Store Owner Guide

Last updated: September 23, 2026

1. Getting your store on TableRally

From the store directory, click "Add your store to TableRally". This creates your store's listing and submits it for verification -- it's not a matter of "claiming" a listing that's already there, since TableRally doesn't pre-populate store listings.

The form asks for your store's name, a URL slug (shown live as tablerally.com/stores/your-slug), a description, your street address (used only to figure out your store's time zone -- never shown as a precise pin), your hours for each day of the week, and an optional table capacity. Under "Verifying your store," you'll also give a contact email and phone, plus a quick note on how we can confirm you actually represent the store (a Google Business listing or Facebook page works fine). Submit with "Submit for verification."

While your request is pending, your store isn't listed publicly yet and you won't have dashboard access. Our team reviews requests by hand, and once approved you'll get an email confirming you're the store's first Owner, with a link straight to your dashboard.

One thing to expect: TableRally requires two-factor authentication for any account that manages a store (Owner or Event Manager), so the first time you visit your dashboard you'll be walked through a quick setup using an authenticator app like Google Authenticator or 1Password. It only takes a minute, but you won't be able to access your dashboard until it's done.

2. Creating events

From your dashboard's Events tab, use the "Create event" form. It's organized into named sections -- Basics and Game & Format and Schedule are open by default; Capacity and Extras & Promotion start collapsed, so click to expand them if you need what's inside (a few genuinely useful settings live there -- see below, don't skip past them).

Basics is your title, description, and a "Family-friendly / all-ages" checkbox that shows a small badge on the event everywhere it's listed.

Game & Format is how you tell TableRally what's being played. Check "BGG game" to search BoardGameGeek and attach a specific game -- its real cover art shows up on your calendar and event page automatically, and once you've picked a base game you can optionally pick one of its real publisher-released expansions too (fan-made content is filtered out). Otherwise, pick from a curated Event type list grouped into Trading Card Games, Tabletop, Miniatures, and Other (Magic, Pokémon, D&D, Warhammer, and more), plus a Format field when one applies to that type. Don't see your game in the list? There's a "Don't see your game? Request it" link right there to ask us to add it.

Every event also gets a picture -- a curated default image for its Event Type or BGG game, unless you've uploaded your own images to your store's gallery (Settings) and picked one instead. Purely visual, shown on your calendar and the event page.

Schedule is your date, start time, and end time (leave the end time blank to run until closing, or until 30 minutes before closing for a specific-game event), plus the "Repeats" dropdown if this should be a recurring series (weekly, every N weeks, monthly on a weekday, or monthly on a date). Recurring occurrences are generated three months ahead at a time -- you'll get a notification nudging you to use "Extend series" before that window runs out, so future dates keep appearing without you having to recreate anything. If you've set holiday hours for a specific date (Settings), the date/time picker respects them automatically -- closed days are blocked out, and special hours narrow the available times.

This section also has "Registration opens", if you want to delay when players can actually claim a spot rather than opening it the moment you publish the event: a specific date and time for a one-time event, or (for a recurring series) a relative offset like "3 days before each occurrence."

Capacity is tables required and seats per table, which together set your event's capacity -- once that many people have claimed a spot, anyone after that lands on a waitlist instead. If you've set a table capacity for your store overall, TableRally checks it for you: it adds up the tables already booked by anything else scheduled in the same time window and won't let a new event overbook your space. If you haven't set a table capacity, there's no such check at all -- it's entirely optional.

Extras & Promotion (collapsed by default) has:

• "Block the store for player-organized events" -- cancels (and notifies the registrants of) any personal, player-organized event already scheduled at your store for this same time. Players can only host a personal event at an existing, verified store like yours (never an unclaimed venue) -- if you'd rather not host any player-organized events at all, there's a separate "Allow personal events at this store" toggle in Settings.
• "Enable event chat for people who've registered" -- lets registered attendees chat with each other leading up to the event. Chat stays open for a week after the event (read-only after that), and messages can be reported or moderated like anything else. It can't be turned on or off once the event has started.
• For a brand-new recurring series, a "Social reminder post" field -- a separate, smaller reminder posted to Discord/Facebook/Instagram closer to each occurrence's date (e.g. "6 hours before"), on top of the one-time announcement post described below. Leave it at 0 to skip reminder posts entirely.
• Checkboxes to post this specific event to Discord and/or Facebook & Instagram, when connected -- see section 5 below.

