If you're a coach at an FA Charter Standard or England Football Accredited club, you've been told you need to "keep records." The handbook is vague about which records. Your club secretary is vague about which records. Your league might audit you, or might not, and you definitely don't want to find out the hard way.
This post is a plain-English checklist of what's actually expected, drawn from the FA's Club Accreditation criteria and what audits typically look for. None of this is legal advice — check with your county FA if you're unsure — but this is the working baseline I keep for my own U10s.
The five record categories
Charter Standard / England Football Accredited audits typically look at five things:
- Player registration records — who's on your team and which competition they're registered for
- Coach and volunteer records — DBS checks, FA qualifications, safeguarding certificates
- Match records — fixtures played, results, key events (injuries, dismissals)
- Training records — sessions held, attendance, session plans
- Financial records — subs collected, expenses paid, kit purchases
You don't need a 200-page binder. You need each of these to be retrievable if asked. Five-minute response, not a Friday-night dig through old emails.
1. Player registration records
What you need:
- Player full name, DOB, school year
- Parent/guardian name and contact details
- Medical info / allergies (parents must consent to this)
- League registration number (if your league uses one — WGS, COMET, FA Full-Time, etc.)
- Photo consent status
How to keep it simply:
- One spreadsheet per season works fine
- One row per player; columns for each of the above
- Keep a copy off-device (Google Sheets / iCloud) in case your phone dies
How Squadd helps: every player has a profile holding name, DOB, position, kit number, photo and guardian contacts. Parents can update their own contact details directly, so the data stays current without you chasing it.
2. Coach and volunteer records
What you need (for every adult who has regulated contact with kids):
- In-date DBS certificate (FA's "Enhanced" level for coaches)
- FA Safeguarding Children certificate (renewed every 3 years)
- FA Introduction to First Aid in Football certificate (renewed every 3 years)
- FA Level 1 in Coaching Football (minimum for lead coach)
How to keep it simply:
- A folder per coach (digital or physical), with PDFs of each certificate
- A reminder calendar event for each expiry date — DBS and safeguarding both expire and lapsed certs are the most common audit failure
How Squadd helps: not directly — Squadd does not store DBS PDFs, coach qualifications or safeguarding certificates. We deliberately stay clear of that data because it's sensitive and best kept in your club's own document store. Squadd does record which adults are on your team and what role they have (coach, team admin, parent), which is at least a record of who needs each qualification — the certificates themselves you'll keep elsewhere.
3. Match records
What you need per fixture:
- Date, opponent, competition, home/away
- Squad list (who actually played)
- Result
- Disciplinary events (yellows, reds)
- Match official's name (for league fixtures)
- Any injuries or incidents
How to keep it simply:
- A notebook per season works, if you're disciplined about it
- League platforms (WGS, COMET, Full-Time) require you to enter the result and team sheet anyway — that takes care of most of this
How Squadd helps: every fixture stores the date, opponent, format, squad, lineup, result, goals, cards and substitutions automatically. Longer-term player unavailability (an injury layoff, a school trip, a family holiday) is tracked separately on each player's profile with a reason and date range, so you've got a clean record of "Charlie missed weeks 12–15 with a sprained ankle." Match-day-only incidents and match officials' names you'll still note elsewhere — Squadd doesn't yet have dedicated fields for those, so keep your league platform or notebook as the canonical record for that detail.
4. Training records
What you need:
- Date, location, session plan or theme
- Attendance
- Any incidents during the session
How to keep it simply:
- Same notebook as match records, or a separate training journal
- The session plan can just be a one-line description ("Tuesday: passing in tight spaces, 9 attended")
How Squadd helps: training sessions are first-class objects in Squadd with attendance, session notes and recurring schedules. Per-session attendance is recorded. For incident logging (e.g. an injury at training, a behavioural issue), keep a separate note alongside — Squadd's training screen doesn't yet have a dedicated incident field.
5. Financial records
What you need:
- Subs collected per player (date, amount)
- Match fees collected
- Expenses paid out (kit, equipment, ref fees, pitch hire)
- Bank statements if your team has its own account
How to keep it simply:
- A second spreadsheet alongside the registration one
- Or any of the standard payment tools — GoCardless, Stripe, even a shared bank account with the team
How Squadd helps: built-in subs and payments tracking. Subs are set up per-period (e.g. "April 2026") with a paid/unpaid view per player; one-off charges (e.g. tournament fees, kit purchases) can be attached to specific fixtures. Bulk CSV export isn't there yet — for an audit you'll currently screenshot or work through the in-app views.
The five-minute audit prep
The fastest path to "compliant" is this:
- One Google Drive folder per season named e.g. "U10s 2026-27"
- Five subfolders matching the categories above
- One spreadsheet per category containing the live data
- Coach certs as PDFs in the volunteer-records subfolder
If your county FA emails you tomorrow asking for evidence of any of the above, you share the folder. Done.
If you use an app like Squadd for the day-to-day, the audit prep is even simpler — you export the relevant CSVs into the folder before each season closes and you've got a permanent record.
What you can ignore
A lot of grassroots coaches stress about record-keeping requirements that don't actually exist. You don't need:
- Written session plans for every training session (a brief title is fine)
- Signed consent forms for every away fixture (one-off consent at the start of the season is fine)
- Match reports for every game (the result + squad is enough)
- A specific software platform — the FA doesn't mandate one
The standard is retrievable evidence, not exhaustive documentation.
TL;DR
- Five categories: players, coaches, matches, training, finance.
- Standard is "retrievable in five minutes," not "elaborate binder."
- A Google Drive folder with five subfolders + a spreadsheet each will pass most audits.
- An app like Squadd handles the day-to-day record of players, fixtures, training attendance and payments. Coach certificates, match officials' names, and incident logs you'll keep elsewhere.
Squadd takes the heaviest day-to-day records — players, fixtures, training, payments — off your hands. You'll still keep a small Google Drive folder for coach certificates, match-day incident notes and the bits Squadd doesn't yet store. The 4-week free trial is a fair test of whether the time it saves is worth it.