Software Status

Volunteeria 2.0 brings together the major Training, Rota & Schedule and Volunteer Expenses releases with redesigned role-aware dashboards. Admins receive an organisation-wide operational picture; Coordinators see the appropriate organisation or assigned-volunteer scope; and volunteers see only their own upcoming work, Training and claims.

The staff dashboard now combines Needs attention, Coming up, skills and Task overviews with permitted Training deadlines, rota gaps, onboarding, certification renewals, safeguarding concerns and expense work. Every figure and link follows the viewer's real permissions rather than merely hiding navigation.

The volunteer dashboard provides the same clarity at a personal level: assigned work, schedule dates, Training progress, expense status and next actions are kept together without exposing anybody else's records.

Volunteers now have a private My Expenses area for submitting costs against Tasks assigned to them. Each claim records the expense date, category, exact amount and currency, explanation, and either a receipt or a reason why no receipt is available. A direct action on every assigned Task keeps the claim connected to the work that caused it.

Receipt evidence accepts validated PNG, JPG/JPEG, GIF and PDF files up to 5MB. Receipts are kept out of the general Documents library: a volunteer sees only their own, while the organisation register is restricted to admins. File access continues to be authenticated and recorded.

Admins receive one searchable register and a clear workflow from Submitted to Approved or Rejected, followed separately by Paid. Rejections require an explanation so the volunteer can correct and resubmit. Review decisions and payment marks can be corrected only through explicit actions that retain the earlier history.

Every submission, edit, withdrawal, review decision, correction and payment update is retained in the admin-only Activity Log and reflected in notifications. Authorised export admins can download a report-ready Excel or CSV register, and Volunteer Expenses is included in Complete Export without embedding the receipt files.

The new Rota & Schedule area turns dated Tasks into Day, Week, Month and detailed List views without creating a second scheduling system. Every scheduled Task appears whether it belongs to a Project or stands alone; Projects can be used as optional filters, while active undated Tasks are called out clearly so they cannot be mistaken for missing work.

Staff can set a volunteer staffing target for each activity, see exact gaps, filter for unassigned or fully staffed work and open the underlying Task directly. Volunteeria also flags definite overlapping assignments and mismatches with recorded volunteer availability. Restricted coordinators remain limited to work involving volunteers they manage or Tasks they created, without exposing other volunteer identities.

Authorised export admins can produce Excel or CSV rota files, with every successful download retained in the Activity Log, while any staff user can print the permitted view. Volunteers receive a private My Schedule page containing only their own upcoming and recent dates, times, locations and optional Project context.

Staff can now reuse an existing Task from the rota or add another rota date directly from its Task page. A staff-scheduled volunteer receives a clear invitation to Accept or Decline, while volunteer-initiated date requests remain a separate approval workflow. Awaiting replies and requests never inflate confirmed staffing figures, and staff can confirm somebody directly when agreement happened offline.

Staffing filters now describe their calculation directly, including below-target, target-met, nobody-confirmed and no-target views. The Activity Log retains rota dates, invitation batches, staffing-target changes, volunteer requests and withdrawals, responses, staff decisions, direct confirmations and optional notes, with each record linked back to its Task.

The new Training area gives organisations one complete register of volunteer learning. Admins can create reusable courses with learning links or policy documents, recurrence periods and reminder windows; authorised staff can then assign them, record progress, retain completion evidence and see what is current, approaching renewal or expired. Every permitted volunteer remains visible even before training is assigned, with searching, filters and sortable register columns making gaps easy to find.

Evidence and review requirements can be chosen separately for each course. A certificate or completed checklist may be optional or compulsory, and any supplied evidence may either be kept on file without a review step or require verification by an authorised Training manager. Volunteers receive a clear My Training area, while their staff profile shows a concise course history with direct links back to the relevant register record.

