DutyGO Documentation

When you open the portal, you'll first be asked to find your club by name. Start typing and select it from the list, then sign in with the email and password your club admin gave you (or that you set yourself, if your club allows self-signup).

If you belong to more than one club, they'll appear under Your clubs so you can switch between them without searching again. DutyGO remembers your last selected club, so next time you visit you'll be taken straight to it.

The Roster tab is your home screen. At the top, your upcoming duties are laid out as cards so you can see at a glance what you're signed up for and when.

Below that is the full schedule for your club, searchable by event name, date, or role. Admins also see a Show Drafts toggle here to preview events that haven't been published yet.

Under Profile, you can update your name, phone number, and car registration at any time. Your email address is shown but can only be changed from the Security section, since it's tied to how you sign in.

Your qualifications are listed read-only here. If one is missing or incorrect, ask your club admin to update it, since only admins can assign qualifications.

Each event on the roster is a card listing its roles. Every role shows whether it's open, filled, or reserved, and which qualifications (if any) are required, a role can require more than one, and a volunteer needs to hold all of them to take it. Roles you hold yourself are highlighted so they're easy to spot in a busy schedule.

An admin can add a short note to an event, shown at the top of its card and visible to everyone who can see that event, useful for things like where to meet or what to bring.

Role states

• Open: anyone qualified can volunteer.
• Filled: shows who's taken it. Admins can reassign or remove them.
• Reserved: held back by an admin, usually for someone specific who hasn't been formally assigned yet.

Find an open role on the roster and select Volunteer. If the role requires one or more qualifications you don't hold, DutyGO will tell you which are missing rather than letting the request go through. Check with your admin if you believe your qualification records are out of date.

You can only hold one role per event, and you can't volunteer for an event that's already taken place.

If your plans change, select Drop on any duty you hold to release it back to the roster. You'll be asked to confirm before it's removed.

Instead of dropping a duty outright, you can offer it as a swap. Open the Swap tab, pick one of your upcoming duties, then choose a duty currently held by someone else that you'd like in exchange. They'll receive your request in their Inbox and can accept or decline it.

If they accept, both duties change hands immediately. If they decline, nothing changes and you can try a different swap.

Finding the right duty to ask for

The target list can be long, so it comes with a search box and two filters. Search matches the event title, the role name, the person's name, and the date (typed either way round, so both 2026-09-25 and 25/09/2026 work). The role filter narrows to one kind of duty, and the person filter narrows to one member. A line above the list tells you how many of the available duties your filters are currently showing.

The list only ever offers swaps that can actually go through. Duties on an event you are already rostered for, and duties held by someone who is already on your event, are left out rather than shown and then refused. See One duty per event.

Adding a note

When you select Request, you can attach a short note (up to 500 characters) explaining why you're asking. It appears in the other person's Inbox next to the Accept and Decline buttons, and in the email they receive. Notes are optional, and they're plain text: links and formatting are shown exactly as typed, not turned into anything clickable.

You can offer the same duty to more than one person, and more than one person can ask you for the same duty. Only one of those can succeed, so the first person to accept gets the swap.

As soon as someone accepts, every other request for either of the two duties involved is closed automatically. The people who were still deciding get a short, polite note telling them the duty has already been filled, both in their Inbox and by email. Nothing changes on their own roster, and they're free to offer or accept another swap straight away.

If you happen to press Accept at the same moment as someone else, one of you will see a message saying the duty has already been filled. That isn't an error and nothing has gone wrong with your account, someone simply got there first.

Nobody can hold more than one role on the same event. This holds everywhere, not just in one place:

• Volunteering: if you already hold a role on an event, the other roles on it show "You already have a duty on this event" instead of a Volunteer button.
• Being assigned: anyone already rostered on an event is left out of the Assign list, and an assignment that would double them up is refused.
• Swapping: a swap that would leave either person holding two roles on one event is refused, both when it's offered and again when it's accepted, because the roster can move in between.

Trading two roles on the same event between two people is still allowed, since each of them still ends up with exactly one.

If your club has equipment requests turned on, some roles are marked equipment-eligible. If you hold one of these roles, you'll see a Request Equipment button on the roster. Select it to choose from your club's equipment catalog, with a quantity for items that need one, plus a free-text note for anything not on the list, if your admin allows it.

You can request or edit equipment for a role at any time, including after the event has taken place, useful if you need to report something you used, lost, or never received. If you already have a request in for a role, the button changes to Edit Request.

Editing a request that's already been marked fulfilled reopens it as pending, since your admin's earlier fulfilment was based on the old contents.

