ProductiveRecruit gives you two ways to put a due date on a checklist step: a fixed calendar date, or a due date that's calculated relative to when the athlete was enrolled. Which one you get depends entirely on the checklist's type. Type is locked in the moment you create the checklist, so it's worth understanding the difference before you build one.
BASIC: fixed due dates
A BASIC checklist gives each step a single Due Date: a calendar date you pick when you add the step. That date is the same for every athlete enrolled in the checklist, no matter when they joined. If you set a step due July 15, it's due July 15 for the athlete who enrolled in March and the one who enrolled last week.
BASIC is the right choice for anything tied to a real-world deadline rather than an athlete's personal timeline: think "submit your highlight video by August 1" for an incoming class, where everyone is working against the same date.
DRIP: relative due dates
A DRIP checklist doesn't use calendar dates at all. Instead, each step has a Trigger After value and a Due In value, entered as a number plus a unit: Minutes, Hours, or Days. Trigger After controls when the step becomes the athlete's current step; Due In controls how long they have to complete it once it triggers. A value of zero on either field means no delay. The step triggers or is due immediately.
Because these are relative offsets, every athlete gets their own personal cadence based on when they were enrolled and when they complete each step. Two athletes enrolled a month apart will hit the same step's deadline a month apart. This is the better fit for onboarding-style flows — "reach out to 5 schools within 3 days of joining," "submit your academic transcript within a week of finishing step 1" — where the clock should start with the athlete, not a fixed date on the calendar.
The first step measures Due In differently
Timing is stamped onto a step at two different moments: the first step is scheduled the instant an athlete is enrolled, and every later step is scheduled when the athlete completes the step before it. That much is expected. The part that catches people out is what Due In counts from:
- First step: Trigger After and Due In both count from enrollment. They run in parallel from the same moment, so Due In ignores Trigger After entirely.
- Every later step: Trigger After counts from when the previous step was completed, and Due In counts from the trigger. The due date is trigger plus due.
Take a step set to Trigger After 2 days and Due In 1 day:
| Position | Triggers | Due |
|---|---|---|
| First step | 2 days after enrollment | 1 day after enrollment |
| Any later step | 2 days after the previous step is completed | 3 days after that (2 + 1) |
Which type should you use?
| BASIC | DRIP | |
|---|---|---|
| Due date | Fixed calendar date per step | Relative offset (trigger + due, in minutes/hours/days) |
| Same for every athlete? | Yes | No, calculated per athlete from their enrollment/progress |
| Good for | Deadlines tied to a real date (season start, event, deadline) | Onboarding and cadence-based flows |
| Can you switch later? | No — type is locked at creation | No — type is locked at creation |
Because you can't change a checklist's type after it's created, decide up front which model fits the checklist's purpose. If you're not sure, ask whether the deadline is really the same for everyone (BASIC) or should scale with when each athlete joins (DRIP).
A few things to know
- Due dates you set on a checklist only affect steps going forward. See Creating a checklist for what's locked in at setup versus what you can still edit.
- Zero is a valid value for Trigger After or Due In — it just means that step has no delay.
What's next
- Set up the steps themselves in Steps and instructions.
- See how athletes land on a checklist automatically in Auto-assign.
- Check how due dates show up for athletes in Athlete view.
- Track who's on time and who isn't in Tracking completion.