Flag football referee scheduling software
Scheduling officials for flag football leagues.
Cover a Saturday of short games on side-by-side fields with two officials or one per game. Send the day by text or email once it’s filled, see who has accepted, and tell officials when weather moves a game.
- Referee and Line Judge by default
- Officials need no account
- Pay export as CSV or QuickBooks bills
A worked example
Four fields in one park, a game every hour
A league plays Saturday mornings at Riverside Park on Fields A to D, with 50-minute games starting on the hour. These are three games on Field C and one on Field A, part-way through assigning.
| Time | Field | Division | Officials |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9:00–9:50 | Field C | 8U | Tyler Nguyen, Ava Patel |
| 10:00–10:50 | Field C | 10U | Tyler Nguyen, Ava Patel |
| 11:00–11:50 | Field C | 12U | Ava Patel, open |
| 11:00–11:50 | Field A | 6U | Tyler Nguyen (one official) |
The 6U game on Field A uses one official, so the assignor removed the Line Judge position from it. Tyler had been drafted on the 11:00 on Field C, so picking him for Field A as well showed “Overlaps”. The assignor kept him on Field A and took him off Field C, which is now open. Ref Grid warns about a clash and never blocks the pick.
Ava’s 9:00 and 10:00 games appear under “Also working” when she is picked for 11:00. They don’t overlap, because each game ends at :50.
Enter end times. A game with none is assumed to run 75 minutes, so the 9:00 game would look as though it runs to 10:15, and every official working two games in a row on Field C would show an overlap. The warning is marked as assumed, but on an hourly schedule it would be on nearly every pick.
Ref Grid doesn’t check travel. Fields C and A are side by side; driving to another park after the last game is your judgment, and so are games your officials work for other leagues.
Through a session
From the fall schedule to the pay export
- 01
Import the session
Bring in the fall or spring games from CSV or Excel, or from Arbiter and Assignr exports. Put the field in the location, such as “Riverside Park, Field C”, and include an end-time column. You map the columns and check a preview before anything is saved, and the import contacts no one.
Next session, import the new schedule the same way. Your officials are already on the roster, and games already played are skipped.
- 02
Set each game’s crew
New games start with Referee and Line Judge. Where a division plays with one official, remove Line Judge from those games so they don’t sit on the board half filled. For a bigger crew, Ref Grid suggests Back Judge and Field Judge when you add a position, and any position can be named however your league names it.
- 03
Fill the Saturday, then send
Picking an official saves a draft and contacts no one. Filter the board by location to work through one field at a time, then review the drafts and send them together.
Each assignment is its own text or email. An official on four back-to-back games gets four messages and answers each one. The dashboard counts the assignments still awaiting a reply, and following up on them is up to you.
- 04
Move or call off games for weather
Whether a wet field or a storm stops play is your league’s decision. Once you’ve made it, move a game’s time or field and every official who was sent it gets the old and new details, or cancel it and they get a cancellation notice and the response links stop working. Officials you had only drafted hear nothing.
- 05
Export the session’s pay
Each position on each game carries its own fee, so an adult league game can pay more than an 8U game. The pay report covers a date range: accepted assignments on games that weren’t cancelled and whose start time has passed. Export it as detail or summary CSV, or as QuickBooks Online bills. Ref Grid pays no one, and it can’t tell a full game from one stopped at halftime.
For your officials
What a part-time official has to do
Answer each assignment from the link. The page doesn’t show who else is on the game, and game notes aren’t on it.
No account or app
Text, email or both
A calendar file per game
Reminders, if you want them
Limits
What Ref Grid doesn’t do
- No age or training checks. Nothing stops a 14-year-old official landing on an adult game. Keep notes on each official and follow your league’s own policy for young officials.
- No automatic assigning. You pick every official on every game, and officials can’t claim open games themselves.
- No dated availability. Officials can give you the days, times of day and divisions they prefer. School trips and exam weekends stay in whatever form or sheet you use now.
- No weather calls. Ref Grid sends the notices after you decide. It doesn’t watch forecasts or field closures.
- One organization per account. A youth league and an adult league run by the same people can share one organization, told apart by division, or keep separate accounts.
Where to go next
- Rainouts and schedule changes
Who to tell first when a Saturday is called off, and whether officials are paid.
- Recruiting and keeping officials
Finding new officials, including teenagers, and bringing them back next session.
- How to pay officials
A pay process for the end of a session, with a pay sheet.
One plan, with a free trial: see the pricing.
Request a demo
See how Ref Grid would work for your league or club
Tell us about your organization and we’ll get back to you.
Prefer to look around yourself? You can set up your organization without talking to us: get started.
Set up this session’s Saturdays.
Import the games with their fields and end times, add your officials, trim the crews that use one official, and send.