Documentation
The KitchenSync manual
Written for the person standing at the court with a session starting in ten minutes. 12 short sections, in the order you would need them: setting up your first session, getting players in, keeping the queue moving, taking money, running a tournament, and what to do when something looks broken. The pictures are recordings of the real interface, so a button here is the button on your screen.
What KitchenSync does
KitchenSync runs the waiting list for you. It keeps the queue, works out who plays next, holds the scores, and paints it all on the screen on your wall.
There are two kinds of session. Open play is a normal club night: people drift in and out, and the app keeps fair games going all evening. A tournament is a set draw: you sign players into categories, the app builds the schedule, and you referee the results in.
You sit at the console. Your players do not need one.
- The console
- Your screen. Courts, the queue, scores, settings. This is where a session is run.
- The player view
- What a player sees on their own phone: are they waiting, who they play, which court.
- The display board
- The full-screen view for a TV or projector. Anyone in the room reads it.
- The watch page
- A public link to a tournament, for people who are not at the venue.
Try the tour instead
The console has a walkthrough built in. It runs on sample players, so nothing you tap changes your real session. Open the ⋮ menu inside a session and choose Guide.
Your first session
You need a name, some courts, and players. Everything else already has a working default.
- 1Open the app and tap New session.
- 2Choose Open play. That is the club-night shape.
- 3Name it — the court and the date works — and set how many courts you have. The free tier runs 2 courts; more need a paid session.
- 4Optional: set a start time if the session is planned rather than right now, and pick a theme so the board matches your club.
- 5Tap Create. You land on the console with empty courts and a six-character code that players use to join.
- 6Add players, or let them scan the card, then start a game on a court. The clock starts with the first game.
Start smaller than the room allows
Two or three courts is usually right to begin with. The matcher needs enough people waiting to build a fair game, and a half-empty board is easier to read than a half-empty room. Add courts as the crowd builds, from Settings.
Getting players in
Four ways for a player to get into your queue. You can mix them in the same session.
| Way in | What you do | What they need |
|---|---|---|
| You type them in | In the console, type a name in the player box and tap Add. | Nothing. They are a walk-in: no account, no email. |
| They scan your card | Print the check-in card once and put it on the desk or the wall. | A phone camera, and a KitchenSync account. |
| They type the code | The six characters at the top of your console. Tap the code to send it to someone. | The join screen and the code. |
| You scan their code | Tap Scan QR in the header and aim at their phone. | A QR from a past session. |
Checked-in players appear in the queue. A player who is on the roster but not checked in is a name waiting, not someone standing there — check them in when they arrive and they go to the back of the queue, not the front.
Importing a roster
If your club runs events on Reclub, the ⋮ menu can pull that list of names straight into your session. Ratings and photos come across with them, so you are not typing a spreadsheet.
The same person, twice
A walk-in may already have a KitchenSync account from another club. Tap the account icon in the header to find those matches and link them, and their history follows them into your session.
The queue: who plays next
The queue is everyone waiting for a game. The app builds the next games out of it, and you approve them.
Three tabs hold it all. Queue is the waiting list, in the order the matcher will use. Groups is the next games, already paired and ready for a court. Fixed is the pairs that must stay together.
How it picks
The rule is simple: whoever has waited longest plays next, as long as the game stays even. A player who has been standing for twenty minutes is not passed for someone who arrived late.
How strict that is is your choice, under Queueing mode. Mixed will not put a beginner against a strong player to fill a court, and waits for a fair game instead. Skill-matched does the same with a tighter limit, and widens it only when nobody else can play. Round robin keeps that same limit, but among the games it allows it prefers the ones where you meet someone new. Tiered keeps each level together in its own group. First come plays the order people arrived in, whatever their level.
- Partners are picked so the two sides are close, not so two friends get to play together.
- Everyone who played is rested before they play again, so nobody runs every rotation.
- Whichever one you pick, the wait you set below still holds — see “The wait you promised” underneath.
