Prizes lock once the season starts

A family buys a square because of what the board says it pays. So once a season is under way, what it pays can't change.

Two locks

• The price of a square locks once any square is sold. Everyone on a board pays the same.
• The prizes lock once the first game's numbers are drawn. From then on the four prize boxes in the board's settings are greyed out and show what's stored.

The settings screen says why, right next to the boxes: members bought in on these prizes, and every week pays the same.

There's no override. Not for a team admin, and not for me.

Before the season, the math has to work

Until the first draw, an admin can set the four quarterly prizes however the team likes. A quarter can be set to nothing, so a board can pay only at the half and the final.

• The screen shows what the prizes add up to over the whole season.
• If the season's prizes would come to more than a fully sold board collects, the change is refused with a plain message: lower the prizes or raise the square price.

A board can't promise more than it can ever take in.

Everything else still saves

Locking the prizes doesn't freeze the rest of the settings. An admin can still change the other things about a board in the middle of the season.

And if someone left the settings page open from before the first draw and saves it afterward, the old prize numbers on their screen don't go through. The stored ones stay.