Your admins are told about the request inside DutyGO, in their own Inbox, rather than by email. Nothing is emailed unless your club has specifically switched that on.

Your Inbox collects everything waiting on you: swap requests to answer, notices that a swap you were offered has already been filled by someone else, announcements from your club admins, notices that an equipment request of yours was rejected, and your own messages to admins with any replies. A red counter on the sidebar shows how many items need your attention.

Admins see one extra card at the top, Needs Your Attention, summarising pending equipment requests, pending expense claims, and unanswered member messages, each with a button that takes you straight to it. This is how requests reach admins by default; nothing is emailed unless the club turns email on. See Request notifications.

Announcements are labelled by priority. High priority announcements are also emailed to every member; Low and Notice only appear in the Inbox.

Posting an announcement (admin)

From the Inbox tab, admins can select Manage Announcements to post a new one, save it as a draft, or edit and delete past announcements.

Under Events, give your event a title and date, then build its roles one at a time under Define Roles: a name (like "Safety Officer") and, optionally, a qualification a volunteer must hold to take it.

Choose Publish Event to make it visible to members right away, or Save Draft to keep working on it privately. All events, published or not, appear in the All Events list below the builder, where you can edit, export to PDF, or delete them at any time.

Tick Repeat Event? when creating or editing an event to generate several occurrences at once: set how many days apart (e.g. 7 for weekly) and how many total occurrences you want. Each occurrence is created as its own independent event with the same roles, all starting unfilled.

Some duties are sensitive to last-minute changes, for example a role that's difficult to backfill on short notice. Ticking Contact-only duty removal when creating or editing an event means members holding a role on it can't drop or swap it themselves; they'll see a note asking them to contact an admin instead, who can then reassign or free the role from the roster view.

This only affects members. Admins can always manage their own duties on any event, contact-only or not.

Draft events are invisible to regular members until published. Use Show Drafts on the Roster tab to preview them yourself. When you're ready, publish a single event from the All Events list, or use Publish & Alert on the Roster tab to publish every remaining draft at once.

If you already keep your season's roster in a spreadsheet, select Download Template under All Events to get a starting CSV with the exact columns DutyGO expects, then select Import CSV once it's filled in.

Columns

• Event Title and Date (as YYYY-MM-DD): rows sharing both become roles on the same event.
• Role Name: required for every row.
• Qualification: optional; leave blank for "no qualification required."
• Status: draft or published.
• Contact Only: Yes or No.

Give one event several roles by repeating its title and date on consecutive rows, one row per role. Lay it out exactly like you'd write a duty sheet by hand.

Select the PDF icon next to any event in the All Events list to download a printable roster for that event, listing every role, who holds it, and their contact details on file.

From Staff/Members, select + Add Staff Member and fill in their name and email. You don't set a password for them: they're emailed a one-time link and choose their own. That means no password you picked is ever sitting in someone else's mailbox, and a DutyGO login (which works at every club they belong to) is only ever set by the person who owns it.

If the email you enter already has a DutyGO account, from another club, you'll see a note saying so. They simply sign in with their existing password and pick your club from the list; nothing about their existing account changes.

The welcome email can carry your own words as well. See Your welcome message.

Select Export CSV first to see the exact column layout DutyGO uses for your existing staff, or build your own file with the columns Name, Email, Phone, Admin (Yes/No), Exempt (Yes/No), and Qualifications (separated by semicolons). Then select Import CSV to add everyone at once. Each genuinely new member is emailed a one-time link to set their own password; anyone who already has a DutyGO account keeps the password they have.

Qualification types are defined per club under Settings → Qualification Types, then assigned to individual members from their staff record and to roles when building an event. A role can require more than one qualification; a member can only volunteer for it, or be assigned to it, if they hold all of them.

When assigning a qualification to a specific person, you can optionally set an expiry date for just that person's copy of it, useful for certificates that need renewing. Once expired, that member can no longer volunteer for, or be assigned to, a role requiring that qualification, until an admin updates the date or re-adds it. Expiry dates are set per person, not for the qualification type itself, so the same qualification can have different expiry dates (or none at all) for different members.

Each member's staff record has an optional Admin Notes field for anything worth remembering about them, allergies, preferred duty times, or anything else relevant to running the roster.

Suspending a member blocks them from signing in without deleting their record, useful for a temporary leave of absence. Removing a member deletes their profile from this club entirely; they're notified by email, and if they belong to any other clubs on DutyGO, those memberships are completely unaffected.

