Slalom4me

Does anyone has knowledge &/or experience with on-line event
registration applications or service providers suitable for
managing track events.

Organizers here are considering ways to streamline next year.
There are no shortage of ways in which the current process
could be improved.

Attendees could register on-line and prepay via PayPal. Registration
people could download lists to the event PC, print waivers, assign
run groups, and ready the timing software. Yada, yada ...

Rather than roll our own, I took a poke at searching for shrink
-wrap apps and noticed the predominence of service providers in
the Event Registration field.

What can other people here suggest that I consider/discard?

Thanks,
Ken R.

AU N EGL

Ken Yes

Pukka Software http://www.pukkasoft.com/

A few clubs have used it says it is good but needs some tweeking for your applications and events

Slalom4me

Thanks for the link, looks interesting. I've viewed one of the
demos and am about to follow through the others.

I'll be interested to see how they handle payment security - their
own system or one of the established third-party outfits. If it is
their own system, I wonder whether there been any word about
resistance to providing financial info to yet another org?

Also interested to see whether MotorSportReg.com is the sole
'portal' or whether clubs can host the interface under their own
auspices. I'll look further at their site and email them with questions.

Thanks again,
Ken R.

.

AU N EGL

Ken

Tarheel Sports Car Club here in the Carolinas uses them. They are very happy with the software and the proccess.

They did tell me with this system they cut off registration 2 or 3 weeks prior to their event to make sure they get paid.

I understand it free to use, but they keep the 5 or 6 % CC fees.

http://www.thscc.com

Cashmo

http://www.myautoevents.com may be the easiest to set up if not the least expensive.

Jeff

greendot

Slalom4me

AU N EGL, Cashmo and greendot - thank you for the responses.

For anyone following with interest, I learned of another online
event registration service called www.karelo.com. This one caters
to cycling and running events in addition to motorsports.

I'd like to talk to them more about this.

Is this a measure to prevent losing money fronted for the event in
the case where insufficient participants step up? Or is it due to
having trouble collecting from the event registration service?

The clubs I've participated with here have enough in the kitty to
front the expenses for the scale of events they conduct. So, as
long as it wasn't a case where some basement hosting operation
folded up its tent and defrauded the club, then I wonder why
registrations would not be kept open up until the start of the
event or all the available spots were filled?

.

acrace

If you need contact info for the guy that runs myautoevents.com, let me know.

greendot

With MyAuto Events payment is not a requirement at all. CCM uses it to expedite the registration line by having the pre-registered entrant's card filled out ahead of time and collects all monies at the event.

Besides, lots of us know where the webmaster lives!!

AU N EGL

They do this so the registration company can send them the check for the last few enteries. That gives them 10 days to get the registation check and cash the check.

after a specific date registration is done by snail mail to the club itself.

In most cases these clubs have the registation filled weeks in advacne.

Our event fills up 5 and 6 months in advance.

Slalom4me

If I recall my economic theory about Price Elasticity, your club
can stand to raise the entry fees - a lot!

But we'll keep this to ourselves.

If the OER service is only retaining the 4 - 5% credit card fee, then
they are essentially providing the registration service for free because
they must hand over the cut to the CC company. Maybe they pick
up some margin on the difference between what they collect and what
they turn over but this would be smallish. The profit for them must
be in the advertising revenue?

.

VetteDrmr

The BMW and S2000 clubs I run with use www.dlbracing.com. It uses Paypal for registration payments, can incorporate membership IDs and expiration dates, and is used nation-wide. Works pretty well for me.

HTH, and have a good one,
Mike

UstaB-GS549

Midwestern Council of Sports Car Clubs uses myautoevents.com

Not sure how it works, but I like it. After the first registration, all I have to fill out it blood type (stupid), last tetnus shot date (equally dumb) and certify that my drivers license is not currently suspended.

AU N EGL

Our Fees are +/- $400 for a weekend. or four 25-30 min sessions per day. Plus Saturday night dinner encluded.

Based on my survey of HPDEs in 2004 AND the events I and other instructors have attened, PLUS what NCM membership is willing to pay is how we determaind the price of the event.
Our membership has stated they recieve far greater value then the amount they pay for the HPDEs.

Now that being said, and seeing prices going up, we have and will make adjustments for 2007 especially do the high costs of 2 tracks will will attend in 07. Those prices have not been announced yet.

