Referee Assistant is a relational database that is used for assigning referees to games. Referee Assistant is a Microsoft Access database application, however, Microsoft Access is not required to use the program.
All versions of Referee Assistant are able to perform the following tasks:
Store and report basic demographic information on each referee, team administrator, and coach
Track and manage referee ability level and game difficulty level
Manage referee day and time conflicts (specify dates and times a particular referee is not available to officiate)
Assign referees to games, taking into account day/time conflicts, referee ability. Referees can be manually assigned or automatically assigned by Referee Assistant.
Manage conflicts between referees and teams
Manage referee fees based on Age Group and officiating position (referee/assistant referee/fourth official)
Import referees and games from a tab-delimited text file
Generate the following reports:
Referee demographics
List of games, grouped by any of the following:
Date/time/field
Field
Team
Referee
League
Age Group
Mailing labels
Data wallet cards, which can be used by the referee during a game.
For the Standard and Professional Editions:
Billing Reports, based on
pre-season (anticipated officiating schemes & coverage) or post-season (actual scheme used and officials assigned)
by team or by team administrator
Payroll reports for referees, both one-page-per-referee and a summary of payroll for all referees.
In addition to the above features, the versions of Referee Assistant differ in the following ways:
| Feature | Youth | Standard | Professional |
| Manage conflicts between a referee and the day/time a team is playing | No | No | Yes |
| Manage referee fees based on Age Group, system of control, and officiating position | No | No | Yes |
| Auto-assign referee to back-to-back games on the same field | No | No | Yes |
| Add new officiating systems of control | No | No | Yes |
| Zone assigning | No | No | Yes |
| League assigning | No | No | Yes |
| Distance-based assigning | No | No | Yes |
| E-mail assignments to referees | No | No | Yes |
| Track game cancellations and declined assignments | No | No | Yes |
| Mileage and other referee expenses | No | No | Yes |
| Manage the billing process for teams/soccer associations | No | Yes | Yes |
| Manage referee payroll process. | No | Yes | Yes |
| Manage referee fees based on Age Group and officiating position (referee/assistant referee/fourth official) | No | Yes | Yes |
| Manage referee fees based on Age Group and officiating system | No | No | Yes |
| E-mail assignments to referees | No | No | Yes |
| Manage referee fees based on Age Group and officiating position (referee/assistant referee/fourth official) | No | No | Yes |
Games and referees can be imported into Referee Assistant, but assignments cannot be imported into Referee Assistant
For the Youth and Standard editions, all referees are assumed to be able to work at all locations.
Assignments cannot be imported; referees must be assigned from within the Referee Assistant program
GameData files cannot be merged
Relational databases are a type of database management system that stores information in the form of related tables. Relational databases are powerful because they require few assumptions about how data is related or how it will be extracted from the database. As a result, the same database can be viewed in many different ways.
An important feature of relational systems is that a single database can be spread across several tables. This differs from Excel spreadsheets, in which each database is self-contained in a single table/spreadsheet.
Definition of Relational Database taken from www.webopedia.com
As changes are made to games, teams, referees, or other entities in Referee Assistant, the changes are automatically committed to the database as you make them. If you make changes to a word processor document, you have the option of saving changes or discarding changes when you have completed working with the document. With Referee Assistant, some changes may be able to be "un-done" by using the Undo function, but this is typically limited to the most recent change. The changes that you make to games, teams, referees, etc. are permanently committed to the database as soon as you make them.