The archery club records officer's year, month by month

The records officer's year in eight steps

Dates are for Archery GB clubs, whose outdoor season follows the calendar year and whose indoor season runs from 1 July to 30 June.

1. Early January: run the outdoor reassessment. Set each archer's outdoor handicap for the new season from the best three handicaps of the old one, and carry into the new season the classification each archer gained last year. Anyone with nothing to carry becomes unclassified.
2. January: work out the improvement medal. Compare each archer's handicap on 1 January of the year just ended with their handicap at its end, check who met the award's conditions, and send the winner in as the award's rules ask.
3. Spring: open the outdoor season. Collect score sheets from target days and competitions from the first outdoor shoot onwards, and enter them as they arrive rather than in one pile in December.
4. After every target day: update and check claims. Update handicaps from new scores, and look for classification claims and 252 badges that the new scores complete, so badges can be handed out while the achievement is fresh.
5. Summer: run the club handicap shoots. Before each handicap shoot, check every entrant's current handicap, then apply the allowances and publish the adjusted ranking.
6. 1 July: run the indoor reassessment. Reset indoor handicaps and classifications from the indoor season just ended, the same way as the outdoor reset in January.
7. Autumn: indoor league and records. Enter indoor league and club scores, and update the club records table whenever a new best is shot.
8. December: prepare for the AGM. Print the current handicap and classification lists, the club records and the claim sheets still to hand out, and back up the club book.

What the job actually is

Most of the work is arithmetic on score sheets: turning each score into a handicap from the tables, averaging, and checking classification thresholds for the archer's bowstyle, category and age group. Archery Geekery's records officer series, the most detailed public description of the job, recommends records software for exactly that reason: done by hand, it is slow and easy to get wrong.

Two things make it fiddly. First, an archer can hold up to eight handicaps, one per bowstyle indoors and one per bowstyle outdoors, each on its own season. Second, the rules changed in 2023 (handicaps now run on a new scale and averages are rounded down) and the categories were renamed in April 2026 (Men became Open and Women became Female, with the scores unchanged), so older club handouts can be wrong.

Two seasons, two reset days

A classification gained in one season is held until the end of the next, so on reset day nobody loses a class they earned last season; they lose one they earned the season before and did not earn again. Field archery is kept on the outdoor calendar in the desk; if your county runs field differently, the season start is a setting.

Worked example: the demo club's 1 January

The invented demo club in the records desk has 6 archers with outdoor scores in 2025. On 1 January 2026 the desk reset each one from their best three handicaps of 2025. Ann Farrow went from 38 to 38 because the reset was the average of the best three handicaps of 2025 (37, 38, 41), rounded down.

Common mistakes

• Doing the January reset from the handicaps archers have on 31 December. The reset uses the best three handicaps of the season, which can be worse than where an archer finished.
• Keeping one handicap per archer. Indoor and outdoor handicaps are separate, and so is each bowstyle an archer shoots.
• Using a handout from before 2023 that rounds averages up. Current practice rounds down.
• Leaving score sheets in a drawer until December, then missing badge claims that were completed in June.
• Printing old category names. Since April 2026 the categories are Open and Female.

Work it out now

Look up one score in the free calculator, or open the records desk to keep members and scores and print the lists. Everything stays in this browser; nothing is uploaded and there is no account.

Sources

Last reviewed 27 September 2026 against:

• How to be an Archery Club Records Officer: Part 3, Handicaps, Archery Geekery, published 4 April 2023, read 27 September 2026. Used for: First handicap from three official rounds, improvement averaging, rounding down, season restarts on 1 January and 1 July from the best three, and one handicap per bowstyle indoors and out.
• How to be an Archery Club Records Officer: Part 4, Outdoor Classifications, Archery Geekery, published 7 April 2023, read 27 September 2026. Used for: The arrow counts for each tier, the kind of event each tier needs, classifications held to the end of the next season, and outdoor Master Bowman tiers awarded by Archery GB.
• Classifications 2023, Glasgow Archers, undated, read 27 September 2026. Used for: Season dates (outdoor calendar year, indoor 1 July to 30 June) and a classification that cannot drop within a season.
• Handicaps and classifications, Wymondham Archers, undated, read 27 September 2026. Used for: Reassessment on 1 January outdoors and 1 July indoors, allowances that make 1440 at handicap, and an example that still rounds up (the pre 2023 practice).
• 2026 Updates to the Archery GB Classification Scheme, Jack Atkinson, published 6 June 2026, read 27 September 2026. Used for: Open replacing Male with unchanged scores, Female tables unchanged, handicap thresholds unchanged in 2026.

This guide is our own summary, not a rule book. Rules are paraphrased, never quoted at length, and if this page disagrees with the current published rules, the rules win. Endbook is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Archery GB, Archery Australia, Archery New Zealand, World Archery or any county or regional archery association.