Training access is independently configurable for every staff member as Manage courses and records, View only or No access. Restricted coordinators remain limited to their assigned volunteers, and the same boundary is enforced across direct addresses, documents, profiles, search, reminders and Activity Log entries. Continuity safeguards ensure that an organisation cannot accidentally remove its final active Training manager or final admin Training manager.

Courses may also be linked to onboarding, so completing the real Training record satisfies the connected pathway step without duplicating work. First-visit guidance and expanded staff and volunteer help explain statuses, completion dates, renewals, archiving, evidence and verification in plain language.

Every successful organisation-data export now creates an admin-only Activity Log entry recording the authorised admin, date and time, exported dataset, file format and generated filename. This includes complete, volunteer, task, activity, onboarding and organisation exports as well as task-specific activity reports. If the accountability record cannot be written, the export is not delivered unlogged.

Admins can also choose how new messages to multiple volunteers are delivered. Organisations may retain one shared conversation, or require separate private conversations from one compose action. With private delivery, volunteers cannot see the other recipients or receive one another's replies; the choice is enforced on the server and changes are retained in the Activity Log.

The newly named Staff & Access area now presents staff roles, safeguarding responsibilities, export permission and organisation-wide map and messaging rules together in a clearer, more consistent layout. The Export Data area has also been reorganised so format guidance and practical export advice appear before a consistent set of download options.

The Staff & Access panel now provides a controlled handover for the organisation's final export-authorised admin. When removing that person or changing them to a Coordinator, an admin nominates an active replacement in the same action: the previous permission is removed as the replacement is authorised, and both changes are retained in the Activity Log.

This continuity action cannot be used on its own to expand or take over access while an active export user remains. If an old export account has already become inactive, administrators are shown a recovery prompt so the responsibility can be restored without database support.

Organisation administrators can now decide whether Volunteeria should collect DBS/background-check certificate files or record only the check result, type and relevant dates. Choosing results and dates only removes certificate upload, replacement, verification and reminder controls for staff and volunteers, with the restriction also enforced on direct upload addresses.

Existing certificate files are retained rather than silently deleted when the setting changes. Authorised administrators can still identify, open and remove them, but neither staff nor volunteers can replace them with another certificate while storage is disabled. Changes to the organisation setting are retained in the Activity Log, and First Aid certificate handling is unaffected.

Administrators can now restrict an individual volunteer, onboarding or task document to selected active administrators. Every administrator retains an accurate, locked inventory showing that the document is on file and who is responsible, while only the selected people receive its stored filename or can open, verify, replace or delete it. Coordinators and volunteers receive no restricted file record or contents, and direct file links remain protected.

The dedicated document-access screen keeps the choice clear: standard access, all administrators, or named administrators only. Every administrator can govern the named list so responsibility can be transferred when somebody leaves; all changes, including adding yourself, are retained in the Activity Log. Volunteeria also prevents a selected administrator from being removed or made a coordinator until their confidential document access has been transferred or widened.

Organisation administrators can now decide whether the volunteer Locations map is available to administrators only or to administrators and coordinators. The choice is enforced in navigation, global search and the page itself. If coordinators are allowed while restricted volunteer management is enabled, each coordinator sees only the mapped volunteers assigned to them. Changes to the setting are retained in the Activity Log.

Exporting organisation data is now a separate administrator permission. An authorised export user can nominate the particular administrators who need it; other administrators cannot discover or open export pages or direct download addresses. Permission changes are retained in the Activity Log, and Volunteeria ensures that at least one active administrator always keeps export access.

Organisations can now nominate both a Primary/Designated Safeguarding Lead and a Secondary/Deputy Safeguarding Lead. Safeguarding concern details, handling records and alerts are restricted to those nominated people, with a safe continuity arrangement for organisations that have not yet selected a lead.

Every successful opening or download of a managed document is now recorded in the administrator-only Activity Log, including who accessed it, which document was accessed and when. This covers staff and volunteer access while leaving routine profile photographs and organisation logos out of the log.

