Before replacing a system, write down what people actually do with it and what it does on its own, role by role. The most reliable method is to watch each person use it for a day, then list the screens they open, the reports they read, the messages the system sends by itself and the jobs it runs when nobody is looking.
The feature list on the vendor's website is no help here. It tells you what the product can do. You need to know what your club relies on, which is a much shorter list with a few surprises in it.
Shadow each role for a day
In a youth sports club the roles are few but very different: the registrar, the treasurer, coaches and team managers, the welfare officer, and parents. Sit beside each one, or ask them to share their screen for an evening, and have them do their normal tasks while you take notes. Do not ask them to describe what they do. People leave out the steps they no longer notice.
Pay attention to what happens outside the system as well. If the treasurer copies payments into a spreadsheet every Sunday, or a team manager keeps availability in a group chat because the app is awkward, those are requirements too. They show where the current software falls short.
Record the screens and reports that are really used
- Each screen opened, what the person was trying to do, and how frequently they do it.
- Each field they fill in, and any they always skip.
- Each report or export they run, who receives it, and what decision it feeds.
- Anything they search for regularly, such as a player's medical note or a parent's phone number on a match day.
- Who is allowed to see what. Access to children's details and welfare notes is a requirement, not a detail.
- Every workaround, with the reason for it.
Find the messages it sends without being asked
Automatic messages are the easiest thing to lose in a replacement, because nobody on the committee sends them. Registration confirmations, payment reminders, receipts, waiting list offers, fixture changes and training cancellations may all go out untouched by human hands. To find them, register a test player yourself and watch your inbox and phone for a few weeks. Then look through the message templates and the sent log in the settings, and copy the wording of each one.
The overnight jobs and the once-a-year jobs
Some work happens on a timer: retrying a failed instalment, moving the next child up a waiting list, sending data to a league or governing body, closing registration at midnight on a set date. Ask the vendor's support team for a list of scheduled tasks on your account, and compare it with what you have seen.
Then there are the tasks that only come round once a year, which a day of shadowing will never catch. Registration opening is the obvious one, with its early-bird dates, sibling discounts and returning-player priority. Others include moving players up an age group, updating fees, archiving last season, producing the membership list for the annual meeting and ordering kit. Walk through the calendar month by month with your longest-serving volunteer and write down what each month asks of the system.
What the finished document is for
The result is a few pages, and it is useful even if you change nothing. It shows how much of the product you use, which puts your bill in context. Our software bill calculator will give you the yearly and three-year cost to set beside it, and our guide to owning your software explains how to weigh the two. If the club does decide to replace the system, this document is the brief. At Hiro we rebuild only the parts a customer really uses, so it is the first thing we would ask for. Our page for youth sports clubs describes what clubs rent and what can be rebuilt.