Giving people access to a tournament

How an organiser adds staff to a tournament and decides what each of them may do, what the permission groups actually control, and how to work out why someone cannot reach a screen.

Updated October 13, 2026

Looking for something else? Things to ask Profixio support for

Three things are worth knowing before you start:

  • Access is given per tournament. Someone who administers this year's cup has no rights in next year's cup, or in any other tournament, until they are added there too. This surprises people who run several tournaments.
  • Access is given as groups, not as single rights. You tick one or more permission groups for a person — for example a group that covers the finance screens, or one that covers check-in. A person can have several groups at once and the rights simply add up. No group ever takes a right away from another.
  • Being able to see a menu item is not the same as being allowed in. Judge access by what happens when the page opens, not by the menu.

A person can have access for two reasons: an organiser added them to this tournament, or they come from the federation that owns the tournament or from the organisation that holds its licence. The second kind is not managed from the tournament and cannot be removed there.

  • Signing in, passwords, changing your e-mail address and social sign-in — see Accounts and signing in.
  • Federation and district users, and how those roles are registered — see Federations, districts and base data. That is also where access to leagues and series is handed out.
  • What each tournament module does and how a tournament is configured — see Tournament settings.
  • Referee registration, referee assignment and referee expenses — covered on the referee pages.
  • Team leaders and club representatives. They do not get access from this screen; their rights follow from the team or club they are registered on.

For other roles

You need an access that includes managing other users — in practice the full tournament administrator group. The person who created the tournament has it automatically.

  1. Sign in and make sure the right tournament is the active one.
  2. In the admin menu, open License and then Users. Older help material calls this screen "Access control".
  3. Click New.
  4. Type the person's e-mail address. If the address is already known to Profixio, the Name field fills in by itself. If that person already has access to this tournament, the screen switches over to editing them, so you cannot create a duplicate by accident.
  5. Tick the permission groups they should have.
  6. Save.

The user access screen

Everyone you add this way is sent an e-mail headed "Login information for" their address, telling them they now have access and giving them a link to sign in. Two things about that mail are worth knowing:

  • If the address was new to Profixio, an account is created and the mail gives them their sign-in details. They should choose their own password after signing in.
  • If the person already had a Profixio account, the mail is still sent, but the password line shows placeholder characters rather than a password. Their existing password still works and is unchanged. Warn them, or they will write back asking what their password is.

The mail is written in whatever language you are using Profixio in when you grant the access, although a few lines — the subject in particular — may come out in English.

The most common mistake is granting access to a different address from the one the person actually signs in with. If they sign in with Facebook or Google, the address on that account is what counts. See Accounts and signing in.

New access is not live in a session that is already open. The person must sign out and in again, or switch tournament, before the new screens appear.

The list of groups is the same in every tournament. Tick as many as you need — the rights add up.

During the tournament itself, the people helping you work in one of four roles: results registration (an ordinary volunteer), administrator (full access to everything), referee (access to result registration for all matches) and secretariat (check-in and lists). Work out which role each helper will have, then tick the groups that cover it.

Group What the person can do
TournamentAdmin Everything, including handing out and withdrawing access for other people. This is the usual choice for a co-organiser.
TournamentAdminRestricted Everything except managing other people's access. Use it when you want a fully working administrator but want to keep control of who gets in.
MatchScheduling Match schedules: create and change matches and register results. It also opens the separate scheduling tool.
RefereeAdmin Everything to do with referees in this tournament: add and remove referees, assign them to matches, referee settings, referee reports and referee costs, and sending SMS to referees. It opens the scheduling tool as well, but not the right to change matches or register results.
RefereeReportTeam Referee reports only — no referee register, no assignment, no costs.
Economy The finance module, plus editing teams, fees and services, and classes.
CheckinTeams Check-in and check-out: team information, editing teams, editing name lists, and the food list.
Food Only the food and allergy overview for players — no names and no other personal information.
FireAndPolice Only the emergency list: names, dates of birth and accommodation for everyone registered. Give this to safety staff and nobody else.
TeamSMS Sending SMS to registered teams.
RefereeSMS Despite the name, this currently gives the same team-SMS right as TeamSMS. If someone needs to send SMS to referees, give them RefereeAdmin instead.

A few further entries appear in the same list. Groups whose names begin with League belong to league and series administration, not to running a single cup, and are handed out from the federation's own screens — see Federations, districts and base data. If you see a group that is not in the table above and you did not create it yourself, leave it alone and ask Profixio support what it is for.

Tournaments can also have groups of their own, created by the organiser and only visible in that tournament. See "Making your own groups" below.

Explanation of the access groups

Everyone who has been added to the tournament is listed with their Name, Email and current groups.

To change what someone may do, click Edit on their row and tick or untick groups. Each tick takes effect as you make it — there is no separate save step on that panel.

To take access away completely, click Delete. You are asked to confirm, and the confirmation warns that the action is permanent. It removes all of that person's groups for this tournament only. Their Profixio account, and their access to any other tournament, is untouched. There is no undo — if you remove the wrong person, add them again.

