Getting started

Four steps, about ten minutes, and your season runs itself from then on.

Signing in. There is no password. Enter your email at app.reftraq.com/sign-in and tap the link we send, then Finish signing in on the page it opens; the same link creates your account the first time and signs you in every time after. Nothing happens until you tap that button, so a work or school mail filter that opens links to check them can't use yours up. Links expire after a while, so if one has gone stale the page tells you and offers a fresh one. If nothing arrives within a minute, check spam, then tap Resend the link. Reading your email on a different device from the one you are signing in on? The same email has a code: type it under Code from the email on the sign-in page instead of tapping the link. The link and the code each work once, and using one uses up the other. Still stuck? Email [email protected]. Opening a game link while signed out takes you straight to that game once you are in.

Put RefTraq on your home screen. RefTraq runs in a browser, but it doesn't have to look like one. Installed, it opens full screen with its own icon and no address bar, and on an iPhone it's the only way RefTraq can send you notifications (on iOS 16.4 or later). There's nothing to download from a store and nothing to update: it's always the latest version. Which browser you install it from matters, so use the one in this table. Once your games are in and the first setup card on Home is finished, Home shows the steps for the browser you're using. On any device, a row in Settings opens this page.

On an iPhone or iPad, sign in once inside the app. The Home Screen app keeps its own sign-in, separate from Safari, and a link in your email opens Safari, not the app. Open RefTraq from your Home Screen, enter your email, and type the code from the email. The same goes for Safari's File → Add to Dock on a Mac (Safari 17 on macOS Sonoma or later). Chrome and Edge on an iPhone add the same Home Screen app as Safari, so they work too.

Other browsers. Samsung Internet on a Galaxy can add RefTraq with Add page to → Home screen; your phone may say the app was built for an older version of Android, which is how Samsung packages every website, and Install anyway is safe. Firefox on Android can add RefTraq to your home screen and Firefox on Windows can pin it to the taskbar, but Firefox on a Mac can't install it. Some browsers make a plain shortcut instead of an app, and their notifications may not arrive, which is why Chrome is the one to use on Android.

How far along you are. Once the first setup card on Home is finished, Home shows RefTraq is 60% set up (or wherever you are) with a bar and the one step that's next, with Take me there. See all steps, also in Settings → Setup steps, lists every step with why it matters: your name, your games, your calendar link, your pay, your home address, arrival times, a first drive or expense, leave reminders, your games in your calendar, who pays you and, in a phone's browser, RefTraq on your home screen. A step RefTraq couldn't check just now says so and stays out of the percent, and a step with nothing to check yet (arrival times before any game is ahead) is not done until you do it. While the first setup card is still on Home, Setup steps lists that card's steps first, with the same count Home shows, then the rest. Hide for now puts the card away on that device until a new step needs you; at 100% it goes away on its own.

1. Tell RefTraq who you are

Settings → Your name — exactly as it appears on your assigning platform's crew lists (that's how RefTraq picks your position out of each game's crew, and knows which line of the crew is you). Settings → Home address — the anchor for every mileage and travel-fee calculation. Type the street, city and state: RefTraq can't time a drive from a town alone.

2. Connect your schedule feed

Every major assigning platform (Arbiter, Assignr, RefTown, ZebraWeb…) publishes your schedule as an iCal feed — a private URL that always reflects your current assignments.

• Arbiter: Settings → Preferences → Calendar Sync → Send Email, then press and hold the link in the email and tap Copy. Don't tap the link itself: on an iPhone, Mail hands it to Apple Calendar instead of copying it. The setup card on Home has a Connect your calendar link door that walks through it: pick who assigns your games, follow the numbered steps, paste the link, and RefTraq saves it and pulls your games in. A link that starts with webcal:// is fine; RefTraq reads it as https://. Paste an Arbiter page by mistake and it says where the right link is.
• Know the feed's limit: Arbiter's calendar feed carries your current and upcoming assignments only — past games roll out of it (in our testing, even the widest Date Range preference didn't bring them back). That's fine: history comes in through Settings → Import from a file or a paste instead (see the Importing guide), and the feed keeps everything current from today forward.

