Duties & rotas
Rotas. Not ring-rounds.
Duties is how the club works out who is on race officer, safety boat or galley, and gets them to agree to it. It's the job most committees find hardest to do fairly, and the one that most often falls to a single volunteer with a spreadsheet.
The rota builds itself from your season's calendar.
Point it at an event type or a race series and it gathers the right days and stamps the right empty slots. Set the season's racing up once and the duty slots follow, rather than a whole season being retyped into a separate roster.
It only offers members who said yes.
Members set which duties they're willing to do, the days they'd rather not and the dates they're away, and every fill method reads it. That's the difference between a rota people accept and one they quietly ignore.
You can show it was fair.
Set how many duties a member owes per season, then see the load by role and by member, and who has done their share and who hasn't. The argument at the AGM stops being about impressions.
From one club day to a whole season
- Describe what a day needs, once: a role, how many, and who can fill it, saved as a reusable template per kind of event. Club racing might need a race officer, an assistant and two safety crew; a quiet club day might need only safety cover
- Gate roles by qualification: anyone put on safety crew without a valid powerboat ticket is flagged, on the same standard applied to instructing and boat hire
- Fill it three ways: by hand, with the picker ranking best match first and flagging each member as willing, qualified, away or already at their cap; or by rules, giving each slot to the matching member with the fewest duties this season, either placing them directly or inviting them to claim it
- Never double-count the cover: a day's roles can be filled by volunteers or by paid staff, so when a manager rosters someone onto a shift, the matching duty shows as covered instead of being offered to a member as well
- Publish deliberately: nothing reaches a member until you publish, then everyone assigned is asked to accept or decline, matching members hear about open duties they could pick up, and reminders go out automatically at two points you choose, only ever to people actually on a duty
- Handle what happens next: swaps and claims on unfilled duties, automatic for qualified members or checked by an administrator as your club prefers, an optional paid buyout collected online, and a configured consequence for no-shows
- See the gap early: unfilled duties and pending swaps are counted on the committee dashboard, so the hole in three weeks' time is visible now
- Protect junior activity: mark a rota as covering under-18s and anyone without verified, in-date DBS and safeguarding training is flagged
Who duty rotas help the most
Sailing Secretary or duty officer
No more a fortnight of emails to build a season, and phoning round to fill Sunday.
Club manager or team leader
No more rostering your paid staff separately, then finding the two rotas disagree about who is covering Saturday.
Members
No more being put on a duty you can't do, on a weekend you're away.
Race Officer
No more assuming the day's team rather than knowing it.
Commodore or Chair
No more the same six volunteers carrying every duty, and a private tally to prove it.
Duties and rotas are included in
- Essentialsnot included
- Clubincluded
- Club Proincluded
- Swaps, buyout, reminders and the fairness and compliance views are all included in Club.
- Club Pro adds the SailAI rota optimiser.
- Safeguarding clearance checks are in every plan.
The SailAI difference
On Club Pro, the duty rota optimiser plans the whole season at once rather than slot by slot. It balances fair shares, avoids the same people on back-to-back weekends, and mixes experienced members with newer ones. It only proposes members who are qualified, willing, not away and under their cap, and on a junior rota it will not propose anyone without clearance. What you get is a proposal to review: every pick with its reasoning, grouped by date, plus an honest account of anything it couldn't fill and why. Untick what you disagree with, then apply. Nothing is assigned until you approve it, and it's available as an assist on any rota even if your club normally fills by hand.
Discover SailAI →