Youth trial invitation and safeguarding paperwork tracker
Problem
When an academy invites a young prospect to a trial, the regional scout sends the invitation by phone or email, and the consent and medical forms go out separately as PDF attachments that nobody tracks. Whether the prospect's home address falls within the club's travel-distance rules is checked by whoever remembers to look, if anyone does. Confirmation that a DBS-checked staff member and a designated safeguarding lead will be present on the day is assumed rather than verified. The pieces live across three inboxes and a shared spreadsheet the academy office maintains by hand. On the trial day itself, a missing signature or an unconfirmed chaperone surfaces at reception, and the prospect is turned away or the session is delayed while someone tries to reach a parent.
Product idea
A workflow automation that turns each trial invitation into a tracked case. It generates the consent and medical forms for the prospect's age group, sends them to the parent or guardian for signature, checks the home postcode against the club's travel-distance rules, and confirms a DBS-checked staff member and safeguarding lead are rostered for that slot. Each case shows a single status: outstanding, chased or ready. If any item is still open close to the trial date, the academy recruitment lead is notified automatically instead of finding out at reception. It does not run age verification and does not store medical detail beyond a completion flag, since that record belongs in the club's existing medical system.
Who it is for
Academy recruitment leads who own the trial process, regional scouts who issue invitations, and the head of recruitment who needs the safeguarding checklist actually completed, not assumed.
Possible first version
A single case type covering one age group: invitation generation, a consent form sent through the club's existing e-signature tool, a travel-distance check against a manually maintained postcode table, a staffing checklist marked complete by hand, and reminder emails at set intervals before the trial date. A status dashboard shows every open case at a glance. Out of scope for version one: no e-signature capture built in-house, no integration with the academy's case management or medical systems, and no automated age verification.
- Build classification
- Workflow application
- Rough effort
- 4-6 week first release
- Roles involved
- Academy recruitment lead, Regional scout, Head of recruitment
- Relevant to
- Academy & youth, Professional club, Women's league
- Systems in play
- Scouting and recruitment databases, Spreadsheets and shared documents, Messaging apps
- Product framing
- Automate a workflow
Questions we get asked
What do we need in place before this could go live for a single trial?
The consent and medical form template you already use, a list of which staff currently hold DBS checks, and a postcode or distance table for the travel-distance rule you apply. None of that needs to be perfect on day one. The point of a first release is testing the workflow against one age group's real trial process before deciding whether to extend it further.
Does this replace the academy management system we already pay for?
No. It sits in front of it. The academy system stays the system of record for the prospect once they are registered; this tool exists for the narrower window between invitation and trial day, when the coordination work currently falls through three inboxes and a spreadsheet. Version one does not write back into that system automatically, so nothing changes there until you decide it should.
Parents already get a form by email. Why add another link for them to click?
Because the form going out is not the problem, the form disappearing into an inbox unanswered is. The parent still gets one message with one link. What changes is on your side: someone can see, without asking around, which of this week's invitees have actually completed it and which need a reminder or a phone call before the trial date arrives.
What happens if a form comes back the morning of the trial, or not at all?
The status simply reflects reality: still outstanding until the signature lands, whatever the hour. The tool does not decide whether a trial goes ahead without complete paperwork; that stays a human call for the academy recruitment lead, made with accurate information instead of a guess. Its job is to surface the gap early enough that the call rarely has to be made at the door.
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 Scouting & recruitment
- Pitchside prospect lookup chat for scoutsA chat line scouts text from the ground to check whether a prospect has already been assessed, get the verdict on file, and flag that they are now watching too.
- Player approach and agent-contact clearance trackerA workflow that routes a scout's request to approach a player, guardian or agent through formal sign-off, logging who approved contact and when, in place of a phone call or group chat message nobody records.
- Scout report intake and duplicate-assessment routerA workflow that matches new scout reports against existing prospect records, routes them for triage and chases overdue watch list assignments so no player gets assessed twice or forgotten.