Although the Bridgemate system incorporates provisional scoring, in order to provide players with an idea of how well they're doing in the event overall, it still requires the club to have its own scoring program. Bridgemates work with dozens of different scoring programs around the world, and all the major programs available in the UK and Ireland are designed to operate with Bridgemates. Note that in the case of some programs there is an additional charge levied by the developer in order to facilitate wireless support.

The Bridgemate Scoring System [BCS] and the scoring program work cooperatively. The scoring program is launched first, and the user provides details of the number of tables and selected movement. At this stage, the scoring program creates a small interchange file [of type .bws] and automatically launches BCS. BCS reads this bws file to determine the characteristics of the new event, and also to pick up a table of club members with corresponding player numbers.

The players at the table [usually North] enter their table number, followed by the four player numbers. The Bridgemate handset displays the four matching player names for verification purposes [any mistakes or omissions can be rectified at any later stage during the event], and proceeds to solicit details of the first board to be played. It's recommended that North enters the contract, declarer, and opening lead [if used] at the outset. Once the hand has been played, North enters + 'n', =, or -.'n', before passing the handset to East [or West] for verification. These 'traveller' details are then transmitted to the Bridgemate server, and are retrieved by BCS and written to the bws file. The scoring program will 'poll' the bws file every few seconds to pick up these results, as well as the details of the four players who started at each table.

Once BCS has received the last expected result from the last table to finish, it will close down. The club now uses its scoring program in the normal manner to print final results, upload to its website, and possibly upload to the national union website.