Entry fees – online and offline

You can now collect entry fees when a competitor enters a SailEvent competition!

The minimum you need do is set an entry fee for an event. The online entry form shows the amount and asks the entrant to pay up. (It’s a good idea to provide payment instructions in >Settings >General.) That’s offline payments. As you receive entry fees you can mark them as paid in the club app.

Online payments go to the next level by automating the entire process. When competitors submit their entry forms they are asked to pay by credit or debit card. Only when payment is received is the competitor’s entry accepted. SailEvent uses the Stripe payment platform to provide a secure, modern payment experience and manage all the tricky financial stuff.

To implement online payments each club has its own Stripe account so that entrants pay their fees directly to the organising authority; SailEvent isn’t in the loop.

Setting up a Stripe account is reasonably painless and, once you’ve activated it, just connect it to your SailEvent account and you’re done. Sit back and watch the money roll in!

For more about collecting entry fees see club app >Help, Entry Fees topic. This infosheet explains how to set up Stripe.

Entry fees are available for Club and Plus plans only.

Entry Forms for Open Meetings

It’s time for open meetings – a chance to see new faces, and old, and bring much-needed income to the club.

SailEvent is ready with a new online open meeting entry form. It collects the same information as the familiar club racing form plus more contact details, club name and emergency contact.

A quick look round entry forms on the web reveals, unsurprisingly, much variety in the questions they pose nevertheless we believe we have covered the essentials that most clubs need. But we are open to suggestions so please let us have your feedback. We can fine tune the existing form or even add variants.

However at this stage we are not going to cater for selling merchandise, providing menu choices or any of the other many and varied potential options! Instead SailEvent now also supports custom entry forms. Create them using your choice of online form builder and embed in your SailEvent online entry forms page.

Of course open meetings imply entry fees and SailEvent is ready to collect them via the slick and modern Stripe payment gateway. But when it comes to dealing with real money we need to tread carefully so we are not making this feature generally available just yet. First we want to work closely with a small number of clubs so that we can monitor the flow and make sure everything runs smoothly. If you’d like to be one of those clubs please contact us at support@sailevent.net.

Open Meeting entry forms are available now if you have a SailEvent Club plan. For Custom entry forms you need to subscribe to the Plus plan. More information is available via club app >Help.