The two settings worth knowing
| Setting | What it changes |
|---|---|
| Biggest rating gap | How uneven a game the app may build. Smaller means fairer matches and longer queues. |
| Late players catch up | Whether someone who checks in halfway through earns extra games to make up for the ones they missed. |
Both are in the session settings, and both take effect on the next game, not the one being played.
The wait you promised
Max wait is how long anyone should have to stand for a game — 20 minutes to start with, and you can set it shorter, longer, or switch it off.
A player who goes past it is given a seat in the next round, ahead of someone who arrived later. If the room is ever too busy for that to work out, the queue says so at the top and names who is owed a court, so you know to start a game or add one.
An optional second opinion
If you have your own AI key set up, the sparkle button reads your live queue and suggests changes — who to seat, who is being shortchanged. It only ever suggests. Nothing moves until you accept it.
Pairs that must play together
Some people always play together: a regular pair, a family, four friends who came in one car.
- 1Open the Fixed tab.
- 2Tap New group and pick the members from your roster.
- 3Save it. From now on those names are seated together, in every game the app builds.
A pair is a unit with room: the matcher fills the other two seats around them. A full four is a unit that plays itself, so it is held out of the normal rotation and simply sent to a court when its turn comes.
Starting games on the courts
A court is one game in progress. Fill it from the Groups tab and the paid clock starts running.
- Start a game. Drag a group card onto a court, or tap the play button on the card. Either way the court turns live and the room gets the call.
- Switch two courts. Drag one court onto another and the two games trade places.
- Change a player. Tap a seat on the court and pick someone else, for example when a player leaves mid-game.
- Stop a game. End the court when the match is done, or stop it early without recording anything if a pair walks off.
When a court is stuck
A court that still shows players after a walk-off is a court nobody cleared. End it, and the game either goes into the standings or is discarded, depending on what you chose.
Court calls and the TV board
Players should hear they are up before they have to read it.
The moment you put a game on a court, the display board announces it: the names, the court, and the players on the other side. If the sound is on, the names are spoken too. The speaker button in your header mutes or unmutes that, without touching the board.
Putting it on the wall
Tap Display to fill your own screen and check what the room sees. What you want for a TV is the little external-link icon beside it: that opens the board in its own tab, on the TV, with no sign-in and nothing for anyone to click.
The board takes your club name and logo, and any theme you picked for the session. Dark themes read best from across a room.
Scores and standings
A game is not finished until you score it. The standings are built from what you enter, and nothing else.
- 1When a court finishes, tap it and enter the games played — 11–7, 11–5, and so on.
- 2Confirm. The result goes in, the court frees up, and the table moves.
- 3Open the trophy tab on the right edge to read the standings and the match history.
How the table is ranked
Wins first. If two players are level on wins, the app looks at point difference, then points scored, and only then at how long they have been waiting.
- An X on a row
- That game does not count toward the ranking — usually a mismatch the app agreed to run anyway.
- H2H
- The two players are level, and their head-to-head result decided who sits higher.
Taking the results with you
The ⋮ menu exports the session as a spreadsheet, and the standings can be shared as a picture for the group chat. Do it before you reset anything — a finished evening is the one copy you cannot remake.
Credits, price and the 24 hours
You buy credits, a session spends one, and the time you paid for only runs while games are running.
| Session | Costs | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Open play | ₱49 | One club night, up to 24 hours of play, as many courts as you pay for. |
| Tournament | ₱149 | One tournament day, with categories and a printed bracket. |
Before you pay anything, the free tier lets you run 2 courts and 16 players. That is enough to try a night, and not enough to run a busy one.
Paying
- Pay by QR with any Philippine wallet or bank app. The session unlocks as soon as it clears.
- A voucher code adds credits instead. Codes start with KS- for open play and KST- for tournaments, and the app tells you if you used the wrong one.
- Credits are one balance. Money put in for a tournament can pay for an open night, and the other way around.
