Recently, there has been a lot of confusion about when and how referees are paid. Two things every referee should know up front is that they are not paid after every game and every referee is paid for all games worked as long as they have met their reporting responsibilities. Hopefully, this article will clarify any remaining confusion.
History
First, it may be helpful to review a little of the history of how referees have been paid in southwest Idaho. Up until about 5 years ago, there were three primary ways referees were paid depending on the league or event. Most leagues, like the TVSL or CYSA (predecessors to the present day D-3 and Rush Select) sent checks to SWISRA once a season and referees were paid by check in July and December. High school referees were paid by check by each individual high school at the time of the game. Tournaments, some leagues like SISL and exchanges paid referees cash on the field.
Everyone recognized that all of these systems had flaws. For instance, paying referees cash on the field raised possible IRS problems for both the payor and the individual referee. Therefore, a slow transition began toward using the RefPay system. The transition has not gone as smoothly as everyone had anticipated for a wide variety of reasons that we will not address in this article.
Current System
At the present time, all tournaments, D-3, Rush Select, FC Nova Youth and BSL and most high schools use RefPay to pay referees. A few high schools still use check payments and SISL continues to pay cash.
Except for high school and SISL, referees are not paid after every game.
SWISRA enters into contracts with all the leagues it serves. Currently, this includes D-3, Rush Select, FC Nova Youth League and BSL. SWISRA does not have anything to do with payments to referees for high school or SISL games. The terms of each contract dictate when and how often SWISRA may bill the leagues for referee services. Once a league is billed, SWISRA waits for the bill to be paid and deposits the money into it’s bank account when the payment is received. Once the league’s check clears the bank, the SWISRA treasurer transfers the funds needed to pay referees to SWISRA’s RefPay account. RefPay holds the funds for a few days before allowing referees to be paid. At the end of the holding period, the SWISRA treasurer transfers money to individual referee RefPay accounts for the games that have been paid by that league. Please remember that the SWISRA treasurer is a volunteer who is not compensated in any way for the thankless task of paying referees and maintaining SWISRA’s books. The treasurer also has a regular full time job and can’t always respond immediately to each inquiry sent to him.
SWISRA does not wait for all the leagues and tournaments to pay their bills before paying referees. Referees are paid when each league pays their referee bill and the funds become available. Therefore, referees may get several payments over the course of weeks or months. This raises some confusion as referees often wonder why they haven’t been paid for all games they worked. A referee can always check their paysheets in Arbiter to see exactly which games they have been paid for and compare against their schedule to see which games remain unpaid. This comparison can also be a good indicator of which leagues have paid SWISRA and which have not.
If you believe you haven’t been paid for a game, please wait until August 1 for spring games and January 1 for fall games before sending an inquiry to the SWISRA treasurer. It is always a good idea to copy the SWISRA president and the assignor on these kinds of communications. Their respective email addresses can be found on this site.
Getting Your Money
SWISRA transfers money to your RefPay account as noted above. After that, it is up to you to decide how you want to handle your money. You must login to your account at refpay.com . Once there, you may request that any amount of money in your RefPay account be electronically transferred to your bank account; you many request to have the money added to your RefPay debit card if you signed up for one; you may request that funds be sent to you in a check (fees apply); or you may now setup an automatic transfer to your bank account (fees apply). Finally, you can set your RefPay account to send you an email every time you are paid. Go to “My Profile -> My Preferences -> Modify” in your refpay.com account to set this up. If you have specific questions about using RefPay, these are best addressed through the support department at refpay.com .
Where Do We Go From Here?
The SWISRA board has indicated that one of it’s primary goals going forward is to improve the method and frequency of payments to referees. However, it cannot do this alone. It will require the cooperation of the various leagues and modifications to current and future contracts. Hopefully, the leagues will see the benefits of paying referees more often and will work with SWISRA to improve the system.
Conclusion
Finally, if you have any other questions, please be sure to check the FAQs section on this site. It can be reached by clicking the FAQs menu item at the top of every page. If you have any suggestions on how to improve the payment system (remembering that SWISRA probably can’t do anything unilaterally), please email them to the SWISRA board.
