Importing your history
Ten years of games in a spreadsheet? That's not a problem — that's the point. Officials kept records long before apps; RefTraq is built to take those records as-is.
The paste
- Open your spreadsheet (Excel, Google Sheets, whatever).
- Select the schedule rows — include the header row — and copy.
- RefTraq → Settings → Import from a spreadsheet → paste → Analyze.
Any layout works. The recognizer reads your headers (and knows the common variants — "Fee", "Game Fee", "Pay"; "Site", "Field", "Location"; "Received", "Paid"…), checks that each column's contents actually match what the header claims, and repairs layouts where they don't. Dates in any format, $ signs, x for paid — all understood. Arbiter's own schedule export pastes in the same way.
The review — nothing writes until you say so
Analyze shows you exactly what will happen, in buckets:
- New games — rows RefTraq has never seen become new games.
- Fills — rows matching an existing game (by date, venue, level, position, time) fill in missing fees and paid status. Your existing numbers are never overwritten — if the sheet disagrees with a value you already have, the conflict is shown, not applied.
- Ambiguous — rows the engine refuses to guess about: usually double-headers with no time column (add a Time column and re-paste to resolve), or a row identical to another. Untouched until you decide.
- Already imported / up to date — skipped. Importing the same file twice changes nothing, ever, and the app tells you so.
Practical tips
- One season per paste is easiest to review, but the engine handles a full multi-year sheet fine.
- Separate files per sport or per year? Paste them one after another — overlapping rows are recognized and skipped automatically.
- A Time column is the single biggest matching improvement you can make — it's what tells two games at the same field on the same day apart.