Complaints

The Complaints page is your club's conduct register: what was alleged, who handled it, what was decided, and when. It sits beside the Incidents register but answers a different question — Incidents records what happened to someone's body, Complaints records what someone says about another person's conduct. You'll find it under Club operations → Complaints.

Complaints are permanent records. They can be closed, but never deleted — so a committee that turns over every year still has one honest account of what the club did.

Who can use this

Administrators only. Moderators cannot open the page at all: it returns a "not found", because how many conduct complaints a club is carrying is itself sensitive information. Platform staff at ClubHelix can read a register when they are helping you, but the forms are not shown to them — recording, updating and closing a complaint stays with your own administrators.

There is no plan requirement. Every organisation on every plan gets the register.

What's on the page

• Stat tiles: complaints still open, the total on the register, and how many organisations sit beneath you in your hierarchy.
• Record a complaint — the intake form.
• The register — every complaint as a card, newest first, with its notes, its status and its outcome.
• Your policy for the organisations beneath you — only shown to a governing body that actually has clubs beneath it.

Step by step

Record a complaint

1. Fill in What is the complaint about? — a short subject line the committee will recognise later.
2. Person complained about — the respondent. This is required: a register entry with nobody named is not a record of anything.
3. Pick a Category and a Severity. Both are used to sort the register and to roll counts up to a governing body, so choose them honestly rather than kindly.
4. When did it happen? (optional) — the date of the conduct itself, which is often well before the day someone spoke up.
5. Who raised it? — the complainant's name, or tick the anonymous box and their name is not recorded at all.
6. What happened? — the account as it was given to you. Write what was said, not what you concluded.
7. Save. The complaint enters the register as Received, stamped with your name and the time.

Work it through

1. Move the complaint to Under review while it is being looked into.
2. Set Handled by to the person actually dealing with it — usually a committee member or a member protection officer.
3. Add notes as things happen: a conversation, a meeting, a decision to seek advice. Notes are timestamped, attributed and append-only.
4. When it is finished, write the Outcome and set the status to Resolved — or Withdrawn if the complainant chose not to continue.

Refer it upward

If your organisation has a parent — a region, a state body, a federation — the card carries a Refer upward action. Use it when the complaint is beyond what a club should decide on its own: anything involving child safety, anything about a person who holds office above you, anything where you cannot be impartial. The status becomes Referred upward and the referral is timestamped. The complaint stays on your register; referring it does not hand the record away.

Set a policy for your clubs (governing bodies)

1. Choose What you can see — nothing, counts only, or the full register of every club beneath you.
2. Optionally set Acknowledge within (days) so your clubs know the standard you expect.
3. Set Keep records for (years) — the retention period the background jobs apply.
4. Write Guidance for your clubs in plain words: when they should refer something up rather than handle it themselves.

Field reference

• Category — Conduct, Harassment, Discrimination, Bullying, Child safety, Selection, Governance, Facilities, or Other.
• Severity — Low, Moderate, High or Critical. A critical complaint is one where somebody may be at risk now.
• Status — Received → Under review → Resolved, or Withdrawn, or Referred upward. Received, Under review and Referred upward all count as open.
• Who raised it — a name, or anonymous. Anonymous means no complainant name is stored, not that it is hidden from you.
• Handled by — free text, so you can name a member protection officer who is not a ClubHelix user.
• Outcome — what was actually decided. This is the field an insurer, a funder or a tribunal will ask to see.
• What you can see (parent organisations) — Nothing: each club keeps its own register. Counts only: how many, by category and status, with no names or detail. The full register: every club beneath you, read-only.
• Keep records for (years) — how long entries are retained before the retention job removes them.

Tips & FAQ

• Can I delete a complaint? No. Closing one is the intended ending; deleting a conduct record is exactly what a register exists to prevent. If something was entered in error, resolve it with an outcome that says so.
• A complaint was handled by email, months ago. Should I still record it? Yes. A register the committee only remembers to use for the hard ones is worse than no register, because the gaps look deliberate later.
• Who can see the names? Only your own administrators, and ClubHelix platform staff when they are helping you. A parent organisation sees only as much as its policy allows — and if that policy is "counts only", it genuinely cannot read names or detail.
• Is this the right place for an injury? No — use Incidents. A complaint about the conduct that led to an injury can sit here alongside it.
• Does referring upward notify anyone? It changes the status and timestamps the referral on your register. Tell your parent organisation the way you normally would as well; a status change is a record, not a message.
• What about child-safety matters? Record it, then follow your state's mandatory reporting obligations immediately. ClubHelix is a register, not a reporting channel, and nothing here discharges a legal duty to report.