The ladder lives inside Compete, beside Boxes and Tournaments. On a laptop those three sit under the club's name, and on a phone Compete is one of the buttons along the bottom of the screen. By default the ladder does not belong to a season: it carries on from one to the next, and archiving a season leaves it exactly as it is. A club that would rather it started again every year can say so; the recommendation is to leave it alone.
A club can run more than one. Every paid plan runs 8, so a club can have a club-wide one, a doubles one, and whatever else it needs beside them. They sit behind a row of buttons at the top of the ladder screen, and pressing Ladder opens the first one.
How a match gets on it
The same way a box match does. Arrange it between yourselves, then one of you records the score and the other confirms it. If nobody confirms it, it confirms itself after three days, the same as a box score.
A recorded score counts straight away. It moves both ratings the moment it goes in, and the row is shaded purple with the settled rating beside it until the other player agrees. That way the ladder is never three days behind the tennis, and nobody has to take an unconfirmed score on trust.
The league owner can record a match for any two players, confirmed on arrival, and can clear any score. Clearing one works the ratings out again from scratch, so a wrong score fixed today does not leave a mark on the ratings from last month.
Ratings, and who you can play
Everyone starts on 1200. Your first 3 matches are your placing matches. They move your rating further than later ones, so the ladder finds your level quickly. You can play anyone at all while they last.
After that the ladder rates matches within 5 places of you, up or down, and those are the ones you can arrange and record on it. Somebody further away than that is not offered, and a score against them is refused. The owner can set that number to whatever suits the club, and 0 means the ladder rates every match, however far apart two players are. The owner can record any pairing at all.
Beating somebody above you is worth more than beating somebody below you, and losing to somebody below you costs more. A walkover moves half of what a played match would. A retirement is a real match and moves all of it.
Resting
After 90 days without a match a rating eases down by 15 points a month, and it never goes below the 1200 everybody started on. Both numbers are the owner’s to change, and resting can be switched off. Play one match and it stops.
It shows on the ladder as a resting chip, and on a player’s own page as a dotted stretch in their rating line. So a rating that has drifted down always says why.
Who is on it
Everybody the club puts in a box joins the ladder automatically. They sit under Yet to play until their first match, with no place on the table yet, and nothing chases them. The owner can take somebody off, and taking them off sticks: they are not added back the next time a season is built.
You can also type a name straight into the ladder, when you set it up or later under Ladder settings. That person joins the club as well as the ladder, so a club can run a ladder and no boxes at all. A name somebody already has puts that member on the ladder rather than making a second one.
Members can join it themselves. The button is on the ladder screen and it is on for a new ladder. Somebody who is not in a box taps Join the ladder, or on a doubles ladder names the partner they want and waits for them to say yes. Nobody has to be asked and nothing lands on your desk. Turn it off in Ladder settings if your club would rather decide who is on.
A ladder can be any of the sports the app scores. The sport and whether it is singles or doubles are fixed once the ladder exists: a rating earned as a pair is not a rating as a singles player.
How a match was scored
The ladder has a normal way of scoring, and you set it when you start the ladder. Clubs do not always play that way, so when you put a score in you can say how that match was actually played. A single set because the court ran out, or a match tiebreak instead of a third. Pick it at the top of the score screen. It starts on the ladder's usual, so most people will never change it.
It has to be the same sport. A squash game on a tennis ladder is a different ladder, not a different score.
If you would rather nobody was asked, tick Everyone scores matches the same way in Ladder settings. The question disappears from the score screen and every match goes in the ladder's usual way.
You can change the ladder's usual scoring later, even with matches on it. Nothing is rewritten and no rating moves: every match keeps the scoring it was played under, and only new matches take the new one. Ratings do not depend on the scoring anyway, because what moves a rating is who won.