On the Pro plan and above, admins can create custom roles under Settings → Custom Roles to give a non-admin member specific permissions, without making them a full admin. Each role can grant any combination of:

• Manage Events: create, edit, delete events, and assign roles
• Manage Staff: add, edit, suspend, and remove members. Can never grant or remove admin status, that stays admin-only
• View Staff: see the Staff/Members list without editing it. Included automatically with Manage Staff
• Manage Announcements: post, edit, and delete announcements
• Manage Documents: add, edit, and remove documents in the Documents tab
• Manage Settings: branding, qualification types, and club preferences. Never includes billing
• View Settings: see Settings without changing anything. Included automatically with Manage Settings
• View Analytics: see the Reports tab, fill rates, top volunteers, and duty history
• Manage Expenses: see the Expenses tab, approve, reject and mark claims paid, and export them. Grants nothing else, so a treasurer can settle claims without being able to touch the roster or the member list

Assign a role to someone from the Access dropdown when adding or editing a staff member, alongside Standard and Admin. Only a genuine admin can create, edit, or delete role definitions, someone who merely holds a role can't also define new ones, even if that role grants Manage Staff.

The Documents tab is a shared place to link to important files for your club, safety procedures, handbooks, or anything else members might need to find quickly. Every member can view the list; adding, editing, or removing a document requires the Manage Documents permission (admins always have this).

Documents are links, not uploads, paste a link to wherever the file already lives (Google Drive, Dropbox, your own site) along with a title and an optional description. Each entry also shows who added it.

When adding a document, you can optionally restrict who sees it to specific custom roles and/or specific qualifications. Leave both unselected to show it to everyone. A document is visible to anyone matching at least one of your selections. Anyone with Manage Documents can see every document regardless of restrictions, since they need to be able to manage them.

The person who originally signs up and pays for a club becomes its permanent owner. Only the owner can see or manage Settings → Billing & Centre, nobody else, including other full admins, can even see that this section exists. The owner also can't be demoted, suspended, or removed by anyone, including themselves.

The kiosk turns any tablet or spare device at your club into a self-service sign-in station. From Sign-ins, select Launch Kiosk to open it directly, or Copy Kiosk Link to send it to a device you'll set up later. The kiosk screen only shows a name field, a car registration field, and Sign In / Sign Out. Nothing else from the portal is reachable from it.

Anyone opening the kiosk link must also enter a short code before it unlocks, shown under Kiosk Unlock Code in the Sign-ins tab. Keeping the link and the code separate means a bookmarked or shared link on its own isn't enough to sign anyone in or out.

Select Generate New Code at any time to retire the current code immediately. Anyone who needs the kiosk afterward will need the new one.

The Sign-ins tab shows everyone currently or previously signed in today, alongside which duty (if any) they're rostered for. It resets automatically at the start of each day. Use + Manual Sign In to sign someone in yourself. This is useful for guests, or anyone who can't reach the kiosk.

Under Settings → Branding, set your club's name, upload an optional logo image, an admin contact email shown to members who need help, and your own primary and accent colours. These apply across the portal and the kiosk screen for anyone in your club.

A few club-wide switches live under Settings → Preferences:

• Show plan badge in sidebar: shows or hides your plan name and member count in the sidebar entirely.
• Enable contact-to-remove duty by default: sets whether new events start with contact-only mode switched on. You can still change it per event.
• Allow equipment requests: turns the equipment request feature on for your club. See Equipment catalog & requests.
• Allow custom (non-catalog) equipment requests: only shown once equipment requests are on. Lets a volunteer also type in something not on your catalog, rather than only picking from it.
• Allow expense claims (Pro and Enterprise): lets members claim travel, food and other costs against duties they held. See Turning on expense claims.

Three more settings cards sit alongside Preferences on the same screen: Welcome Message, Duty Reminders, and Request Notifications.

Once Allow equipment requests is switched on in Preferences, two new things appear in Settings:

• Equipment Catalog: the list of items volunteers can choose from. Each item can optionally use quantity, for things a volunteer might need more than one of, like radios. Leave this off for a single named thing, like a specific classroom or powerboat.
• Equipment Requests: every request submitted by a volunteer, sortable by pending or fulfilled first, or by newest. Mark a request Fulfilled once it's sorted, or Reject it with an optional reason, the volunteer is notified either way, a rejection through their Inbox.

To make a role equipment-eligible, tick Volunteers for this role can request equipment when building or editing an event, under Define Roles.

Settings → Billing & Centre shows your club's current plan, how many members you're using out of your quota, your subscription status, card on file, and when you're next billed. Limits are enforced automatically, you'll be told clearly if you try to add a qualification type, equipment catalog item, or member beyond what your plan allows.

