How many club duties have I still got left? Your own total in the app

The same argument is had in every clubhouse: I have done three already, so that list must be wrong. Bar duty — how many shifts are left? — used to be a question you could only put to whoever keeps the records, and they did not have their folder with them. Now that there is a card on your own dashboard, you look it up yourself: what is on your name, what the club asks of you, and where that number comes from.

Where to find your own total

You do not have to go looking. Open the app and you land on your dashboard — the screen you see first after logging in. Among the cards there is one headed My duties, with a single line underneath: 2 of 5 duties done, and on the right a small label saying Up to date or Behind. Below that is one more sentence explaining how that number is built up. That is all there is, and usually all you need.

By club duties we mean everything a club asks of its members outside playing and keeps track of itself: standing behind the bar on a match day, hall duty, refereeing a match, keeping the scoresheet or cleaning up afterwards. Which kinds exist at your club is for the club to decide; the card adds them all together.

The card appears in the player account as well as the parent account. What else is on your dashboard is covered in what a player sees in Koach and in Koach for parents. The duties card simply joins them, alongside the other things that concern you personally, such as the trip you have been put down to drive in the lift rota.

No card? Then there is nothing to count for you

If you cannot see it, nothing is broken. Keeping track of club duties is something a club switches on deliberately. If yours does not, there is no administration either, and your dashboard stays quiet about it. A club that does nothing with duties does not get a card nagging about a norm that was never set — and neither do you.

There are three other reasons why the card might be missing for you:

• The club is keeping the totals in-house for now. A club can perfectly well keep the administration without showing it to its members yet, for instance because it wants to get it right itself first. That is a choice, not a fault.
• There is no norm set for you. As long as the club has not recorded how many duties belong to a season, there is nothing to count down from and the card stays away.
• You are exempt. If the club has released you from the obligation this season, your norm is zero and the card has nothing to report.

In all three cases the answer is the same: that is for the club to arrange, not you. One question to whoever does the club administration and you know which of the three it is.

What "2 of 5 duties" actually means

On the left is what has been booked against your name, on the right what the club asks of you this season. The word in between is the club's own: some count in duties, others in turns or points. So if it says turns rather than duties, that is simply the word your club uses.

Two things about that left-hand number take people by surprise.

It can contain halves. Not every duty weighs the same. Behind each type of duty sits a weight, and it need not be a whole number: a club that considers refereeing heavier than scoring can let a refereeing turn count for one and a half duties and a scoring turn for half. So if you are on 2.5, that is not a rounding error but exactly what you have done.

At many clubs a duty still to come already counts. The moment you are rostered on for something, that number goes up — the assumption being that you will simply turn up that evening. At other clubs a duty only counts once somebody from the club has ticked off that you really were there. Which of the two applies to you is in the sentence under the number: it tells you whether anything unconfirmed is included, and whether that counts or not.

What never counts: a duty you withdrew from, and a duty you failed to turn up for. A match that did not go ahead does not count either, but it is not held against you.

Where that number on the right comes from

The club sets the norm, per season. You only see the outcome — and that is deliberate. The sentence under your total does tell you where it comes from, because a number nobody can explain only produces rows at the AGM. So it says in as many words whether this is the norm for the whole club, a norm attached to your team, a norm for the whole family, or an arrangement made specially for you. The more specific the arrangement, the heavier it weighs: a personal arrangement overrides the club norm.

That same sentence also names an exemption if one applies to you. Clubs often exempt members under or over a certain age, and sometimes coaches, committee members or board members as well. On top of that a club can record a personal exemption — whole or partial — with a reason attached, an injury for example. You get to read that reason; it is meant to be told to you.

If you think the norm itself is too high or too low, that is not a message to your coach but a conversation about policy: who takes a turn, may you buy your way out of a duty, and what happens if somebody does nothing. That belongs with the committee, and the considerations are set out in dividing up the jobs in a club.

Why a parent also sees their children's total

For junior members below whatever age limit the club uses, it is the parent who does the duty — that is the arrangement at most clubs, and the rota is built that way too. Which rules apply and how duties are spread across the teams is covered in planning bar duties for the whole club. For you as a parent it means there is an obligation that formally hangs off your child's name.

That is why your card counts that obligation in. What you see is the sum: your own norm plus that of your children at this club, and against it everything booked against your names. One number, then, not a row per child. If a child plays at another club, that stays neatly outside it.

The condition is that you are linked to your child in the app; how that works is described in adding parents to your team. Without that link you are, as far as the administration is concerned, just another member, and you will not see your child's total — which is exactly the intention.

What you do not see, and why not

You never see a fellow member's total. That is not meanness but a principle: this administration is about who is not meeting their obligation, and at many clubs there is a consequence attached. It also says something about a home situation — who cannot stand behind the bar in the evenings. The member side of the app can therefore literally fetch nothing but your own lines and those of your children.

You do not see the admin's notes either. Whoever keeps the administration sometimes writes something alongside ("mother will call back", "no-show twice"); that is working material and stays inside the admin screen. The reason for an exemption that is meant for you does come through.

And you cannot tick off your own duty. Only whoever does the club administration can do that, and it is built that way on purpose: an administration in which everyone puts their own tick is no longer evidence but a wish list. What you can do yourself is sign up for a duty that still has a place free; that goes through the calendar and is answered in the article on the club rota.

The total is wrong — what then?

Read the sentence under the number first. Usually the answer is already there: something in it has not been ticked off yet, or the norm turned out to be a different one from the one you had in mind.

If that gets you nowhere, work through these three:

• Has the duty been processed yet? A duty only appears on the admin's list after it has taken place, and they do not go through that list every morning. Give it a few days before you raise it.
• Did you swap with somebody? The administration books against the name in the app, not against whoever actually stood there that evening. So put a private swap into the app as well: you withdraw from that duty, the other person signs up. Agreeing it in the group chat alone changes nothing about the booking.
• Does your child have their own login? Then duties may be booked against that account instead. The club counts them, but you do not see them on your card, so your number ends up lower than the club's. If that applies to you, the sentence under your total says so.

If something is still left over after that, send one message to whoever keeps the administration, with the date and the type of duty in it. That is a correction that takes half a minute. An argument at the bar about who did what takes longer and achieves less.

Frequently asked questions

Further reading

Bar duty roster for your whole club: one tap, a year sorted What does a player see in Koach? The player account explained Koach for parents: following your child's development

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