Phase 0 — Decide and assign (before you touch anything)
- Board vote recorded, with the decision date and the target cutover date (cutover belongs between seasons, never mid-registration)
- One named migration lead (usually the registrar) and one named backup
- Renewal/notice dates of the outgoing contract confirmed in writing — notice given inside the contract window
- New platform contract signed before notice is given to the old one, so there is never a week with no platform
- A board-controlled folder (shared drive) created for everything below — not on one member's personal laptop
Phase 1 — Get your data out
Export from the current platform and open every file to verify it:
- Player records: names, birthdates, grades/school, medical/allergy notes, emergency contacts
- Guardian records: names, emails, phone numbers — emails are the key; on the new platform, family accounts are keyed by email, so a family whose email you have has nothing to re-enter
- Registration history: who played what, which seasons, payment status
- Volunteer records: hours owed/served/bought out per family, including open balances you intend to honour
- Financial records: registration revenue, processing fees paid, refund history, outstanding balances
- Rosters and schedules from recent seasons (CSV is fine)
- Board/admin email addresses — note: platforms typically hide board emails behind their own contact forms, so an admin has to export these by hand; they are not on your public pages for anyone to scrape
- Video files, if your club keeps a library — video cannot be pulled from embedded players; an admin must export the files themselves and decide where each should live
Verify before you proceed: row counts roughly match your registration totals; birthdates look sane; one family you know personally can find themselves in the export. Ambiguous duplicate records go on a list for a human to resolve, never a silent merge.
Phase 2 — Audit the website content
Your old site is bigger than you think and worth less than you fear. Measured on one real association's migration: 313 pages existed; 36 were pages worth keeping. The other ~277 were team, division, and league pages (which the new platform generates from your live season data — they stop being pages anyone maintains), plus stale and empty pages and bolt-on workarounds the new platform replaces outright.
- Walk every page of the current site and mark each: Keep / Replace with live data / Drop
- Documents and forms: bylaws, handbooks, policies (including your volunteer policy), waivers, codes of conduct — download the actual files, do not rely on links surviving
- Photos worth keeping: download originals where possible, not page screenshots
- Note anything behind a login (members-only and board pages) — a public walk-through cannot see these; list them from an admin account
- Field-status spreadsheets, embedded forms, and other bolt-ons: list each and what replaces it (these become features, not pages)
Phase 3 — Keep your address: domain and URL mapping
- Confirm the association — not a former board member, not the old vendor — controls the domain registrar account; two current board members have access
- Keep your domain (yourclub.org); plan the DNS change with the new platform's instructions and certificate setup
- Map old URLs to new pages. Bookmarks in parents' phones, a decade of search ranking, links in old emails: every old page worth keeping gets a destination. This is done before cutover, not discovered after
- Board email/contact forms recreated so enquiries reach the right people without publishing personal addresses
Phase 4 — Money and records handover (treasurer)
- Final payout from the old platform reconciled to the bank account
- Refund/credit policy for anyone mid-payment-plan at cutover — decide who honours it and write it down
- Outstanding family balances (including volunteer buyout balances) exported and loaded, or formally forgiven by board vote — pick one, do not let them evaporate silently
- Historical financials exported and filed for the association's records (audits and grant applications ask for years you no longer have a login for)
- Accounting handover: chart of accounts / QuickBooks mapping agreed with the treasurer before the first new-season transaction, not after
- New payment account verified: test transaction end-to-end — registration, payout to the association's bank, refund — before families touch it
Phase 5 — Tell families (earlier than feels necessary)
Families need to hear three things: what's changing, what they have to do (ideally: almost nothing), and where to ask questions. A workable timeline for a winter cutover ahead of spring registration:
| When | Message |
|---|---|
| 6–8 weeks out | Board announcement: we're moving, why (one honest paragraph), when registration opens, "your account comes with you — nothing to re-enter" |
| 3–4 weeks out | Practical note: registration opens [date] on the new system; sign in with the email you already use; link to the new site |
| Registration opens | Reminder with the link, plus the one thing that is different (checkout flow, bank-payment option, volunteer buyout — whatever applies to you) |
| 1 week after opening | "Problems signing in?" message naming a real person and email — most issues are a parent using a different email than the one on file |
| Season start | Close the loop: thank-you, where schedules/volunteer shifts live now, who to contact |
- Draft all five messages before cutover week; the board approves wording once, not under deadline
- FAQ answers ready for the three predictable questions: "Do I need a new account?" (No — same email.) "Did my kid's history come over?" (Yes.) "What about my volunteer hours/balance?" (Answer from Phase 4's decision.)
Phase 6 — Cutover week and after
- Registration opens on the new platform only; old platform registration closed/locked the same day — never both open at once
- First-week watch: migration lead checks sign-ins, payments, and payout daily
- Old platform kept read-only until the final export and reconciliation are filed, then cancelled in writing inside the contract window
- Post-migration board note: what surprised you, filed with the exports — the next board (and there is always a next board) will thank you
On InSeasonHQ, most of Phases 2–3 is work we do for you — site rebuilt, documents and photos re-hosted, old URLs mapped — and the migration is included in your first year. Families re-enter nothing: accounts are keyed by email. The honest limits, and what we need from you, are on our switching page. Preparing to evaluate a move? Start with SportsEngine after the PlayMetrics acquisition and the pricing guide, or book a demo and we'll walk your own site through this checklist.