Match official licence and DBS expiry gate for fixture appointments
Problem
Referee and match official compliance sits in a spreadsheet the officials' secretary updates when a certificate lands in their inbox, covering DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) checks, safeguarding training and refereeing qualification renewals. Fixture appointments are made from a separate list in the appointments officer's head or a rota tool, reconciled against the compliance spreadsheet only at the start of the season. Through the season the two drift apart: an official's DBS check lapses in October, nobody updates the rota, and they are still appointed to fixtures in November. The gap surfaces only when a parent, a club or an insurer asks who checked the official was current, and the answer is a shrug and a promise to look into it.
Product idea
An obligation register built around the official rather than the club: one row per person, one column per requirement — DBS check expiry, safeguarding training expiry, qualification and CPD (continuing professional development) renewal — each with its own date and owner. A traffic-light view shows who is current, who is inside the renewal window, and who has already lapsed. Before publishing a weekend's appointments, the appointments officer pulls a do-not-appoint list straight from the register instead of trusting memory. Overrides are possible but require a named reason, timestamped for audit. It does not replace the appointments rota or run fixture scheduling itself — it is the eligibility check that sits in front of whichever tool does that.
Who it is for
Officials' secretaries and compliance officers who track qualifications and checks, and competition administrators who appoint officials to fixtures. Typically sponsored by the compliance officer or general secretary.
Possible first version
A web register populated from a CSV of officials, obligation types and expiry dates, with a sortable dashboard by days-to-expiry and threshold-based email alerts to the named owner of each obligation. Appointments officers can export a current do-not-appoint list before publishing a rota, and overrides are logged with a reason. Out of scope for version one: no integration with the appointments or rostering tool — the do-not-appoint list is exported and checked manually — and no automated blocking inside any scheduling system.
- Build classification
- Workflow application
- Rough effort
- 4-6 week first release
- Roles involved
- Officials secretary, Competition administrator, Compliance officer
- Relevant to
- League office, Federation / governing body, Women's league, Academy & youth
- Systems in play
- Spreadsheets, Email and shared drives, Appointment and rostering tool
- Product framing
- Manage compliance
Questions we get asked
What data do we need on day one for this to be worth switching on?
An accurate CSV export of every official with their current qualification level, DBS check expiry and safeguarding training expiry date is enough to start. If those dates are approximate or missing for a chunk of your officials, the first job is a data-cleanup pass, not a software rollout — the register can only flag what it has been told, and a compliance tool built on guessed dates is worse than the spreadsheet it replaces, because people will trust it more.
Does this replace the system we use to appoint officials to fixtures?
No. It sits alongside whichever appointments or rostering tool your officials' secretary already uses. Version one does not write into that system — it produces a do-not-appoint list that the appointments officer checks before publishing a rota. If that manual step proves to be the bottleneck once the register is trusted, a direct integration becomes worth scoping, but that is a second conversation, not a first-version promise.
Our officials' secretary already keeps a spreadsheet for this. What does this actually add?
A spreadsheet works until the person who maintains it is on leave or the appointments officer is working from a different, older copy of it. This gives both roles the same current view, alerts the right owner before an expiry rather than after, and keeps a timestamped record of any override — which a spreadsheet cannot produce when someone asks why an out-of-date official was appointed.
What happens if a licence lapses after the weekend's appointments have already gone out?
Version one does not watch a published rota and push a live alert if something changes underneath it — it is a check you run before publishing, not a continuous monitor. An official whose DBS check lapses on the Thursday before a Saturday fixture will not trigger anything automatically; the appointments officer would need to re-run the do-not-appoint list close to matchday to catch it. That gap is worth knowing about before you rely on this for anything safety-critical.
Is this your workflow?
Tell us one sports workflow that still runs on paper, spreadsheets, WhatsApp or an outdated system. We will map it and show you what a simpler product looks like.
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