Update League Site Settings

➧ Confirm Billing Contact

SwimTopia sends renewal reminders and invoicing to the email listed as your Billing Contact, so this must remain up-to-date to avoid any service disruption. (Also add billing@swimtopia.com to your contacts/address book).

This is found under Settings > Billing Contact.

➞ See our Billing Support & Policies Overview article for additional billing details

➧ Confirm Your Online Payment Account is Ready

If you plan to collect League Fees online or sell merchandise through your online store, ensure your Stripe account is in good standing each season. Resolving issues or setting up an account can take time, so we suggest getting this started right away. 

Is a new volunteer in charge of your Stripe account?

If they are not already listed as a Business Representative or Team Member on your Stripe account, you will need to add them due to a mobile verification step to access your account. See ➞ Stripe Account Access & Management - Add/Remove Team Members

Do you need to set up an online payment account?

You need an account to accept online payments. Reference our step-by-step tutorial ➞ Stripe Account Setup

➧ Update Division Assignments

At the beginning of each new season, you'll need to assign your teams to the correct division. Go to Manage League > Settings > Division Assignments, and review the list of SwimTopia teams. If any SwimTopia teams are missing from the list, contact leagues@swimtopia.com. Use the drop-down menu next to each team to select the appropriate division assignment:

Learn more about this topic ➞ Setting up Divisions for Your League. 

Create Your New Season

➧ What is a Season?

A Season is simply a span of time during which your team’s activities take place. 

• A season defines a range of time, from the start date to the end date (SwimTopia default is calendar year).
• Seasons are used to organize your events, athlete affiliations, role assignments, sponsorships and registrations.
• The selected season determines which season is currently active, regardless of the current date.
• Members who are affiliated with the active season are included in Communications and Reports.
• If a season has an age-up date, that date is used to determine athlete ages for age-group membership.
• By setting the active season, you can control when your team "rolls over to the next season."

➧ Setting Your Acitve Season

One of the most critical aspects of managing a season is setting the “active season.” This setting determines which season is currently active, regardless of the actual date. This is important because roles, meet schedule, and reports will all default to the active season. This means that if the season is not set correctly, all these critical aspects of team management could be out of sync.

When the current date falls outside the time that defines your active season, you'll see a reminder that your season is out of date. When you go to Schedule > Seasons and click on Fix Active Season, your new season will be created for you.

Or you can select +Add Season to create one manually. (also update the age-up date)

Past season data can be found by selecting the season from a drop-down box (People), from the left margin where applicable (Registration/Schedule), or from the Reports tab.

Why did the information disappear?

Once you change your season, you might notice that the previous season's role assignments, people/roster, division assignments, meets/events, sponsors, and reporting information seem to “disappear." This is because this information is tied to the previous season.  

Past season data can be found by selecting the season from a drop-down box or from the left margin where applicable (Registration/Schedule), or from the Reports tab.

Learn more about this topic ➞ Creating & Managing Your Seasons 

After Creating Your Season

➧ Update Access to Site Administrators and Coordinators

As you transition to a new season, one of the first tasks is to ensure the correct people have access to either all or specific areas of the league site. When you go to your People page, the members listed are those with an affiliation to the current season (you can easily change to a different season the season drop-down box).

Full Access (Red Badge) Site Admins

Admin accounts from the previous season, those with the red "Admin" badge, will automatically carry over each season in People. If there are admins who will not return, you can click the Revoke Admin button in their profile to remove their access.

» Tip: To give you more control over who can make changes that could affect your site, we suggest limiting administrators with full admin privileges.

Limited Permission (Role-Based) Site Admins

Many Board Members and other volunteers only need to access specific areas such as People, Meets/Events, or Reporting. You can grant partial admin privileges based on a Role to limit access of each volunteer.

➞ Learn more about managing access for your site admin and coordinator roles in our Adding New Admins and Defining Roles articles.

Manually Add Season Affiliations 

You can also manually add a Season Affiliation to volunteers who do not have an athlete participating by clicking their name on the People page. (If they are not visible in the list, search for them in a previous season using the Search function at the top.)

Click into the user account and you will see an option to add an affiliation to any season created in your site. 

Learn more about managing your members ➞ People/Roster

Roster Affiliation to New Season

When your new and returning members complete the new season’s registration form (more on this step below), they’ll be affiliated with the new season. 

If your team does not use the online registration form, you can "roll over" your previous season's roster by exporting the Athlete Roster report and then re-importing that into your site under the new season. (This method is not ideal for most teams that need to ensure updated information is captured, waiver signatures, merchandise selection, volunteering, and fees are paid.) 

Learn how to roll over your roster here ➞ Managing Your People/Roster

➧ Review Shared Acknowledgement Sections

Review your Shared Acknowledgements each season to determine if you need to make any updates (Manage League > Registration > Shared Acknowledgement Sections).  

If any changes need to be made, we HIGHLY recommend you create a new Shared Acknowledgment versus editing the existing one as changes made will propagate to all past forms. Please refer to this Help Center article to determine the best way to manage any changes to an existing acknowledgment  ➞ Managing Changes to Shared Acknowledgements 

You can use the icons to the right of each form to copy, edit or delete an existing form.  Forms will automatically be added to all teams' registration forms AFTER the Acknowledgement has been published. Any teams who have already opened registration will need to manually add it.

➧ Update Role Assignments

Role assignments are also associated with seasons.  Some roles are set up so the assignments are seasonal, and others can be set up so the assignments are ongoing from year to year when assignees do not change often.

Seasonal Roles

If the setting, “This role is reassigned every season” is checked, the role assignments will be reset each season. All members who were assigned to those roles last season will no longer be assigned to those roles. 

