FormSide vs spreadsheets and Google Forms
A Google Form and a spreadsheet can take sports camp bookings, but they cannot hold a place while a family types, match a bank transfer to a booking, or show a coach the right medical note at the gate. FormSide is a sports camp booking system built for those parts, and it is free while in beta.
Most UK sports camps start on a form and a sheet, and plenty run well on them for a season or two. This page sets out, job by job, what the sheet does, what it leaves you doing by hand, and the point at which the by-hand part becomes the whole weekend.
WRITTEN BY THE FORMSIDE TEAM · LAST REVIEWED 22 AUGUST 2026 · FORMSIDE IS OUR OWN PRODUCT
SIDE BY SIDE
The same jobs, side by side.
Every row is something a camp has to do between a parent finding the page and a child being collected on the last day. The spreadsheet column is generous: if a formula or a copy-paste can do it, it says so.
| WHAT A CAMP NEEDS | FORMSIDE | FORM + SPREADSHEET |
|---|---|---|
| Public camp page with dates, price and places leftA form can be shared; places left has to be updated by someone. | Yes | By hand |
| A place held while the family fills in the formTwo families can both submit for the last place. | Yes | No |
| Capacity enforced, per camp and per day | Yes | By hand |
| Several children in one checkout, one total | Yes | By hand |
| Card payments into your own Stripe accountA separate payment link, reconciled by hand. | Yes | By hand |
| Unique bank-transfer reference per booking, matched automatically | Yes | No |
| Deposit now, balance later, or instalments charged on a date | Yes | No |
| Reminders before a held place expires | Yes | No |
| Waitlist that offers a freed place automatically | Yes | By hand |
| Sibling and early-bird discounts applied at checkout | Yes | By hand |
| Signed, versioned waiver stored with the bookingA tick box is not a signature, and the wording changes. | Yes | No |
| Medical notes visible only to the people running the dayA shared sheet is visible to everyone with the link. | Yes | No |
| QR check-in and check-out with the staff member recorded | Yes | No |
| Register records who collected each child | Yes | By hand |
| Coach groups, split by age or surname | Yes | By hand |
| Incident log with the family told in writing | Yes | No |
| Weekly training blocks sold as one booking | Yes | By hand |
| Review request after every camp | Yes | No |
| Revenue, fill rate and repeat families against last term | Yes | By hand |
| Family can download or erase their own data | Yes | No |
| Retention period enforced automatically | Yes | No |
| Cost while FormSide is in beta | Free, no commission | Free |
“By hand” means it can be done, but someone has to do it each time: a formula, a copy-paste, or a phone call. Every FormSide row describes what the product does today; see the product page for the detail behind each one.
HONESTLY
When a spreadsheet is still fine.
We would rather you kept a sheet that works than moved for the sake of it. A form and a spreadsheet are a reasonable choice when most of the following are true.
- One camp a year, under about twenty children, and the organiser knows every family by name.
- Everyone pays the same amount, in full, up front, so there are no deposits, balances or instalments to track.
- Nobody needs to see medical notes except the person who owns the sheet.
- The camp never sells out, so there is no race for the last place and no waitlist.
- You are happy to type the register out, print it, and write who collected whom on the back.
WHEN IT STOPS BEING FINE
The moment it stops being fine.
- Two families book the last place at the same time and one of them has already paid.
- Bank transfers arrive with the child’s nickname as the reference and the balance column stops matching the bank.
- A coach needs an allergy note at 8:55 and the sheet is on someone else’s laptop.
- A grandparent who is not on the form turns up to collect, and nobody wrote down who was allowed to.
- A parent asks what you hold about their child, and the answer is three inboxes and a shared drive.
Can I keep using Google Forms for the questions I already ask?
Yes, in effect. FormSide lets you add your own form fields to the booking page, so the questions you ask today — kit size, swimming ability, a second emergency contact — move across as fields on the same form the family uses to book and pay. The answers are stored against the booking rather than in a separate sheet.
Can I still get my bookings into a spreadsheet?
Yes. Every camp's bookings download as a CSV from the dashboard, the analytics per-camp table downloads as CSV, and a read-only API lets a spreadsheet or your website read live camps and bookings directly. Moving to FormSide does not mean losing the spreadsheet; it means the spreadsheet stops being the system of record.
How long does it take to move a camp from a sheet to FormSide?
Publishing a camp takes about twenty minutes: name, dates, price, capacity, the day-by-day programme, and any extra questions. There is no import for bookings already taken on a sheet, so the cleanest switch is at a camp boundary: finish the current camp on the sheet and publish the next one on FormSide, keeping the sheet as a read-only backup until you trust the register.
What does FormSide cost compared with a free spreadsheet?
Nothing while FormSide is in beta: no monthly fee, no limit on live camps or team members, and no commission on bookings. Card payments go straight to your own Stripe account and Stripe charges its own processing fee; bank transfers and cash cost nothing. We will give notice before pricing changes, and the commission stays at zero.
Is a shared spreadsheet of children's medical notes a GDPR problem?
It can be. Medical information is special category data under UK GDPR, and a sheet shared by link is visible to everyone who has the link, for as long as it exists. FormSide restricts medical notes to the people running the day, logs every export and erasure, and anonymises records automatically after the retention period you set. The GDPR guide covers what you must do either way.
RELATED
Keep reading
- Moving from spreadsheets to a booking systemThe guide version: what to move first, what to keep, and what to ask any system to show you.Read
- Taking camp payments without chasingDeposits, instalments and bank-transfer references that match themselves.Read
- FormSide vs generic ticketing toolsThe other common starting point, and where ticketing stops.Read
- The registration deskQR check-in, medical notes on arrival, coach groups and the incident log.Read
FREE WHILE IN BETA
Try it on one camp before you move anything.
Publish one camp page in about twenty minutes, take a real booking, and see the register. No card, no contract, and no commission on what families pay you.