Add the URL under Settings → Calendar feeds → Add feed (add as many feeds as you work under). RefTraq syncs every 30 minutes from then on; Sync now forces it. New assignments and cancellations flow in on their own, and a game that vanishes from your feed gets flagged Removed for your review. Fees, notes and payments you have are never overwritten by sync, and neither is a site you picked yourself. If Arbiter reschedules a game whose day, time, site, status, crew, sport or assigning group you haven't changed yourself, the next sync moves it for you (typing its fee doesn't count); a game where you changed any of those keeps yours, and RefTraq sends you a notification and shows it in Needs attention when Arbiter moves it, so you can take Arbiter's or keep yours. Banquets and chapter meetings are recognized and skipped.

Your time zone. Assigners send game times in a standard time, and RefTraq turns them into your local time using the zone you choose: on Connect your schedule (Your time zone), or in Settings → Notification settings. Until you choose, both pages show your phone's zone ("Set from your phone: Pacific") and save it when you tap a zone, Connect, or Save on Notification settings. Turning on notifications or adding a calendar feed saves your phone's zone too, the first time, if you haven't chosen one; it never changes a zone you chose. If your phone is set to a zone outside the US, the pages ask you to pick one. With no zone chosen at all, it is Central. If you change it after games have synced, the games already on your schedule keep their old times until you tap Fix my schedule in Settings, which moves only the times RefTraq read itself, never one you typed.

The bell. The bell at the top of every page opens Notifications: everything RefTraq has told you, newest first, with a number on the bell for what you haven't read. New, moved and canceled games (a game Arbiter moved while you kept yours included, and one Arbiter put back on while you still have it canceled), leave reminders, the morning-after "Log your drive" reminder, a weekly note when money is still owed ("1 game unpaid, 1 partly paid — $30 still owed", which opens your Unpaid list), and replies to your requests all land there, whether or not your phone shows notifications. Tap one to open it, or Clear it to tidy the list; nothing is deleted, and Show cleared brings it back. What RefTraq sends, and when, is chosen in Settings → Notification settings.

3. Set what you get paid

The Set what you get paid step on Home's setup card has one door, Set what you get paid, which opens the guided setup. It starts with one question: how do you get your games? Through a chapter or association, it asks for your chapters, then your venues, then who pays you, and a Texas UIL official starts from UIL's fee schedule. On your own, it asks who books you and what each kind of event pays. You can do both, every step saves as it goes, and Skip is there. On your own gigs, once you type amounts and haven't saved them, Skip steps aside: Next goes to the same place and asks first, and so do Back, the back arrow, your phone's back button and swiping back. (Your web browser's own back button can't be stopped, so save first.) It prices the games that have no fee yet; a fee you already have is never changed. A fee schedule with no amounts in it prices nothing, so the setup step stays open until one has.

Once something is set up, the same step (and Home's money card) says Price your games, or Price the rest once some games have a fee, and both open Fee schedules. Setup's last page says You're set up only when no game this year is waiting on a fee. Otherwise it says how many are, like Almost set up: 6 games this year still have no fee, and opens Fee schedules.

Varsity football and the gate. UIL pays varsity football by each game's gross gate receipts, which RefTraq can't know. On the chapter step, check every gate range your games fall in (UIL's own words, like Gross Gate Receipts: $5,001 - $7,500), or I don't know:

• One range checked: varsity football is priced at that range, as an estimate.
• I don't know: varsity football is priced at the lowest range, the least UIL pays, as an estimate. Change a game's fee when its gate was higher.
• More than one range checked: each varsity football game keeps a blank fee (shown as —) until you set it on the game, and Needs attention lists them for you.

If you check nothing, the button says Use UIL's schedule without varsity fees and tells you how many varsity games will have no fee. You can pick or change the range any time after: Fee schedules shows a gate-range card for your UIL Football schedule. Picking a range prices this school year's varsity games that have no fee; a game that already has a fee keeps it.

Before your games are in. Set what you get paid shows UIL's own fee schedule, not a blank form, unless something says you officiate outside Texas. Check the sports you work and it sets up UIL's amounts, ready to price your games as they arrive.

