Guides and templates for assigning sports officials.
The operational side of officiating — collecting availability, filling a weekend, chasing confirmations, and rebuilding a Saturday on Friday night. Written to be useful whether or not you ever use Ref Grid.
All resources
Free template
Free referee scheduling spreadsheet template
Three CSV sheets — officials, availability, and games and assignments — set up so open positions and unconfirmed assignments are a filter rather than a hunt.
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Guide
How to schedule referees without living in a spreadsheet
The end-to-end workflow — game list, pool, availability, assignments, sending, confirmations, changes — and the two decisions that make the rest of it manageable.
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Guide
How to collect referee availability before the season
What to ask for, when to ask, and how to keep availability usable once the season starts and it begins changing.
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Guide
How to assign referees fairly across a season
Experience, level, travel, workload and reliability pull against each other. How to weigh them, and what to record so fairness is demonstrable.
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Guide
What to do when a referee cancels at the last minute
A recovery process for Friday night and Saturday morning, in the order it has to happen — and the step that causes two officials to show up for one game.
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Guide
Referee scheduling software vs. spreadsheets: when is it worth switching?
Where a spreadsheet is genuinely the right tool, the five signals that it has stopped being one, and what a move actually costs you.
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Looking for the product rather than the reading?
Ref Grid is referee and sports officials scheduling software: your roster, the assignments, and the text and email that go with them, in one place.
- Referee scheduling software — what Ref Grid is, what it costs, and what is in it.
- Sports officials scheduling software — the workflow in depth, for associations and multi-sport organizations.
- Umpire scheduling software — crews, diamonds and doubleheaders, for baseball and softball assigning.
Stop rebuilding the schedule in three places.
Ref Grid keeps your roster, the assignments and the messages about them together, so the schedule and what people were told are the same thing.