Overview of Transfers

Applicable to: Association and Club Administrators
Application(s): Admin Portal > Transfers & Permits

This article is for club and association administrators who are part of competitions that have transfers enabled

This article will cover the following:

How to create, approve or decline transfer requests
When a transfer is required
Time limits for transfer requests

Related articles:

Registration Email Notification Settings

What is a transfer request?

A transfer request is a request for a player to register to a new club. Transfers can be initiated by:

A player, during registration to their intended new club or
A club administrator, from the Administration Portal.

Transfers require the approval of the player’s current and new club, and their association before the player can complete their registration to their new club.

When is a transfer required?

A transfer request is only required if all of the following conditions are met:

A player is registering to a club or a club administrator has initiated the player transfer;
The player’s last club registration within the competition being registered to was to a different club; and
The competition being registered to has transfers enabled

Transfer requests are never required:

for coach or team manager registrations,
for independent (non-club) registrations,
for the first registration within a competition, and for subsequent registrations to the same club within a competition,
for registrations to the same club, to a different competition

Who approves a transfer request?

Transfer requests must be approved by the following organisations in order for the player to register to their new club:

The player’s current club
The association running the competition that the player is transferring within
The player’s new club

Club Initiated Transfer

This process is only available to the AFL and Cricket Australia.

Club administrators can initiate a player transfer. This process allows any approvals to occur ahead of time before a player registers to the new club. Only clubs that participate in an upcoming or active competition season can initiate a transfer.

To initiate a transfer:

From the menu, click Transfers & Permits
Click + New Transfer Request
Select the Competition details and use the Player fields to find the player. Select the player in the results list.
Review the details of the request and click Submit New Transfer Request.
The transfer must pass the following checks:
- Destination association is currently accepting Transfers
- The profile to transfer has an active affiliation
- The profile to transfer does not have an existing active affiliation with the club initiating the transfer
The transfer request can now be actioned by other organisations. The final approval step (by the destination club) will not required.

When the transfer is approved, the account holder of the participant and the destination club will receive emails notifying them of the successful transfer. The account holder can then register to the destination club.

Notification of Transfer Requests

To receive player transfer notifications that require your club or association's approval, your organisation must enable transfer notifications.

Go to the 'Notifications' tab in ‘My Organisation → Overview’ section of the Admin Portal.

Populate the email address to which you want notifications to be sent, and then select the Transfers and/or Permitstoggles to make these active.

Approve or decline a transfer request

When transfers are initiated, they enter the ‘pending’ status. This status is broken down into sub states as follows:

Requested - The organisation who initiated a transfers will see the transfer in this state whilst they wait for it to be approved or denied.
Upcoming - Organisations who are part of the approval process will see this state when other organisations need to approve or deny the transfer before them.
Action Now - Organisations who are part of the approval process will see this state when a transfers is ready for them to approve or deny.
Actioned - Organisations who are part of the approval process will see this state when they have already approved a transfers but are waiting for other organisations to approve or deny the transfer.

To approve or decline a transfer request, navigate to your organisation’s Transfers request list and Select ‘View’ next to a transfer with the ‘action now’ pending sub state:

Review the request and select ‘Approve’ to approve the request, or ‘Decline’ to decline the request. If you decline the request, you will need to enter a reason.

When finished, select ‘Done’ to close the request and return to your organisation’s transfer list:

Approving a transfer request

When a request is approved, the request is forwarded to the next approving organisation for approval. If your organisation is the last approving organisation, the player will receive an automatic email with a unique link to complete their registration to your club.

Approval workflow:

Email to the organisation who is next in line to approve:

Email to the participant when all approvals are complete:

Declining a transfer request

When a request is declined, the player will receive an automated email and will be unable to complete their registration to the new club:

Auto Approve Transfer Requests

Organisations have the ability to automatically approve transfer requests.

