I went out and looked at the USCF Chess Store Tournament Registration page and noticed that it looks like it is somewhat set up to allow registration for “Other USCF Rated Tournament”
I would make an assumption that this might mean that a TD or Organizer might be able to “purchase” this function from the USCF for a Fee. Is this true?
If so:
What would the cost be?
Are there any set up instructions available?
Would it utilize Credit Card or Direct debit technology?
Does it allow for Teams to perform “Batch Entry”
Has anyone used it in this manner other than the USCF at this point that I could contact?
We did this as a trial for the National Open, including all the side events. It was a fairly complicated registration form.
Al Losoff and I are supposed to put together a report to Bill Hall on how well things went and make a recommendation as to whether we should offer this service to other organizers. I haven’t heard from Al since the tournament ended, you could try emailing Al if you want his opinion.
For Al’s event I think the office sent him a weekly check. I don’t know how much effort it would take to do some kind of direct deposit payment or what the costs would be, assuming that’s what your’re asking.
The USCF accepts Visa, Master Charge, Discover and American Express, and we’re thinking about accepting e-checks. Several people have suggested we support Paypal as well, but that’s still in the discussion stage. It would probably take a complete rewrite of the checkout process to link in Paypal.
One of the big factors is what fee to charge. Obviously, we need to cover our credit card fees (including chargebacks for cancelled registrations or voided transactions) but we also need to cover the cost of setting up and monitoring the registration process for an event, handling phone inquiries, etc.
You can register multiple players in the same transaction, but we don’t currently have a separate team registration process, either for variable size team events like the national scholastics, or for team-on-team events like the Amateur Teams.
I think the feedback from the spring scholastics was that the scholastic coaches thought a separate team entry form would be a good idea but not a high priority one. (I think they’re more interested in the ‘corrections’ module to allow them to move their players between sections or replace preregistered players who cannot attend.)
Thanks Mike, the reason I am asking is that we have our own Tournament registration web application bnasc.org/app/
but at this time it lacks a payment collection function. We have found it to work well for a regional type tournament with up to 300 or so players (our area scholastics) We do have some fuctionality to change players between sections. One nice function is a downloadable WinTD compatible master file (or to excel spreadsheet)
Anyway, we will be hosting the Illinois State Scholastic Championship next March and I want to get ahead of registration. It might be that if we use our own software, set a cut off day about a week before, set up Pay Pal, give an online discount, and ask for team payment ahead of time. Not sure yet… Anyway, we are expecting 750 to 900 players, depending on how many make it down from Chicago to Bloomington.
For this year’s spring scholastics, we cut off online registration at midnight the day before the event began, and we’re looking to extend that even later, if possible. (The next set of changes to the registration module will have a cutoff date and time for each event code, so that we can cut off the blitz event at a different time of day from when we cut off the main event.)
We have a real time interface that TDs can use to download hot lists (players with membership or other eligibility issues, such as ratings that have changed since the player registered) and they can even get a download file to cut and paste into WinTD.
We require a player’s USCF membership to be current through the end of the event (they can join or renew as part of the same transaction), which got rid of virtually all the expired membership issues. I think the only ones were for registrations received in the mail.
Our online registration system uses an event template that is similar to the one that organizers can use to enter online TLAs. If we decide to offer our registration service to other organizers, I may look into merging those two templates so that once an event has an online TLA it is also just about ready to handle online registrations.
The TDs were VERY HAPPY with the way the online registration system worked, all of the nationals started on schedule with very few problems due to registration issues. With the exception of one of the blitz sections at the Elementary, where WinTD crashed mid-event and the file got all screwed up, all of the side events and main event sections were rated within a day of when they ended, some of them within 3 or 4 hours. (I think in one case they had the event rated before they started handing out trophies.)
Very nice, sounds like the kind of thing that would make an integrated operation work very well from TLA to MSA!!!
I guess a major issue would be how much of the work would you be wantig to do to make it workable for USCF and how much you want to be supporting organizers and at what cost. I could see an organizer who is willing to eat the cost of MC, Visa, Paypal being willing to go a step farther and pay a bit to not have to develop there own software. Another advantage I see in your system is that you probably are a more secure system!!
I’ve never used Paypal to send funds to someone else other than to pay for things on places like E-Bay.
I’m told that Paypal’s charge to webstores is in the same range as that of other credit card servces vendors, possibly slightly higher. (In the 2-4% range, depending on the charge card being used.) Grant Perks says their chargeback fees for credits and returns are less than those that the USCF’s current credit card services vendor charges us, but I have not verified that report.
Would it cost another 2-4% to use Paypal to then forward those funds on from the USCF to the organizer?
The base rate is 2.9% + $.30 per transaction. I believe this goes down slightly if you do a high enough volume (something like over $3000/monthj for consecutive months). They do not charge for direct transfers, only for CC transactions. The real advantage of PayPal is that you can create and configure your own “Buy” links for free, and set up your own entry page. Web store packages give you more options (and probably a slightly lower CC percentage), but they are not economical for small operators.
With over 115,000 transactions and about $1.7 million in credit card charges handled in the last fiscal year (mostly memberships but also ratings fees and entry fees), I think the USCF would qualify for favorable rates. I think they USCF recently renegotiated its fees from our current provider down below 2.5%, and I think the transaction charges average less than 25 cents per transaction.