Who can
start. Who
can't. Why
not.
Butcher paper is honest. It's also stuck to one wall.
Free as an Excel workbook. $500 a year + GST as the web version, with one login for the whole office and nothing to email around by mistake. Same tracker either way.
Try it below. Three ways to see the same people, all synthetic, at a fictional school opening January 2027. Same data, same checks. Set up rounds and job numbers, select a candidate, and they show up in all three. Click any name to open their checks. Anything underlined explains itself on hover or tap.
Four checks, in this order
- Five set questions to their current or last employer. Always first.
- , plus the date it was and the date they were Education support and other non-teaching roles.
- Teachers and assistant principals.
- Last. Sent only once the checks above are done.
What Is Pre-Start Tracker?
Pre-Start Tracker records the checks a school completes before someone starts: the suitability check, WWCC for non-teaching roles, VIT registration for teachers, and the transfer or offer letter. It is free as an Excel workbook, or $500 a year plus GST as a shared web version. The demo on this page uses synthetic data.
Why it earns its keep
Most schools don't run mass hires. They replace one or two people most years, a maternity leave, a resignation, a new position. That's exactly when this earns its keep, not the once-a-decade new-school opening.
It's not only a time-saver either. Tracking WWCC and VIT status before someone starts is a compliance-risk item. Getting it wrong doesn't cost you an afternoon, it costs you a person in a classroom who shouldn't be there yet.
Free or paid
Same tracker as a website instead of a file. Multiple people at your school log into the one account, so there's no "which version is the real one" hunting through five emails.
The only real difference is version control and how many people can be in it at once. Most schools start on the workbook. The moment two people need eyes on the same round at the same time, the web version starts paying for itself.
New to school HR? Read this first. 9 TERMS
Rounds and
One row per job number. Shortlisted candidates sit against every job number they are in the running for. Selecting someone records the selection decision and starts their checks. The position decides which checks apply.
Three directions
Pick one to try it. They share data, so a change in one shows in all three.The Wall
The butcher-paper grid, digitised. One row per person, time running left to right, rounds stacked so the overlaps show.
Business managers in a heavy recruitment year, with several rounds in flight and Leadership wanting to see the collision before it arrives. Closest to the hand-drawn wall chart many already keep, so there is almost nothing to learn.
Dense. Fast for the person who built it, slow for a newcomer reading it cold. Gets wide once there are more than a few months in view, and it is the least comfortable of the three on a phone.
The Board
One card per person, one lane per round, and the columns run in the order Department policy requires. Every card says who the next move is waiting on.
The 2027 handover. Someone from another industry will recognise a card board in seconds, and "waiting on" turns jargon into a to-do. Also the easiest to run in a weekly panel meeting.
Shows where people are, not when. Two rounds colliding in January look exactly like two rounds six months apart. Overlap is visible by lane, not by date.
The Gate
Four numbers, one chart of start dates, and a table that says in a sentence what is holding each person up.
Leadership and the principal. It answers the only question that matters on the day: can this person walk in the door. Blockers are written as sentences, not codes. Comes with a summary paragraph ready to paste into a meeting note.
A snapshot. Good for deciding, weaker for planning. It shows the January pile-up, but not the weeks of checks leading into it, so the crunch is visible without its run-up.
Start day
Offer accepted. Now the practical bit: logins, laptop, network, Compass, inductions. Every task has an owner and a due date, so nothing depends on someone remembering. Click a name or a cell to open their setup.
Anyone whose transfer or offer letter has been accepted. Tick the box below to plan ahead for people still in pre-start checks; they show greyed out until their letter is accepted.
First aid and anaphylaxis training live in the Training Register ↗, which reminds you before anything expires. The Department’s template does not. One register, not two.
All people, dates and statuses on this page are synthetic. Links open public Victorian Department of Education, Service Victoria and VIT pages; New Game Solutions does not host or own that content. This prototype tracks whether checks are done and recorded. It does not perform the checks or replace the Department's own guidance. "Today" is fixed at 23 September 2026 so the sample data stays meaningful.