I will also be re-sending out my survery too all my instructors and senior students this winter. The survery results from our instructors are the foundation and shape the structure of the NCM HPDEs.

I do share the results with our instructors.

For example in the winter 2004 survery one of the main responces was, an HPDE is a LEARNING ENVOIRNMENT, not Open Lapping or a RACE school. That was from 98% of the instructors. So that is what we have.

Slalom4me

I hope my post was not interpreted as a criticism.

While $400 is not inexpensive, it is attainable by a large portion
of owners. The early and complete fulfillment of available spots
is a testament to the value and satisfaction attendees get in
return for their money.

It is clear from your explanation that despite the opportunity (that
appears to exist) to raise rates in a big way and probably still fill the
event successly, a conscious decision is being made to retain rates
at a level that make the event available to the greatest numbers of
people.

The lucky folks who plan ahead and register early enough are plainly
getting a great deal.

.

AU N EGL

You hit the start button here.

Plus both Roc and I have a car hauler load of things to do the month before the event. We do not want to worry about filling the event, or having to give discounts too fill the event.

Brian G

Ken,

I founded MotorsportReg.com and I found your post a few days ago. The forum operator Jim was kind enough to let me respond to your questions here.

We do have integrated Visa, Mastercard and EFT processing capabilties and we use our own merchant account. All payments we collect are sent via direct deposit every 2 weeks. Nobody else comes close to that.

We do not use Paypal because they are not an FDIC-insured nor regulated institution and are known (albeit rarely) to freeze accounts or recover funds in dispute situations. Clubs who use MSR are relying on their registration revenue to pay their bills so Paypal was out. This is our full-time business and we are focused on providing a stable, robust and secure system that clubs can count on 24/7.

There are no fees for using MSR and we take both on and offline registrations and payments. Online payment is NOT required (and can be disabled). There is a 4.5% service charge on online transactions that includes the banking fees (~3%) and we interface with the bank on chargeback inquiries, etc. This saves clubs considerable time as well as eliminates a long-term (typically 3 year min) contract they would otherwise have to sign. When you figure the cost is only a couple of dollars to each registration, it's really quite a bargain.


We offer private labeling so you can have a club-specific address like http://yourclub.MotorsportReg.com/ that only lists your events with your logo/etc. We can also set up more privatized sites like http://reg.yourclubdomain.com as well.

You can do all of that and more such as send email blasts to all or part of your member database, generate reports or mailing labels and export directly to your timing and scoring system.

We're currently used coast-to-coast by BMW CCA, SCCA, PCA, Audi Club, Lotus, SVTOA, Alfa and other private clubs who use our site to manage HPDE, races, time trials, autocross and social events. We've been in business for 4 years and have processed tens of thousands of registrations and payments. There are cheaper systems out there but nobody with our track record and expertise.

Good luck in your search- let me know if you have any other general questions. DLB and MAE are both good systems depending on what you need. We tend to cater to clubs who are more serious and demand better service and reliability and want to not only provide a better experience for their members but keep their volunteers sane and having fun.

Cheers!

AU N EGL

Good Info Brian

Thanks and good luck to your company



Man I know about this one. Six years ago my company had to sue Paypal to get funds they owned. There was no disputed accounts either. Paypal just did not transfer funds according to the Electronic Fund Tranfer Act. It was amazing we got the funds the day after the suit was filed.

Brian G

yikes! It's true that this is relatively rare, but when the cost of running an event is north of $50k at some tracks (Laguna Seca is something like $20k/day on weekends), not getting your money could be a catastrophic situation. I wish everyone would read http://www.paypalsucks.com before they commit their club finances to Paypal.

Thinking about it, it could be a more serious situation for the "small guy", like an autocross club or independent track body because those guys are frequently running the show themselves and the finances may be tied to their personal finances. Failure to pay could result in pesonal lawsuits and other bad things depending on how established they are. That would make me really nervous.

Slalom4me

Thanks for posting here, Brian. (I need to clean out my PM box
so that I can resume responding through that channel.)

This is of interest to me. Does your system provide
the means to create custom reports or are users
limited to a predefined selection? Likewise, are export
parameters configurable? In either case, can custom
layouts be saved for future use.

Maybe as pertinent, have templates been created
for interfacing with popular timing/scoring packages
so as to reduce the need for clients to create their
own? A club I run with uses AXWare, for instance.

.