Staff conversation privacy has been further strengthened. A conversation and its message-management actions are now available only to the staff members participating in that thread.

Volunteers now report a shift or other work in one dedicated My Activity area. One report records when the work happened, standard hours, notes and every task-specific outcome answer together. The same form handles today's work and backfilling; history clearly separates the activity date from the submission time. A complete report can be corrected with one mandatory reason while every changed value remains auditable.

Tasks can ask their own reporting questions instead of relying only on general notes and hours. Staff can collect short or detailed answers, numbers, money, Yes/No checks, dates and multiple-choice responses—for example products sold, people reached or expenses incurred. Questions can be required, reordered and archived without losing earlier answers. Numerical results are totalled, choices grouped and every update can be exported safely to CSV.

The Export area now provides a reporting-grade My Activity Reports CSV with one row for every retained activity report across every task. It includes the volunteer and task, activity and submission dates, hours, notes, project and fund context, reporting source, acknowledgement status and every task-specific answer in both readable and analysis-ready columns. Historical reports remain available after a volunteer is deactivated.

Paid registration now links directly to the exact versioned Legal & Account Terms, Privacy Notice and Data Processing Agreement recorded at acceptance, preventing a shortened registration copy from drifting behind the published documents. The login email may explicitly be the same as the Stripe billing email or a different address. Sandbox billing now labels Stripe test identifiers and cancellation behaviour clearly.

The Organisation Setup page now uses a spacious four-section desktop layout while retaining its single-column mobile view. Opening a setup step activates a temporary return bar across the staff area, making the next step easy to find; returning to the checklist or dismissing the bar removes it.

Screens that reload themselves now keep your place on the page. Choosing a task in My Activity, sorting My Tasks, changing a staff member's role, filtering the activity log or replacing a document no longer scrolls you back to the top.

The Onboarding screen now works like the volunteers table. Your chosen columns are remembered when you leave the page and come back, with a Reset to default option. Volunteer, Started, Coordinator and Status can each be sorted, and a new filter panel narrows the list by coordinator, programme, progress, onboarding status or a name search — so you can pull up everyone one coordinator is looking after who still has steps outstanding. Sorting or filtering also keeps your place on the page instead of jumping to the top.

The Complete Export is now available as an Excel workbook built for writing reports. Volunteers, tasks, the full My Activity detail, onboarding progress and the organisation profile each get their own tab, with headings that stay visible and filters ready to use, plus a Read me tab explaining what every tab holds. Hours and outcome figures are stored as real numbers, so they total and pivot without retyping. A further Activity Answers tab lists one row per answer — group by question to total figures such as meals served or miles driven across every shift in a period.

The Documents area now brings volunteer, task, onboarding and safeguarding files into clear permission-aware views. New uploads use private EU object storage with an independently tested backup copy, integrity checks and recovery tooling, keeping large files out of the operational database without exposing public file links.

Across the release, mobile layouts, contextual help and both user guides have been updated. Subscription access is now enforced consistently, deleted volunteers no longer remain assignable to tasks, and sensitive staff-admin-only records stay hidden from coordinators in both pages and activity history.

Where an onboarding step asks for a file, staff can now upload it on a volunteer's behalf — the practical way to bring paper records in without asking volunteers for documents they have already handed over. Each document records who uploaded it, and administrators can mark a document Staff admin only so it stays out of the volunteer portal entirely; a staff-only document cannot be opened by the volunteer or by a coordinator even with a direct link. Uploads, replacements, visibility changes and deletions are all written to the activity log. Documents that already existed remain visible to the volunteer exactly as before.

Onboarding steps can now be internal too. Any step, of any type, can be marked Staff admin only: it disappears from the volunteer's onboarding entirely and does not count towards the progress they see, while staff continue to work through it. That lets an interview assessment or a reference check sit in the same checklist as everything else without being exposed. Steps that already exist stay visible to volunteers.