If you know that any of your members are repeating their roles from last season, you have the ability to manually reassign them, but keep in mind, you won't be able to assign somebody to a role if they aren’t a member of the active season.

See ➞ Update Access to Site Administrators and Coordinators if you need to manually affiliate someone to the season.

Ongoing Roles 

If the setting, “This role is reassigned every season” is unchecked, role assignments will carry over from season to season.  Once you've updated your Active Season, you'll see people in your Roster with this Role badge next to their name. If a member is not returning to one of these roles in the new season, you’ll need to manually remove them from their role assignment.

Go to Roles and then click on Role Assignments in the upper right corner.

• To remove a name, click on the “X” next to the member’s name
• To add a name, click on “Add/Remove” next to the role
• Begin typing in the name of the member, and select the name when it appears
• Click “Save.”

» Note: Changing the setting from one season to the next may produce unexpected results for previous vs new assignees. If you need to change that setting for a role after using it for a season or more, it's better to create a new one. 

Learn more about how Roles are used ➞ Defining Roles

Shared Roles 

Leagues can create Shared Roles that are pushed down to their SwimTopia teams. Shared Roles are used for positions that are common to all of the league’s teams, and especially when the league admins would like visibility to the assignments for those positions as well as the ability to easily communicate to everyone assigned to that role.  Examples include: Team President, League Rep, Head Coach, Meet Director, Technical Lead, etc. Each season, you'll want to review your Shared Role definitions and make any adjustments necessary for the new season. 

» Note: If a shared role is seasonal, last season’s role assignments will “disappear,” so you’ll want to remind your teams to assign names to those Shared Roles. 

Learn more about this topic ➞ Shared Roles. 

➧ Update Meet Templates and Meets & Events Schedule

Update Meet Templates

Review your Meet Templates each season to ensure they're set up properly.  Pay close attention to the following sections:

• Check that your Entry Rules & Seeding/Scoring Rules still apply for the new season.
• Check your Eligibility requirements, paying special attention to any "only accept entry times since" dates.
• Check that any selected Time Standard Sets are still correct

Update the Meets and Events Schedule

If you'd like to send us your league's meet schedule at the beginning of the season, we can push those meets down to the sites of all of your SwimTopia teams, and they'll be automatically added to their Schedules. 

To send a league meet schedule file to us, follow the instructions in this Help Center article ➞ Importing Your League Meet Schedule.

➧ Create or Update Benchmarks (Records, Time Stds)

Update Shared League Record Books

Create or update your Shared League Record Books to display on the league site, and share with your teams to apply those records to their Meet Maestro meets. League admins can also directly attach them to meets listed on the league site as needed. 

Learn more about this topic ➞ League Record Books 

Update Shared Time Standard Sets

Create or update your Shared Time Standards Sets and apply these to your Shared Meet Templates, so your teams can access these Time Standards to apply to applicable meets.

Learn more about this topic ➞ League Shared Time Standard Sets

➧ Edit Content on Your SwimTopia Site

Review your website content to see if there are any references to policies, dates, deadlines, etc. that are relevant to the last season but may have changed for the new season. 

You can edit those pages directly by going to Manage Site > Edit Page Content.

Need some inspiration??

Check out how other SwimTopia Leagues have set up their sites ➞ Example Customer League Sites, or watch our recorded webinar (below) to learn how you can utilize additional website design options.

➞ direct link to our Looking Good! video.

» Tip: Limiting specific dates throughout your site will expedite this process each season. If you need to list specific dates, keep track of the pages that will need to be updated.

Learn more about this topic ➞ Managing Your Website

Do you want to require a CAPTCHA to prevent spam?

If you use the Contact Us Form snippet, you might want to consider turning this feature on if your team has received any spam through your Contact Us page. You can turn this setting off at any time and revisit the need for this extra security level each season.

Learn more about this topic ➞ Contact Us Form Snippet.

➧ Update Sponsorships

If you are displaying league sponsors on your site, be aware that Sponsorships are tracked per season. Once you update your Season, old sponsors will no longer show up in the section of your website that is created by the Sponsor snippet. We offer a handy tool for copying Sponsorships that renew from one Season to another:

Go to Manage League > Website > Sponsors > Sponsorships

• Select the last season
• Select all the Sponsorships that will be renewing for the new Season - you can either select all by checking the box above the top of the list, or you can select individual Sponsorships from within the list
• Once you've selected one or more Sponsorships, you'll see a drop-down box that says "Copy to Season"
• Select your new season

Once the Sponsorships are copied to the new season, you can edit their categories.  And you can add new Sponsors to your new season's Sponsorships.

Learn more about this topic ➞ Sponsorships. 

➧ New Season Instructions & Reminders to Share with Team Admins

Update Shared Roles

Remind your team admins to review any league-shared roles on their team sites to assign the correct individuals for the new season.

Check Registration Forms to Verify League-Shared Waivers

Team admins should verify that the correct league-shared waiver is attached to their registration form for the current season on their team site.  Any registration forms that were opened prior to new waivers being published by the league will need to have the new form(s) manually added.

Verify Meet Dates are Accurate if Team is Adding Manually

If your teams would like to add the meets to their schedules prior to us running your league schedule import (example: in order to collect volunteer signups during registration), it is critical that the meet dates they use match the dates that will be on the schedule import.  As long as those dates match, the import tool will automatically merge the imported meet with the existing meet on the team's calendar.  If the dates don't match, duplicate meets will be created.

Share the SwimTopia Mobile App with Members 

This is an excellent opportunity to remind your teams about sharing the SwimTopia mobile app with their members, so they can receive your push alerts (canceled practices, rainouts, etc.), view their athletes' time history, and follow all the live action during the meet, including upcoming reminders and results. 

Learn more here ➞ ▶️ Training Video - SwimTopia's Mobile App.