Editing Your Race's Registration Info
This page lets you customize the registration experience. You can set your pricing, add waivers, and add extra items that the user can purchase when they register. Many races like to sell t-shirts and meal tickets, for example.
Paypal Email
PaddleGuru currently uses PayPal to send you your registration fees when your regatta ends. We'll send your funds to this email address when your race finishes.
Pay Now and Pay Later
Turning "Pay Now" on enables pre-registration for your race. Athletes will be able to pay with a credit card when they register. PaddleGuru will transfer these funds to you when your race completes.
"Pay Later" allows athletes to register for your race's events without putting any money down. The system will track how much they owe so you can collect your fees on race day. This is good for races that encourage race day entries and payments, but want to streamline the process by collecting information in advance.
Tip: The "Pay Now" option tends to give races a large boost in registrations. Athletes are more likely to show up when they've financially committed to a race.
Credit Card Fee
PaddleGuru's payment processor, Stripe, charges 2.9% plus 30 cents for credit card transactions.
The "Paddler Pays" option pushes this charge onto the athlete. If you charge 100 dollars for an entry, the athlete would actually pay $2.90 + $0.30 = $3.20 on top of that, for a total entry fee of $103.20.
The "Organizer Pays" option allows the paddler to pay the listed $100.00 fee and subtracts Stripe's fee before passing the payment on to the organizer.
We recommend going with the "Organizer Pays" option and charging slightly higher prices, rather than pushing odd entry fees like "$103.20" on to the athlete, but we leave the final decision up to you.
Fee Structure
The two fee structures PaddleGuru supports are
- One fee for the whole race, and
- Separate fees per event.
Let's go over these one by one.
One fee for the whole race
If you select this option, The athlete will be able to enter as many events as she wants for a fixed price. You can set three prices:
Prereg Pay Now Price
This is the price the athlete pays if they register before the event and pay the full amount by credit card. You can encourage pre-registration by setting a discounted price in this field.
Prereg Pay Later Price
This price is applied if the athlete pre-registers but chooses not to pay now. (This is only possible if you turn on the "Pay Later" feature described above.) This amount is typically higher than the "Pay Now" price to encourage athletes to put money down in advance.
RaceDay Price
This price is listed for athletes that show up on race day and register through our "Race Day Registration" feature. This price is typically the highest of the three to encourage pre-registrations.
Race day pricing comes into play at midnight of the start date you entered on the "Edit General" section.
Separate Fee per Event
This option allows you to set a separate price for each event. You can do this on the "Races/Events" tab under the "Edit" menu.
If you set fees per event, you can still set a maximum fee for the entire regatta. PaddleGuru lets you set two limits - one for pre-registration with a credit card, one for pre-registration with payment deferred to race day. These mirror the "pay now" and "pay later" registration prices described above.
PayNow Max Fee
This fee caps the amount a racer will pay if they register in advance. Say you have five events. Each event costs $20.00. If you set a Max Fee of $50.00 for the regatta, the athlete will pay $20.00 to race one event, $40.00 to race two, and $50.00 to race three or more events.
Athletes on PaddleGuru are allowed to edit their race registrations. This means that if an athlete registers for two events, pays $40.00, then comes back and adds a third event, PaddleGuru will only charge $10.00. The athlete will have paid $50.00 total, spread out over two charges.
PayLater Max Fee
The math here works the same as the PayNow Max Fee. The PayLater fee allows you to set a different cap if a racer decides not to pay with a credit card and defer payment until race day. You may want to set a higher cap to encourage more pre-registrations by offering a better deal for that path.
Extra Items?
PaddleGuru lets you add up to two extra items that users can buy at checkout. Race organizers like to use these fields to sell items such as t-shirts, banquet tickets or campsite spots at the race venue.
If you want to use this feature, click "Yes", and fill in the Text and Amount for up to two items. The amount must be a price in US Dollars - 12.00, for example. We show the text and amount to all athletes that register for your race.
The various pricing caps discussed above don't apply to these extras; the extra fees are applied on top of those calculations.
PaddleGuru doesn't currently charge anything for processing these extras, though the usual 2.9% + $0.30 charge from our credit card processor will apply if the athlete pays in advance.
T Shirt Sizes
Check Yes if you'd like us to collect t-shirt sizes for all athletes that register for your race.
Paddler Address
Check Yes if you'd like us to collect the athlete's address on registration. This is required by some insurance providers, and useful if you need an address to send out awards or pre-race information packets.
USACK Info
If your race requires USACK information, check "Yes" and we'll ask every athlete for their USACK number at checkout.
Registration Page Text
PaddleGuru splices this field in to the registration page; if you need to give your athletes custom registration instructions, this is the place to do it.
Registration Waiver
If your insurance provider requires a waiver, paste in the text here. If you provide a waiver we require every athlete that registers for your race to check a box saying that they've read and understand the text of the waiver. They won't be able to register without checking this box.
If you add a waiver after you've opened the race for registrations, athletes with existing registrations will see the waiver when they go to edit their registration, and will have to sign the waiver to make any changes to their registration.
If you do add a waiver later, you may have athletes register without ever signing. You can use our export feature to see which athletes haven't signed and have them do this when they show up on race day.
Confirmation Email Note
When an athlete registers for your race, we send them an email with the details of their registration and some information about the race. Use this field to enter a custom message into that email.