Tasks can carry files as well. Attach instructions, a form, a map or a risk assessment, and the volunteers assigned to that task can open it and are notified when you add one. Access follows the assignment: take someone off the task and the file closes to them at the same moment. Administrators can mark an attachment staff-admin-only where it should not circulate.

Internal onboarding is now easier to run day to day. Every step type carries a "Who can see this step" choice, set when building a template or changed later from a volunteer's onboarding page. Staff-admin-only steps sit in their own subsection with their own progress bar, next to the volunteer-steps bar. Each track has its own clearly labelled "mark all remaining" action, so completing volunteer steps never silently completes internal checks. A volunteer's management page now shows compact template summaries and opens only the template being worked on, instead of printing every question from every template into one enormous list; it remembers the open template after each action. The Volunteers in Onboarding panel shows both figures for every template — click either to open that volunteer's relevant template — with customisable columns, and each volunteer's profile shows their per-template progress too.

Volunteer profiles now keep every relevant custom question visible even before it has been answered, with a clear unanswered count. Administrators can therefore spot missing volunteer answers and unfinished internal fields at a glance, while administrators-only information remains completely hidden from coordinators and volunteers. Deleting a task now also removes its stored attachments safely rather than leaving unused files behind.

Administrators can add or correct dated volunteer hours from a task, with the administrator, previous value and reason retained in the audit trail. Task priority is now genuinely optional instead of defaulting silently to Medium. Custom profile fields can also be restricted to administrators, keeping internal assessments away from coordinators, volunteer registration and the volunteer portal.

Safeguarding now has its own place in both portals instead of being spread across volunteer records, documents and policies. Staff get one screen showing who is up to date and who needs chasing: background check status with expiry warnings, whether each certificate has been uploaded and verified, and who has confirmed reading your safeguarding documents — with a nudge button for each. Administrators can set the organisation default or decide volunteer by volunteer. Volunteers get a matching page showing their Primary Safeguarding Lead, urgent guidance, documents to read and anything outstanding. They can also report a concern from that page or a task update and follow its status; the full concern and append-only handling record are restricted to the nominated Primary and Secondary Safeguarding Leads. Also in this release: staff sign-in needs a password plus a single-use emailed link, and the terms are version-controlled with acceptance recorded against the version agreed.

A search box now sits at the top of every page, in both the staff and volunteer portals. Type what you want — "add task", a volunteer's name, a task title — and go straight there; it copes with typos and only ever offers pages you have access to. Skills are cleverer too: equivalent wordings are grouped automatically, so "football", "soccer" and even a misspelled "fotball" count as one skill, and filtering by it finds everyone. Volunteers can now see the skills their colleagues have listed and add them with a click, which keeps everyone's wording consistent. Also: verifying a document now asks for confirmation first (it can't be undone), the volunteer portal's help button has moved to the top-right to match the staff portal, and logged hours now appear on task pages and in exports.

Onboarding templates gain a "Document upload" step type — ask volunteers for any file (a reference, qualification or signed form), with a per-item choice of whether staff must verify the upload. When staff waive an onboarding item and add a note, the volunteer now sees that note on their onboarding page — and staff messages on open-task applications now reach the volunteer too. Under restricted volunteer management, uploaded documents and certificates are now only viewable by the staff assigned to that volunteer. Plus assorted polish, including volunteer assignment controls on mobile.

Staff who manage a volunteer can now mark individual onboarding steps - or all remaining steps at once - as complete on their behalf. Ideal for steps done in person, over the phone or on paper, so onboarding never gets stuck just because a volunteer can't tick a box themselves.

Admins can now assign specific volunteers to specific staff members, so each coordinator manages and messages only their own group. It's optional and off by default, and admins always keep full access to everyone.

A central place to collect and manage volunteer documents - First Aid and DBS certificates, references, signed forms and more. Volunteers upload straight from their phone, staff verify with one click, and files can be replaced or removed anytime, always kept in sync.