Get started with bowling in ROLLER

ROLLER makes it easy to set up, sell and manage bowling at your venue. With flexible session types, pricing options and real-time capacity management, you can tailor your offering to your business and deliver a great experience for guests. 

What this guide covers

This guide provides an overview of the setup tasks required to configure, sell and manage bowling experiences at your venue. 

To get your venue set up and ready for bowling, you'll do the following tasks:

1. Prepare your lane resources and add them in ROLLER. 
2. Decide between time-based game-based sessions. 
3. Decide on how to charge, either per guest or per lane (by request).
4. Set up bowling products, package products. 
5. Add bowling products to sales channels to sell online and at POS.
6. Manage bowling bookings and capacity. 

1. Set up your bowling lane resources

Set up each bowling lane as a single-booking resource.

This means:

• One booking reserves the entire lane or multiple lanes.
• The lane or lanes cannot be shared with another booking at the same time.
• Availability updates automatically when bookings are created or edited. 

2. Choose your bowling session types  

Bowling in ROLLER is sold using a session pass product.

A session pass determines how long a lane is reserved when a booking is made.

There are two session formats available:

• Time-based: guests book a lane for a fixed duration, such as 30, 60 or 90 minutes.
• Game-based: charge per game and want session duration to scale with guest count (by request).

You can offer one format or a combination of both as separate products.

3. Decide how you want to charge

Once you choose your session format, decide how you want to price it.

You can charge either: 

• Per guest (ROLLER's default): guest purchases their own ticket and price increases per ticket. 
• Per lane (lane-based pricing): charge a flat rate per lane instead of per guest (by request). 

4. Create your bowling products and packages

Once you’ve chosen your session type and pricing approach, you can create your bowling products.

Bowling is sold in ROLLER using session pass products, which define how guests book and how long lanes are reserved.

You can create:

• Session pass products: time-based or game-based. 
• Package products:  bundle bowling with food, drinks or merchandise. 
• Party packages: for structured group experiences. 

5. Add bowling products to sales channels

Once your bowling products are created, make them available for guests to purchase.

You can sell bowling products through:

• Online checkout: for guest self-service booking.
• POS: for in-venue sales.
• Venue Manager: for staff-assisted bookings.

6. Manage bowling bookings and capacity

After your products are live, you’ll manage bookings and lane availability as part of your day-to-day venue operations. 

You'll use the following to support your venue's bowling operations: 

• Venue manager bookings: view upcoming bookings, make changes and plan ahead. 
• POS capacity view: view bookings across your bowling lanes and make changes while serving guests. 

What’s next

Now that you've seen a quick overview of how Bowling in ROLLER works, you can get started on getting set up. First, create your bowling lane resources.