the first admin).
2. Pick the charge style: Flat fee per session (e.g. $10 a head; guests at your guest rate; the treasurer plays free) or Actual costs split (the club absorbs the treasurer's own share).
3. The club bears expenses; every player balance points at the treasurer — no player-to-player transfers.
4. Player hands you $50 for future weeks? Money tab → ＋ Record a top-up — it sits as credit and each session's fee draws it down. Leftover credit is never auto-refunded; it just waits.
5. Cancelled session? Nobody is charged a fee; any sunk costs are split fairly instead.

Coaches: treasurer mode doubles as a fee book. You're the treasurer, the flat fee is your session rate, and prepaid lesson packs are just top-ups — each week's fee draws the pack down automatically, and the Money tab is your who's-paid list.

8Tournaments

1. Home → New tournament → name it, pick Singles or Doubles. Doubles: choose the event category (Open / Mixed / Men's / Women's — pairs are validated as you add them) and build pairs, or let players lock in their own.
2. Structure: one group (everyone plays everyone), graded by rating (auto, balanced), custom groups — you name them (Beginners / Intermediate / Advanced) and pick who's in each — or Interclub (below).
3. Then: round robin only, round robin → knockout, or a league season — the round robin spread one round per week (single, or double home-&-away legs), fixtures listed week by week, the table building all season. Set match length (1 game / best of 3) and courts.
4. Generate draw schedules every match across your courts with nobody double-booked. On the day, tap scores in as games finish — standings update live (won–lost, then game and point difference, then head-to-head), byes advance automatically, and a champion is crowned.
5. When the groups (or the season) finish, you choose who advances: group winners only, or the top 2 of each group. Two groups × top 2 gives the classic cross (A1 v B2, B1 v A2); four groups × top 2 gives quarter-finals → semis → final. Up to 8 qualifiers fit a bracket. A finished league can be decided by the table alone — or send the top 2 or 4 into finals.
6. 📣 broadcast the draw or results to the whole team in one tap.

Interclub (club vs club): pick Interclub as the structure, name the clubs (2–4), and put each pair (or player) in a club. Every pair plays every pair from the other club — Sessivo tallies a club standings table on top of each club's own pair ladder, and the club with the most wins takes it. Perfect for the interclub-night format where combined club points decide the winner. Once the round robin is done you can finish there, or run pair finals — the top 2 of each club cross into semis (A1 v B2, B1 v A2) then a final — crowning pair champions alongside the club title.

9Announcements

Home (team-wide), a session, or a tournament → 📣 → write up to 500 characters → Post. It banners for every member in the right place, and Copy for chat gives you a paste-ready version with the link.

✨ Draft recap (optional): on a played session with games logged, tap ✨ Draft recap — the night's results become a ready-to-post recap (MVP, upsets, grade moves). You always read and edit it before posting or copying; it never posts itself. This is the one feature that uses AI, and it only sends player names and that session's results — the owner switches it on per the go-live guide.

10Roles, categories & safety rails

• Roles: Team tab → make admin / demote. Club "leads" mode restricts destructive actions (cancel, venues, templates, others' attendance) to leads/admins — enforced by the database, not just hidden buttons.
• M/F categories: the M/F button on each member row (players can also self-set). Optional, only used for gendered formats.
• Trust boundary: settlement runs inside the database; every write is pinned to the signed-in identity; team data is invisible to non-members. Your money maths can't be spoofed from a browser.

11If something looks stuck

• Pull down to refresh (or reopen the app) — it re-syncs and runs any missed lifecycle steps.
• A poll that should have closed, closes itself within ~10 minutes via the server clock.
• Still odd? Email us at sessivoapp@gmail.com.