To set up automatic approvals:

From the menu, click Transfers and select the Settings tab.
Select the toggle(s) for each transfer you wish to auto-approve
Select Update & Save

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The following rules are applied:

1. An association or admin body’s approval will be auto-approved if they are:

the ‘Source Association’ and not the ‘Destination Association’ on the request and their organisation’s transfer ‘Outbound’ automatic approval setting is enabled; OR
the ‘Destination Association’ and not the ‘Source Association’ on the request and their organisation’s transfer ‘Inbound’ automatic approval setting is enabled; OR
both the ‘Source Association’ and ‘Destination Association’ on the request and their organisation’s applicable transfer ‘Internal’ automatic approval setting is enabled. For example for a player who is staying within a single competition and the "same competition" is toggled on, than it will be auto approved, however if they are moving between competition (ie Junior to Seniors competition), the applicable toggle is "Different Competition"

2. A club’s approval will be auto-approved if they are:

the ‘Source Club’ on the request and their organisation’s transfer ‘Outbound’ automatic approval setting is enabled; OR
the ‘Destination Club’ on the request and their organisation’s transfer ‘Inbound’ automatic approval setting is enabled.
A club/association’s auto-approval settings are based on their settings at the time when the transfer request is submitted.

Time limits for transfer requests

Administrators of competitions are able to set time limits for organisations to respond to a transfer request. If they don't action the request in time, the request is auto-approved to prevent participants from being held up.

For some sports, these time limits are fixed by the national sporting body and can only be changed by a request to PlayHQ. For others, competitions use PlayHQ's standard Local Transfers setup, where each association sets its own time limits when creating a competition. Both approaches are covered below.

National sporting body-set time limits

AFL

The AFL have a combined source club and source association auto-approval duration for their transfers:

Those organisations are given a combined total of 6 days after the request is created for both the source club and association to approve the request.
All approvals are due by 12:01:00 AM on the due date.
After the 6 days (144 hours from transfer submission), the request is auto-approved. Checks are completed every 6 hours on the due date to determine when the transfer will be auto-approved.
The source association may never get an opportunity to approve or decline the request if the source club doesn't action it within the 6 days.
This combined behaviour only applies if the source association and destination association are different. If they're the same, the association is treated as a destination association, and isn't instantly bypassed if the source club doesn't action the request in time.

Cricket Australia

All organisations are given 5 days after the request is created to approve the request.
All approvals are due by 12:01:00 AM on the due date.
After the 5 days (120 hours from transfer submission), the request is auto-approved. Checks are completed every 6 hours on the due date to determine when the transfer will be auto-approved.

New Zealand Cricket & Cricket Scotland

All organisations are given 7 days after the request is created to approve the request.
All approvals are due by 12:01:00 AM on the due date.
After the 7 days (168 hours from transfer submission), the request is auto-approved. Checks are completed every 6 hours on the due date to determine when the transfer will be auto-approved.

Rugby Canada

All organisations (source club, source association, destination club and destination association) are given 7 days after the request is created to approve the request. Unlike AFL, Rugby Canada doesn't use a combined source club/association duration — each organisation in the approval chain has its own independent 7-day window.
All approvals are due by 12:01:00 AM on the due date.
After the 7 days (168 hours from transfer submission), the request is auto-approved. Checks are completed every 6 hours on the due date to determine when the transfer will be auto-approved.

Basketball & Netball (Local Transfers)

Basketball and Netball competitions don't have a national-body-fixed time limit. Instead, each association configures its own time limits when it sets up a competition, using PlayHQ's standard Local Transfers setup — the same option available to any competition that turns transfers on.

Tip: When is a transfer actually required? Transfers are only required when the setting is turned on for that competition, and only for moves within it — for example, moving between clubs inside the same competition. Moving to a different association or competition doesn't require a transfer.

If transfers are toggled on while creating a new competition, the admin selects a time-out limit for each organisation as part of the transfer approval flow. The following rules then apply:

All approvals are due by 11:59:59 PM on the due date.
For the source club, the due date is the date the request was created plus the configured approval duration in days.
For each subsequent approver, the due date is the date the previous approver approved the request plus the configured approval duration in days.
A request is only auto-approved if the overall request is still pending and that organisation's approval status is still pending.

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