Two things you cannot do from this screen:

  • You cannot edit or remove yourself. Your own row has no buttons. Ask another full administrator to change your access, or contact Profixio support if you are the only one.
  • You cannot remove people who are listed separately as having access from elsewhere in Profixio. Their access comes from a federation or licence role, not from this tournament.

As with adding, a change only reaches the other person when they next sign in or switch tournament.

Underneath the main list there is a second, read-only card headed "Users with access from other parts of profixio". These people can work in your tournament without ever having been added to it.

They typically come from the federation that owns the tournament, or from the club or organisation that holds the licence the tournament runs on. Club and district users who are not listed here have to be added by an organiser like anyone else.

This access cannot be edited or removed from the tournament. If someone should not have it, it has to be changed where their federation role is registered — see Federations, districts and base data.

Federation staff can also administer and delete tournaments their federation owns, which ordinary tournament administrators cannot.

If the card is empty it simply reads that no users were found; that is normal for a tournament run outside a federation licence.

The RefereeAdmin group on this page applies to one tournament. It lets the person add and remove referees, assign them to matches, change the referee settings for that tournament, handle referee reports and referee costs, and send SMS to referees. It also opens the scheduling tool, because assigning referees means working in the schedule — but on its own it does not let them change matches or register results. If your referee co-ordinator also needs to move matches or enter scores, add MatchScheduling as well.

The referee-administrator role on a person's federation or district record is something else entirely. It governs referee work across the federation's leagues and series — referee registers, referee assignment in league play, and who may see protected referee information. It is set where the person's federation role is registered, not from a tournament, and giving someone the tournament group does not give them any of it.

If a referee co-ordinator only needs to write and read referee reports, give them RefereeReportTeam rather than the full referee group.

Registering as a referee, being assigned to matches and claiming expenses are covered on the referee pages, not here.

The standard groups cover most needs, but a tournament can define its own. At the top of the user access screen there is a link marked "Advanced View". It opens an older, fuller screen where you can:

  • create a group that exists only in your tournament and give it a name your volunteers recognise,
  • rename or delete the groups you created yourself,
  • see exactly which individual rights each group holds, and who is in which group.

You cannot change the rights inside a standard group, or the order the groups are listed in — both are shared by every tournament in the system. Ask support if a standard group is close to what you need but not quite right.

There is also a "Group explanation" link on the same screen, which opens the reference article for the standard groups.

The advanced screen needs the same access as the ordinary one, so only someone who can manage users will see it.

Work through these in order. They are listed by how often they turn out to be the answer.

  1. Are they signed in with the address you granted? Ask them to read out the address shown in their profile. Social sign-in often uses a different address from the one they gave you.
  2. Have they signed in again since you granted it? Permissions are read when a person signs in and when they switch tournament. Until then their session still holds the old rights. Signing out and in again fixes it.
  3. Is the right tournament active for them? Access is per tournament. If they administer several, the menu shows the rights for whichever one is currently selected — switching tournament reloads their rights.
  4. Do they actually have a group that covers it? Open their row and check. Remember that the restricted full-access group deliberately lacks the user access screen itself, and that the referee group does not include changing matches.
  5. Is the tournament approved and activated? For a tournament that has not been approved and activated on a licence, almost all permissions are ignored, so a correctly ticked group can still show nothing at all. Contact support if you are unsure of the tournament's status.
  6. Is the module part of your tournament at all? Whole areas — invoicing, SMS, check-in — depend on what the tournament has been set up with. See Tournament settings.
  7. Menu item missing but the person can still work? The menu list and the page rules are maintained separately, so an entry can be hidden for someone who would in fact be allowed in. If they can reach the page from a direct link or from another screen, report the missing menu entry to support rather than changing their permissions.

If a change to someone's federation role or licence was made in the last few minutes, allow a short while before testing again — that information is cached briefly.

Behaviour Rule
Where Admin menu, License then Users
Who may open it Anyone with a group that includes managing user access — in practice the full tournament administrator group, plus federation staff
Scope One tournament. The same person must be added separately in every tournament
Add New, then e-mail address, name, and one or more groups
E-mail sent Always, headed "Login information for" the address. A brand-new account receives its sign-in details; an existing account receives the same mail with a placeholder instead of a password, and keeps its old password
Mail language The language the granting administrator is using; a few lines, including the subject, may appear in English
Address already on the tournament The screen switches to editing that person; no duplicate is created
Edit Edit; each tick takes effect immediately, no save step
Remove Delete with a confirmation; permanent; removes the person's groups for this tournament only
Yourself Your own row has no Edit or Delete button
When changes take effect Next time the person signs in or switches tournament
Groups combine Yes — rights add up; no group subtracts a right
Own groups Can be created, renamed and deleted for a single tournament from "Advanced View"
Access from elsewhere Listed read-only under "Users with access from other parts of profixio"; not removable here
Empty states "Tournament is not connected to any users" for the main list, "Could not find any users" for the second card

Was this page helpful?

@scripts @endscripts