The Starter plan allows up to 100 members, 5 qualification types, and 6 equipment catalog items. The Pro plan allows up to 300 members with unlimited qualification types and equipment catalog items. You can upgrade, downgrade, update your card, or cancel your subscription directly from this page, no need to contact support for routine billing changes.

What every plan gets

Duty swaps are unlimited on every plan, including Starter, and so are calendar sync, duty reminder emails, member messaging, and your own welcome message.

Pro and Enterprise only

• Custom roles and permissions, including Manage Expenses. See Custom roles & permissions.
• Expense claims, with tracking and CSV export. See Tracking & approving claims.

Every plan starts with a 35-day free trial. You give card details up front, nothing is charged during the trial, and you can cancel any time before it ends.

Three reset tools live under Settings → Reset Club, each scoped strictly to your own club and never affecting any other club on DutyGO:

• Reset Everything: removes all members except admins, plus events, sign-ins, swaps, announcements, equipment requests, expense claims, and member messages.
• Reset Events: removes events, sign-ins, swaps, announcements, equipment requests, expense claims, and member messages, but keeps members and branding.
• Reset Branding: restores your logo, colours, contact email, and qualification types to defaults.

The Reports tab gives you a running count of total events and roles, an overall fill rate, and a breakdown of filled versus vacant roles. The Top Volunteers table ranks members by how many duties they've completed, all-time.

Changing your password

Under Profile → Security, enter your current password and the new one you want, then select Update Password. The current password is required every time, so someone who finds your screen unlocked still cannot change it.

If you've forgotten it, use Forgot Password? on the sign-in screen instead. That emails a one-time link to the address on your account, and you set the new password from the link. The link expires and can only be used once.

Changing your email address

Enter the new address and your current password, then select Send Confirmation Link. DutyGO emails a confirmation link to the new address, and your sign-in email only changes once you open it.

Nothing changes before then: you keep signing in with your current address, so a typo can never lock you out of your account. Once confirmed, your address is updated on every club you belong to the next time you sign in.

Verifying your address

The same section shows whether your address is verified, with a Send Verification Email button if it isn't. Verifying is worth doing: it's what lets you change your address later, and it confirms that password reset emails can actually reach you.

If you're asked to sign in again

Changing your sign-in address needs proof that you're really you, not just that a browser is still signed in. If you've been signed in for a while, DutyGO may ask you to sign out and back in first. That's expected, not a fault; sign in again and the change goes through normally.

Everything in the portal works on a phone. The sidebar becomes a drawer: tap the menu icon at the top right to open it, tap anything in it to go there, and the drawer closes itself behind you.

There are two ways to sign out. The menu has a Sign Out button pinned to the bottom of the drawer, where it stays put however long the menu list gets, and the header has a sign-out icon next to the menu button so you can leave without opening the menu at all.

Your duties can go straight into Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook, or anything else that reads a standard calendar file. There are two ways to do it, both under Profile.

Download (one-off)

Download my duties (.ics) saves a file containing every upcoming duty you hold at this club. Open it and your calendar app will offer to add them. Each duty card on your dashboard also has its own Add to calendar button for a single event.

A download is a snapshot. If your duties change afterwards, or you swap one, the entries you already added won't update themselves.

Subscribe (keeps itself up to date)

Show my subscription link gives you a private web address. Add it in your calendar app as a subscribed calendar (in Google Calendar: Other calendars → From URL; on iPhone: Settings → Calendar → Accounts → Add Account → Other → Add Subscribed Calendar), and your duties keep themselves current as they change. Most calendar apps check every few hours.

The feed contains only the duties you hold. No other member's name, contact details or vehicle appears in it.

If your club has reminders switched on, you'll get an email before each duty you hold, telling you which role, which event, when it is, and any note the admin added to the event.

Your club chooses the timing, up to four lead times, for example a week before and again the day before. You'll get one email per lead time per duty, and never more than one for the same duty and lead time.

Reminders go to the address on your club record. If yours is out of date, fix it under Profile → Security.

Open the Inbox tab and select Message an Admin to write to whoever runs your club. Give it a subject and a message, and it goes to the admins your club has chosen to receive requests.

Your message, and any replies, stay in your Inbox under My Messages to Admins, so the whole exchange is in one place rather than scattered across email. When an admin replies you also get their answer by email.

The name and address on your message are taken from your club record, not typed in, so an admin can always tell who a message really came from.

For admins

Incoming messages appear in your Inbox under Member Messages, and are counted in the Needs Your Attention card at the top. Select Reply to answer (the member gets your reply by email and in their Inbox), Close when it's dealt with, or Delete to remove it entirely. You can reopen a closed thread at any time.