Rather type your own rates? Settings → Pay → Fee rules, line by line opens Fee schedules, where you can start a new schedule. Rules match on level, position and more, blank means any, and new games price themselves as they sync. Two things to know:

• Games with no fee yet on Fee schedules shows you the exact combinations from your schedule that no rule covers yet — you never have to guess what to type.
• Saving a rule or a schedule prices this year's games that have no fee set, and says how many. Apply to my games does the same for every schedule, and Price older seasons too reaches earlier years. A fee a game already has is never changed (your edits always win over automation), and a game with no fee shows —, never $0.

4. Let venues price their own drives

My sites fills itself from your feed's venue addresses. Tap Time all … drives once (on Home's Time your drives card, or in My sites) and every venue learns its one-way miles and drive time from home. From then on, logging mileage for a game arrives with the round trip already filled in — editable, never forced.

One school, two places

Football and baseball at one school are usually two places: the stadium and the diamond, with two addresses and two drives. In My sites, give a site a Sport (and a Level, when JV plays somewhere else) and each game takes its own sport's site: a baseball game at Dillon High School takes "Dillon High School · Baseball", never the football stadium's drive. A site set to Any sport fits every game, which is what every site was before. When your feed adds a venue it sets the game's sport and leaves the level to you, because one stadium usually hosts every level. Mark a playoff stadium a Neutral site: the feed adds a playoff or tournament venue that way, and a playoff game's site list shows your neutral sites first. A playoff game at a neutral stadium never takes the host school's drive, address or travel pay.

Leaving from work, or anywhere else

RefTraq counts your leave time back from home. If you drive to some games from work, save Work in Settings → Leaving from with its address, and choose it as where your games usually leave from. If only some games do, open Rules by day and time on that screen ("Tuesdays, games before 7:00 PM → Work"); the first rule that fits a game wins. Any one game can leave from somewhere else too: choose the place under When to get there on the game's page.

A drive from a saved place is never guessed from your drive from home. Until it is timed, the game and Home's Your day say which drive is missing and offer Time the drive from Work, one tap, and give no leave time. Your mileage log doesn't change: it still records the trip to the game, and whether a trip from work counts differently is a question for your preparer.

Stops on the way

Meeting the crew at the Gatlin truck stop, picking up a partner, stopping for gas: under Getting there on a game's page, add up to three stops, each with an optional address, a time to be there and how long you stay. Or build the route in Google Maps (tap Directions, add your stops), copy the link from the address bar and tap Paste a Google Maps route. RefTraq counts the leave time back through your stops, never guesses a drive between two stops it hasn't timed (it says which one), and never assumes how long a stop takes. Tap Time these legs and RefTraq asks Google Maps for each drive on the way it hasn't timed, without traffic, counted toward the same daily limit as any drive you time; change an address and that drive reads as not timed again. Who you meet stays on the game.

Two games in one day

Only the day's first game is a trip from home. A double-header's second game says "You'll already be there from the earlier game." and gives no leave time, and a later game at another venue says the drive is from the earlier venue, which RefTraq doesn't know. Neither asks you to time a drive or gets a ! for one, on its page or in your calendar. If the earlier game is canceled, the next one becomes the day's first trip.

Your games in your calendar

Settings → Your games in your calendar gives you one private link to add to Google, Apple or Outlook Calendar. Every game is in it with when to leave, and when RefTraq knows a real leave time (a timed drive, or every drive through your stops, and an arrival time) the drive is its own event too: "Leave for Herrmann Field · Varsity Football", from when you leave to when you reach your first stop or the venue. It lists your stops with their times, each timed drive without traffic, the miles each way, when to be at the venue and a Google Maps link, and it reminds you 15 and 5 minutes before you leave. Apple Calendar and Outlook ring those reminders; Google Calendar ignores reminders in a calendar you subscribe to, so it won't buzz. A double-header's second game, and a later game at another venue, get no drive event, for the reasons above. Fees, payments, notes and other officials' names are never in your calendar.

Bringing history with you? Settings → Import from a file or a paste takes a straight copy-paste from whatever spreadsheet you've been keeping — any layout — and reconciles it against your games. See the Importing guide.

Open RefTraq →