A spreadsheet is how almost every home poker game starts, and it works: it's free, everyone already knows how to use one, and one person can keep it up to date without training anybody.
What it can't do is be in two places at once. The host is the only editor, the shared tab is a screenshot by Thursday, and by game night nobody quite remembers who dropped out last week.
| Job | Spreadsheet | OnTheButton |
|---|---|---|
The ledger | One shared file, one editor, and a chain of screenshots when someone wants to check a number. | The host records buy-ins and cash-outs as they happen, and each player can track their own stack live. Settling checks the night to the cent; at close the ledger freezes. |
Filling the table | A tab of names and a group chat, with the host doing the arithmetic on who's actually coming. | A seat count and an alternates list. A freed seat promotes the next alternate automatically and emails them. |
No-shows | Everyone remembers a different version of who bailed last time. | A late cancellation or a marked no-show records a strike. Three active strikes at a venue suspends a player from that venue's games automatically. |
Settling up | The host does the who-owes-whom math out loud while everyone waits. | One action settles every seated player at once and shows who pays the host and who the host pays. |
A spreadsheet's ledger is one file with one editor. That's fine until a number is needed mid-hand, so a buy-in gets scribbled on a napkin and entered later from memory — and a single mistyped cell is invisible until the totals stop adding up.
On OnTheButton, the host records each buy-in and cash-out as it happens. Players aren't left guessing what they're sitting on either: each one self-reports their stack during play and watches it move on a live chart, not a mental estimate. Settling the night runs the check in front of you — cash-outs plus the dealer tip minus buy-ins should land on zero, and the app says so on the spot when they do not. At close the ledger freezes with that number recorded against the game. None of this moves money or takes a cut of it; it's a record of what people did with cash, not a payment system.
A spreadsheet has no idea how many seats a game has. Filling the table means a tab of names, a who's-in thread, and the host doing arithmetic about who's actually going to show, updated by hand every time someone drops.
A game on OnTheButton has a seat count and an alternates list from the moment it's scheduled. When a seat frees up, the first alternate is promoted automatically and emailed in the same instant — not whenever someone remembers to check the list — and everyone behind them quietly moves up a rank.
Everyone in the group chat remembers a different version of who bailed on Tuesday, and by the third repeat offender the host is the one keeping score, from memory, weeks after the fact.
OnTheButton keeps that score instead. A cancellation inside 24 hours of a game, or a no-show the host marks that night, records a strike. Three active strikes at a venue suspends a player from that venue's games automatically, and the host can lift a strike — or the suspension it caused — by hand when the circumstances call for it. Whether other members can see someone's no-show history at all is a setting the host controls, off by default.
Settling up from a spreadsheet means the host squinting at a column of numbers at the end of the night while everyone else waits by the door, working out who owes what out loud.
One action on OnTheButton settles every seated player at once and shows who pays the host and who the host pays. Marking someone paid records that it happened — the money still changes hands between people exactly as it always did, and the app keeps the receipt, not the cash.
Five friends who always show up, always know the buy-in, and have never once argued about the count: a spreadsheet, or no ledger at all, is genuinely enough.
Stakes small enough that nobody is going to reconcile a four-dollar discrepancy anyway.
A group that is not going to adopt anything new no matter how it is pitched, and that is a fine place to stay.