On Pro and Enterprise clubs that have switched expense claims on, you can claim back what a duty cost you, travel, food, accommodation, equipment, or anything else.

Find the duty on the roster or on your dashboard and select Claim expenses. Choose a category, enter the amount, and add details if it helps (mileage, what you bought, where the receipt is). Your claim goes to whoever your club has put in charge of expenses.

What you can claim

• Only against a duty you actually held.
• Up to £1,000 per claim. Anything larger needs to go through your club directly.
• Within 90 days of the duty.
• One live claim per duty per category. You can claim travel and food separately for the same duty.

Tracking your claims

Profile → My Expense Claims lists everything you've submitted with its current status: Pending, Approved, Paid, or Rejected, along with any note your club added when deciding. While a claim is still Pending you can Withdraw it; once it's been decided it stays as a record.

The Expenses tab is where claims are tracked and settled. It's visible to full admins and to anyone holding the Manage Expenses permission, so a treasurer can settle claims without also getting the roster or the member list.

At a glance

Four totals sit at the top: Pending, Approved, Paid and Rejected, each showing the money involved and how many claims make it up. They reflect whatever your filters currently show, so filtering to one member or one month re-totals immediately.

Filtering

Narrow by status, category, member, and a duty date range, plus a free-text search across member names, events, roles and details. Clear filters puts everything back. Sort by pending first, newest duty, highest amount, or by member.

Deciding a claim

• Approve: accepted, not yet paid out.
• Mark paid: money has actually gone out. Available once a claim is approved.
• Reject: with an optional reason, which the member sees on their own claim.
• Delete: removes the record entirely. Approving and rejecting are reversible in practice; deleting is not.

Export CSV on the Expenses tab downloads exactly what your filters are currently showing, with a TOTAL row at the bottom. Filter to a month, a member, or everything approved but not yet paid, then export just that.

Columns

• Duty Date, Member, Event, Role, Category
• Amount (GBP) for reading, and Amount (pence) as a whole number for arithmetic that has to be exact
• Status, Details, Decision Note
• Submitted and Decided dates

The file opens directly in Excel, Numbers, or Google Sheets, which makes it straightforward to hand to a treasurer or attach to a committee paper.

Under Settings → Welcome Message you can write your own words for new members, up to 2000 characters. It's used in two places: added to the welcome email everyone receives when you add them, and shown as a card on their dashboard the first time they sign in.

It's added to the standard email rather than replacing it, so the set-password link a new member needs is always still there.

The Use my welcome message switch turns it off without deleting what you've written, so you can go back to the standard wording and return to yours later.

Under Settings → Duty Reminders, switch on Send duty reminders and choose when they go out. You can pick up to four lead times: two weeks before, a week before, three days, two days, the day before, or on the day.

Nothing is sent until you both switch it on and pick at least one lead time. Reminders go to whoever holds each role on a published event, using the address on their club record.

What gets sent

One email per person per duty per lead time, naming the role, the event, the date, and any note you added to the event. A duty is never reminded about twice for the same lead time, even if the reminder job runs more than once.

Equipment requests, expense claims and member messages all reach admins inside DutyGO, in the Needs Your Attention card at the top of the Inbox, with a counter on the sidebar. Nothing is emailed for any of them unless you specifically ask for it.

Settings → Request Notifications controls two things:

• Notify these admins: tick the admins who should see these items. Leave every box unticked to notify all of them. This is how a club with several admins routes equipment to the two people who deal with equipment, without everyone else getting the same prompts.
• Also send these by email: off by default. Switch it on and the same admins also get an email; leave it off and they get nothing but the in-app card.

Expense claims are available on Pro and Enterprise. Switch on Allow expense claims under Settings → Preferences, and members can start claiming against duties they held. On Starter the switch is visible but greyed out, so you can see the feature exists and what upgrading gets you.

Once it's on, an Expenses tab appears for you and for anyone holding Manage Expenses. Members get a Claim expenses button on the duties they hold, and their own claim history under Profile.

The limits, and why

• £1,000 per claim, so a mistyped amount cannot become a large one.
• 90 days from the duty, so claims arrive while people still remember them.
• One live claim per duty per category, so the same journey cannot be claimed twice.

Switching the feature off stops new claims. It does not delete claims that already exist.

One DutyGO login can belong to several clubs at once, for example if you volunteer at more than one centre. Each club sees only your profile, phone number, car registration, and qualifications for that club specifically; nothing is shared between them except your login email and password.

Switch between your clubs any time from the club picker on the sign-in screen, under Your clubs.