3. Managing registrations

Every event on your dashboard's event list has Edit and Cancel buttons (recurring events also get "Extend series" and "Cancel series"). You don't need to email your registrants yourself when something changes -- TableRally handles that automatically:

• Registering (or joining a waitlist) sends a confirmation right away.
• If you increase an event's capacity, anyone waitlisted is promoted in order and notified.
• Editing an event's date or time notifies everyone currently registered or waitlisted.
• Cancelling an event notifies everyone currently registered or waitlisted that it's been cancelled.

4. Managing your team

The Team tab (visible only to Owners) is where you invite people to help run your store. There are two roles: an Owner can see and manage everything, and an Event Manager only gets the Events, Analytics, Demand, and Reports tabs -- no access to your team, settings, connected accounts, or Daily Brief settings.

Enter an email, pick a role, and send the invite -- it's good for 7 days, and you can resend or revoke it from the same page any time before it's accepted. You can promote an Event Manager to Owner, or demote an Owner back to Event Manager (as long as at least one Owner remains -- a store can never be left without one).

Anyone you invite will need to set up two-factor authentication too, the first time they visit the dashboard -- the same one-time step described above.

5. Connecting Discord and Facebook/Instagram

From the Connected Accounts tab, you can connect a Discord server and a Facebook Page (if the Page has a linked Instagram Business account, your posts go there too). Once connected and a channel or Page is picked, every new event you create can post there automatically -- you'll see checkboxes for each platform in the Extras & Promotion section of the event creation form, checked by default once auto-posting is turned on. These checkboxes only appear when creating a brand-new event; editing or cancelling an existing event keeps its original post in sync automatically either way.

For a recurring series specifically, that same section also has a separate "Social reminder post" field -- a smaller reminder posted closer to each individual occurrence's date, on top of the one announcement post the series gets when you first create it. Leave it at 0 if you'd rather not get per-occurrence reminders posted at all.

Beta note: this is free for every store during TableRally's beta. Once beta ends, it will be part of TableRally Pro.

6. Embedding your calendar on your own site

Every store gets a self-contained calendar page at tablerally.com/embed/your-slug -- a full events list/calendar view with no TableRally navigation around it, meant to be dropped straight into your own website with a plain iframe:

<iframe src="https://tablerally.com/embed/your-slug" width="100%" height="700" style="border:0"></iframe>

That's the same embed TableRally's own store pages use, so it stays in sync with your dashboard automatically -- no separate export step or code to regenerate when your schedule changes.

Beta note: this is free for every store during TableRally's beta. Once beta ends, it will be part of TableRally Pro.

7. Using the event-export API

If you're building your own integration rather than using the embeddable calendar above -- a custom website widget, a sync into another tool, a calendar subscription -- TableRally also offers a keyed JSON feed of your store's own upcoming events.

From your dashboard's API / Export tab (Owner-only), click "Generate key". Your key is shown once, right after generating it -- copy it somewhere safe, since TableRally can't show it to you again. If you ever need to replace it, "Regenerate key" immediately invalidates the old one and issues a new one.

Send your key as a bearer token:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_KEY" \
  https://tablerally.com/api/stores/your-slug/export/events.json

or as a ?key= query parameter, for tools (like some calendar apps) that can't set a custom header on a subscribed feed URL:

https://tablerally.com/api/stores/your-slug/export/events.json?key=YOUR_KEY

The response is the same event data (title, game, times, seats/availability) as the embeddable calendar -- never attendee names or contact details.

