Why We Built KickPilot – And What's Next
It started with a simple question: why is managing a football team still so chaotic?
We're a small team of software engineers who've been playing football even longer than we've been writing code. We've captained amateur teams, organized matches, collected payments (painful), created Excel sheets (more painful), and spent way too many hours scrolling through WhatsApp threads to find out who's coming on Saturday.
Sounds familiar?
That's why we built KickPilot — a platform to help coaches, clubs, and football organizers finally take control of everything off the pitch.
The Problem
Let's be real. Most teams today still rely on::
Spreadsheets for payments and rosters
WhatsApp for communication
Google Drive or… nothing for training plans
Hope and prayers for knowing who actually paid
It works – kind of.
But it’s messy, stressful, and unsustainable. Especially if you run more than one group.
The Idea Behind KickPilot
We wanted to build something that feels like a real assistant for football teams. Not just another “app” – but a tool you actually want to open.
Something that helps you:
Collect and track player payments without chasing people
Organize matches, trainings, and events in one place
Share info with players and parents — securely
Manage multiple teams without duplicating everything
Save hours every single week
And most importantly: something that grows with your club.
What’s Live Now
We launched our MVP in October 2025. Since then, we've shipped a lot based on real feedback from coaches. Here's what KickPilot does today:
Player Management
- Full player profiles with contacts, positions, physical stats, and photos
- Player groups for organizing by age, skill level, or any custom category
- Private document storage per player (medical certificates, registration forms)
- Player/parent portal — parents see only their child's info
Multi-Team Support
- Create multiple teams under one club (First Team, U-18, U-14, Women's, etc.)
- Assign players to one or more teams with a primary team designation
- Switch between teams instantly in the dashboard
- Filter everything — calendar, players, finances — by team
Matches and Tournaments
- Record matches with opponent, venue, competition, and home/away
- Set lineups with drag-and-drop, track starters and substitutes
- Log match events: goals, assists, yellow/red cards, MVP — with minute tracking
- Manage tournaments, rivals, and stadiums as reusable records
Training and Events
- Schedule trainings with location, description, and tags
- Track attendance per session
- Create general events (meetings, trips, social gatherings) with date ranges
- Assign events to specific teams or the whole club
Finances
- Record player payments by category (membership, tournament, equipment, trips)
- Record club expenses and split costs across players
- Automatic balance calculation per player — no formulas, always accurate
- Balance dashboard showing team totals, top debtors, and creditors
- Full audit trail — every entry shows who created it and when
Team Announcements
- Send announcements to the whole club or target specific teams
- Severity levels: info, warning, urgent
- Email delivery with tracking — see who received, opened, and clicked
- In-app read tracking — see who viewed and acknowledged
- Pin important announcements, require acknowledgment for critical ones
Task Management
- Kanban board for organizing team tasks
- Assign to staff or players, set deadlines
- Drag-and-drop between columns (pending, in progress, completed)
Calendar
- Unified view: trainings, matches, events, and player birthdays
- Filter by team
- Color-coded by event type
Access Control
- Role-based permissions (owner, coach, assistant, parent, player)
- Parents restricted to their child's data only
- Coaches can be limited to their own team
- Every user sees only what they need
What’s Coming Next
We're not slowing down. Here's what we're working on:
Team chat — private and group conversations within the platform
Tactics board — visual lineups and formation planning
Player analytics — attendance trends, performance stats, development tracking
Online payments — let parents pay directly through the platform
Smart automation — recurring training schedules, automatic reminders, payment due alerts
Mobile app — native experience (the web app already works on mobile, but a dedicated app is on the roadmap)
6 Months In: What We've Learned
We launched in October 2025 with a simple finance tracker and player roster. Since then, here's what coaches have taught us:
Multi-team was the most requested feature. Most clubs aren't one team — they're 2-5 squads sharing players, staff, and resources. We shipped multi-team support and it changed how the whole platform works.
Finances matter more than tactics. We expected match tracking to be the star feature. Turns out, "who owes what" is the question coaches deal with daily. The finance module gets the most use.
Parents need access, not another app. Nobody wants to download another app. KickPilot works in the browser — parents open a link and they're in. Restricted to their child's data only.
Communication needs structure. WhatsApp is fine for chat. But official announcements — schedule changes, match details, payment reminders — need to be separate, trackable, and hard to miss.
Every feature we've built came from a real conversation with a real coach. That's how we want to keep building.
Built with Coaches, Not Just for Them
KickPilot is shaped by real feedback from coaches and team admins who use the platform, tell us what's broken, and help us improve every week.
We love feedback. If you have a feature idea, something that annoys you, or just want to say hi — message us anytime. Really.
Ready to Try KickPilot?
If you're tired of juggling WhatsApp, spreadsheets, and five other tools — KickPilot puts everything in one place.
Free for up to 15 players. No card needed. Set up in under 5 minutes.
Start free at kickpilot.me
Let's build better football clubs — one organized squad at a time.
