Auto-Scheduling Fixtures

Once your fixtures are imported, the Fixture Staging Area is where they wait before going on the calendar. From there, Auto-Schedule can assign pitches and kick-off times for you in one go, instead of doing it match by match.

What you'll learn

What the Fixture Staging Area shows you

How the Auto-Schedule tool assigns pitches and times

What the row badges and warnings mean

What to do if pitches are running out

Quick Steps

Open the Fixture Staging Area* — Reach it from Season Hub step 5, or via *Review Staged on the Club Calendar.

Check row badges* — Each fixture shows **Ready**, **Incomplete**, **Conflict** or *Duplicate?, plus a Home/Away toggle. If a kick-off time came from FA data, the time field is tagged "(from FA data)".

Import more if needed* — Use **Import More** to bring in additional fixtures, or *Remove All to clear the staging list and start again.

Open Auto-Schedule* — Set your **Earliest kick-off** (default 09:00) and **Latest finish** (default 17:00). Tick *"Re-schedule all (clear existing times first)" if you want to redo fixtures that already have times.

Press Run Auto-Schedule — Unscheduled home fixtures are assigned to their preferred pitches and stacked back-to-back, honouring real FA kick-off times where available and working around anything already on the calendar. Fixtures are always ordered by FA kick-off time then alphabetically, so the same set of fixtures schedules the same way every time.

Commit to Calendar* — Once you're happy with the schedule, press *Commit to Calendar to add everything to your club calendar.

Setting pitch preferences

Auto-Schedule uses the pitch preferences set in Facilities settings — assign teams to pitches under "Preferred Teams" before running it so fixtures land in the right place.

Understanding the warnings

Scheduling conflicts — overlapping times on the same pitch. You can still commit, but worth checking before you do.

Possible duplicate fixtures — likely the same fixture imported twice.

Pitch capacity reached — extend your latest finish time, add pitches or sub-pitches, or spread fixtures across more match days.

No pitch assigned — the fixture's team has no preferred pitch set in Facilities, so it was skipped.

Placed on a fallback pitch — the team's preferred pitch was full, so the fixture was placed elsewhere instead.

Anything left over?

Fixtures that would finish after your latest finish time are skipped rather than forced in — just extend the latest finish or free up pitch time and run Auto-Schedule again.