There's also a calendar-subscription version of this same feed at /api/stores/your-slug/export/events.ics (same auth, same key) -- paste that URL (with your key) into Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, or Outlook's "subscribe by URL" option to see your store's events alongside your own calendar, kept in sync automatically as your schedule changes.

Both formats are limited to 60 requests per minute per key.

Plan note: the event-export API (JSON and ICS feeds) is included inTableRally Free, so it stays available on every plan.

8. Understanding your Demand tab

Your dashboard's Demand tab shows games nearby players are actively asking to play, based on real activity -- never a guess, and never who's interested, only aggregate counts. A game only ever appears once at least 3 distinct nearby players are actively "Rallying" it (see the Player FAQ for what that means from their side) -- below that, it simply isn't shown at all, by design.

Every qualifying game lands in one of two lists: "Needs an Event" (no upcoming event covers it in the next 30 days -- click "Create Event"to jump straight into event creation with that game pre-filled) or"Demand Being Served" (an upcoming event, yours or a player-organized one at your store, already covers it -- shown alongside its date and remaining seats). Use the Radius selector (10, 25, or 50 miles) to widen or narrow what counts as "nearby."

At the default 25-mile radius, qualifying games also show a trend line comparing today's demand against 7 days ago -- "Demand increased/decreased from X to Y over 7 days," "Demand steady at X," or "New qualifying demand" for a game with no comparable history yet. A game currently needing an event may also show how many consecutive days it's stayed unmet. Trend lines only appear at the canonical 25-mile radius, since historical comparisons need one consistent geographic definition over time; switching to 10 or 50 miles still shows live counts, just without the trend context.

9. Analytics & Rally Impact

Your dashboard's Analytics tab has two parts. The All Events / Store Events / Player Events tabs show a discovery funnel for a date range you pick (last 7/30/90 days): how many times your events wereSeen in search/browsing, how many of those wereClicked into, and how many turned into a realRegistration -- both as an overall funnel and broken down per event.

The Rally Impact tab answers a narrower, more specific question: of the players who were actually notified about an event because they were Rallying or Following its game, how many went on to register? It's shown per event, split into a Rally-notified cohort and a Follow-notified cohort, and -- like the Demand tab -- a cohort is only ever shown once it clears the same 3-person aggregate threshold, never as a smaller, potentially-identifying number.

10. Reports & the Daily Brief

Your dashboard's Reports tab (Owners and Event Managers) shows how many registered guests to expect at your store. Pick Today,Tomorrow (the default), Next 7 Days, or aCustom range of up to 92 days, past or future. Dates always follow your store's own timezone, and an event counts on the day it starts. UseAll Events / Store Hosted / Player Hosted to include or leave out player-organized meetups held at your store.

• Expected Guests is the number of registrations for events at your store -- not confirmed attendance, and not unique people (someone registered for two events counts twice). Waitlisted players are shown separately and never included. Cancelled events and cancelled registrations are left out.
• Each event shows its registrations against its seat limit (e.g. "14 / 16 registered"), with subtotals by event type -- only for the types you actually have in that period -- and, for multi-day ranges, by day.
• Capacity utilization ("72% of seats filled") compares registrations to seats for events that have a seat limit; events without one are left out of the percentage. It can go above 100% if an event has more registrations than seats.
• Past dates show registrations as they're recorded today, not a snapshot of that day -- if a player cancels after an event, the historical number changes too.

The Daily Brief is an optional email with tomorrow's report -- the headline, each event, and a link back to the full report. Only an Owner can set it up, at the bottom of the Reports tab: turn it on, choose the hour it goes out (in your store's time), tick which Owners and Event Managers should receive it, and save. It's off until you turn it on, goes out at most once a day, and only reaches people still on your team. Click Send a test to me to get tomorrow's brief in your own inbox right away -- it goes only to you and doesn't affect the scheduled one. Anyone who receives it can unsubscribe themselves from their Notification Settings.

Still stuck? Reach out through our contact page.