The 24 hours
A credit buys a day of play, and the clock counts only while a court is live. Pause the session and the time banked so far is kept. Start it again tomorrow and it carries on from where it stopped.
- A session you never started does not burn anything.
- When the 24 hours are used up the session ends, and a new credit starts a new one.
- Resetting a session does not buy you more time — it clears the players and the scores, and leaves the clock alone.
Running a tournament
A tournament is a session with a draw instead of a queue. You set it up, players are sorted into a bracket or some groups, and then matches come onto the courts one at a time.
Setting one up
- 1On the Sessions screen press New Session, then pick Tournament. The rest of the form changes to match.
- 2Name the event, say when it starts and how many courts you have. That is the whole setup — the format belongs to each category, not to the event.
- 3Press + Category for each division you are running: “Men’s Doubles”, “Mixed B”, “Under 16”. A category is a level, and it is where you choose the format.
- 4Add players to that category by name, or import a list from a spreadsheet. Each category keeps its own list, and a player is in one category.
- 5Build the teams — Auto-draw pairs everyone, or Build pairs manually and tap them in. Then press Generate schedule.
The app suggests a format from how many players and courts you have. Ignore it if you disagree; it is advice, not a decision.
Playing it
Every match that is ready sits in a list on the right, grouped by category and sorted so whoever has rested longest is at the top. Drag one onto a court card and it goes live: the list shrinks by one and a clock starts on that match.
Courts are shared, so two categories can be playing at once on courts 1 to 4. A match you drop on a busy court takes it over and the match that was there goes back to the list. The one thing it will not allow is a pair landing on a court they are already playing on.
Enter the score when a match ends. In a knockout the winner appears in the next round by itself — you never fill in the bracket.
Formats, in plain terms
| Format | What happens, and when to pick it |
|---|---|
| Round robin | Everyone plays everyone. Pick it for a small group when you want everyone playing a lot. |
| Single elimination | Lose once and you are out. Pick it when you are short on courts or time. |
| Double elimination | Lose once and you drop to a second bracket. Pick it when nobody should go home after one bad game. |
| Pools, then a bracket | Small groups first, then the top few from each go into a knockout. Pick it when a field is too big for one clean bracket. |
| Ladder | Winners move up a court, losers move down, new challengers come in. Pick it for a casual night that never ends. |
Finishing
- The Standings tab ranks the category by wins, then by point difference. That order is the result.
- Export gives you a spreadsheet of every result and Bracket a picture of the draw to post or print, both in the session’s own theme. Sharing and the audience link work the same here as in open play.
When something looks broken
Almost everything that looks broken is one of these. None of them lose your scores.
| What you see | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| The queue is not moving | Nobody has been checked in, or every court is still occupied. | Check players in, then end the games on the courts. The next group appears on its own. |
| A player is on two courts at once | The same name was added twice, so the app sees two people. | Remove one of the two rows. Names are how the app matches people, so spell the survivor the way they check in. |
| The TV board shows old results | That screen is a separate tab and has lost its connection. | Reload the tab. It reads everything from the session, so nothing is lost. |
| A score will not save | The numbers entered do not decide the game yet. | Keep going until somebody has actually won — the app refuses a scoreline that leaves the result open. |
| “Session Ended — reached the 24-hour limit” | That session has used the day its credit buys. | Start a new session. Resetting the old one does not buy more time. |
| Everything looks grey, or nothing saves | The internet dropped. The app keeps working and holds your changes. | Keep going. It catches up by itself once the connection returns — check the little status pill at the top. |
| A tournament bracket will not change | A result has already been recorded, so the draw is locked. | Clear that result, or use Clear schedule if nothing has actually been played. |
Two things worth knowing. The app proposes, you dispose — every group it puts together can be overridden by hand, and the override holds. And a session is not a database you have to tend: there is nothing to save, close or archive. Stop the games, and the session is finished.