Working your MPIO inbox: the three tabs and how to archive

Your concern log is a working inbox, not a list that only grows. This article explains the three tabs, when to archive, and why archiving is safe.

Needs attention is your actual to-do list: everything that is still yours to act on. The red count beside Concerns in the navigation is this tab and only this tab, so when it clears, it clears.

With the committee holds matters you have handed to someone else — the club committee, Football NSW, the Office of the Children's Guardian, or the Police. Your part is done and you are waiting on them, so these do not count against you and are not in the red badge. Each row shows how long it has been waiting, which is what you need when you are deciding who to chase.

Archive is everything that is finished. It is a record you can read back through, not a bin.

A concern moves out of Needs attention when you set a Referred to value on it, and into Archive when you archive it.

This is the distinction that matters most, and it is the one Football NSW and the Office of the Children's Guardian are explicit about. When you refer a matter on, it leaves your inbox but stays open — because it is still live, just not with you. You archive it when it is genuinely finished: the committee has come back to you, the investigation has concluded, or it is otherwise done.

So a concern that has sat under With the committee for six months is not a mistake. It is either still genuinely with them, or it finished and nobody told you — and the waiting time on the row is how you tell the difference.

Open the concern and choose Archive this concern. You must pick one of five reasons:

• Resolved at the club — dealt with directly and nothing further is needed
• Referred on; now with that body — passed over and out of your hands
• No further action required — looked into, nothing warranted
• Not enough information to act — often the honest close for an anonymous disclosure with no way to follow up
• Duplicate of another concern — the same matter is recorded elsewhere

The reason is not paperwork for its own sake. It is what makes the archive readable in a year, to you or to whoever holds the role next. You can add a closing note too, and it goes on the concern's timeline with your name against it.

On Needs attention and With the committee, tick the concerns you want to archive and use Archive selected. They all get the same reason and the same note, so only batch things that genuinely share one.

Child safety concerns cannot be batched. Their tick box is disabled, and you archive each one on its own with a reason chosen for it. That is deliberate: a child safety matter deserves a decision of its own, not a decision made about nine other things at the same time.

Archiving hides a concern from your working tabs. It does not delete it, and it never has. Everything stays in the log with its full timeline, every note, and who archived it and when.

If something turns out not to be finished, open it from Archive and choose Reopen. It comes back to Needs attention as Acknowledged — not as New — so reopening never fires the new-concern alert at you a second time.

Only your club's appointed MPIO. Not coaches, not the committee, not club administrators. A club owner can grant temporary emergency access if you are unreachable, and if that ever happens you will see it recorded on the concern itself under Break-glass access log.