Termly attendance and dropout risk report for grassroots clubs
Problem
Attendance is marked on a paper register or in a membership app each session. Subs are tracked in a separate spreadsheet. Volunteer sign-ups live in a third list or scattered through the group chat. Nobody cross-references the three. A child who has quietly stopped coming for three weeks in a row is noticed only if a parent happens to mention it. Subs arrears build up unremarked until the end of the season, when chasing them is harder. Committee meetings run on impression rather than record: "attendance seems down at Under-12s" is not something anyone can check. If a committee member asks how many sessions this term ran below a safe adult-to-child ratio, someone has to open every paper register by hand to find out.
Product idea
A reporting tool that reads the attendance registers, subs spreadsheet and volunteer sign-up records the club already keeps, uploaded as spreadsheet files rather than pulled live, and turns them into one termly report per age group. It flags any child with a run of consecutive missed sessions, ages subs arrears by weeks outstanding, and counts sessions that ran below the club's stated adult ratio. A plain-language question box lets a committee member ask things like "which age group had the most short-staffed sessions this term" and get an answer drawn only from the uploaded data. It does not touch the registers or the subs spreadsheet themselves; it reads what already exists into a single view for the meeting.
Who it is for
Club secretaries preparing committee papers, age-group managers watching for players drifting away, and welfare officers checking adult ratios were met each week.
Possible first version
Spreadsheet upload for attendance, subs and volunteer sign-up records, a termly report per age group showing consecutive-absence flags, aged subs arrears and a count of understaffed sessions, and a query box scoped to the uploaded data. Out of scope for version one: any live connection to the membership or subs platform, automatic data pulls, and any message sent to a parent. This reads existing records; it does not act on them.
- Build classification
- Workflow application
- Rough effort
- 3-5 week first release
- Roles involved
- Club secretary, Age-group manager, Welfare officer
- Relevant to
- Academy & youth, League office, Federation / governing body
- Systems in play
- Membership and subs collection tools, Spreadsheets, Messaging groups
- Product framing
- Analyse data
Questions we get asked
What do we actually need to hand over to try this?
Whatever attendance record you already keep, exported or photographed into a spreadsheet, plus your subs tracker and any list of who signed up to help at each session. If registers are still on paper, someone has to type them up once to get a usable first report; the tool does not read handwriting. After that first upload, keeping it current is a matter of exporting the same files again each half term.
We already have a spreadsheet that mostly works. Why add this?
The spreadsheet holds the numbers; nobody has time to sit down and cross-reference three separate ones before a meeting. This does that cross-referencing automatically and turns it into flags a committee can act on rather than raw rows. If your spreadsheet already answers "who has stopped coming" and "who owes what" in under five minutes, you do not need this.
Does it contact parents about arrears or missed sessions?
No. It produces a report and answers questions about the data it has been given; it does not send anything to anyone. Chasing a parent about arrears or a missed session stays a human decision and a human message, made by whoever on the committee owns that conversation. The tool's job stops at surfacing who needs a conversation, not having it.
Who is responsible for this once it exists?
Usually the club secretary, since the termly report is built for the committee meeting they run. The ongoing cost is the upload itself, a few minutes each half term rather than each week, plus a decision on who follows up on each flag. If nobody takes ownership of the flags, the report will sit accurately unread, which is not much better than the situation it replaces.
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.
Tell us about itMore in Grassroots, community & youth sports
- Away fixture transport matching for grassroots clubsA workflow that matches players needing a lift to an away fixture with parents offering a seat, replacing ad hoc requests in the group chat.
- Club compliance register for insurance, certificates and affiliationsA single register that tracks every club-level obligation with an expiry date, an owner and evidence, so nothing lapses when the volunteer who knew about it moves on.
- Incident and near-miss pattern report for grassroots clubsA report that reads the club's existing accident and incident forms and surfaces recurring patterns in location, activity and time, so the welfare officer sees a trend instead of a stack of one-off reports.