Getting started

How to Run Your Group

Running a group on Booki is a loop: you set the rules, your members place their own picks, results grade themselves, and you settle up whenever your group normally settles up. This walks through the whole cycle once, in order.

1. Set up your group

When you create an organizer account you set the defaults that new members inherit. Under Member Settings you'll find Default Credit Limit — how much a member can be down before they're cut off — and an optional default win limit.

These are starting points, not commitments. You can change any member's limits individually once they've joined, and changing the default afterwards doesn't disturb members who already have one.

2. Invite your members

From the Members tab, hit + Invite. Enter an email and Booki sends a branded invite with a code and a join link, or skip the email and copy the code to drop into your group chat.

Your member signs up, enters the code, and they're attached to your group with the default limits applied. You don't create their account, and you don't enter their details — they do all of that themselves.

3. Members place their own picks

This is the part that most replaces a group chat. Members browse the games themselves and place their own picks against live lines. You aren't taking orders, writing anything down, or confirming anything.

Odds come from a data provider that aggregates real sportsbooks — Booki doesn't set them, and doesn't adjust them for individual members. Games become available to bet roughly 48 hours before they start. More on where the odds come from.

4. Set your guardrails

Each member has two limits you control:

Credit limit caps how far down a member can go. It counts what they already owe plus anything currently at risk on open picks, so a member can't quietly exceed it with a stack of pending bets.

Win limit caps the other direction — how far ahead a member can get. When someone hits it you choose what happens: Block Picks stops them betting until you settle up, or Require Approval lets picks through but holds them for you to approve first.

Both are enforced on the server when a pick is submitted, not just hidden in the app. A member can't get around a limit.

5. Monitor what's happening

Your dashboard shows open picks, how much is at risk, and where every member stands. The Members tab flags anyone who needs attention — picks pending approval, someone near a limit, or a balance that's been outstanding a while.

6. Picks grade themselves

When a game finishes, Booki pulls the result, grades every pick on it, and updates balances. Winners are credited, losers are debited, pushes are returned. Multi-picks resolve as a ticket once every leg is in.

You don't do anything for any of this. No entering scores, no working out payouts, no updating a spreadsheet. This is the chore Booki exists to remove, and it's the part that surprises people coming from a manual system.

7. Settle up off-platform

Balances accumulate until your group settles. When you do — end of week, end of the season, whenever you normally do — you and your member exchange the money directly, however you already handle it.

Then you record it. Open the member and hit Settle Up, and their balance clears to zero with the payment logged in their history. A settle-up is recorded as a payment, so it never distorts your performance numbers — it clears the debt without pretending anyone won or lost.

That's the loop. Set the rules once, and the day-to-day is your members betting and you settling up.

Common questions

Do I have to approve every pick? No. Picks are accepted automatically by default. Approval only comes into play if you turn it on, or if a member hits a win limit set to Require Approval.

What if a member and I disagree about a result? Every pick keeps the exact line and price it was taken at, and every balance change is recorded in an audit trail. You can also override a grade if a game was scored wrong.

What if someone doesn't pay? That's between you and your member, the same as it is today. Booki tracks what's owed and for how long, but it doesn't collect.

How many members can I have? Three on the free plan, fifty on Pro.