Online Registration FAQ
The primary purpose of this new feature is to allow athletes and teams to register online
for leagues and tournaments, and to pay their entry fees via credit card.
Athletes will be able to go to your website and click on the name of a registration form. On their screen they will see a list of data entry fields with captions such as Name, Street Address, and Home Phone. When they have filled in all of the fields, they will click a Submit button and be taken to a secure web page where they can pay with a credit card.
You will be able to create and maintain as many different forms as you need. You may have one form for each sport, age group or league, or you can have a combined form where one of the questions asks the athlete to select which sport or league they are signing up for.
A form can have any number of fields, in any order with any caption, and each field can be any of eight different types. While simple text fields will be most common, your forms can also have checkboxes, dropdown lists, text areas, and several other input types. You can assign a dollar amount to any form, so that when an athlete fills out the form, they will be required to pay a certain amount. In addition to the base value connected to the form, you can also assign additional dollar amounts to some fields. For example, you may have a base fee of $60.00 to play in a soccer league, but if the athlete clicks the “I want a soccer ball” checkbox, an additional $8.00 could be added to their bill.
While the most common use of this feature is expected to be for registration where money is collected, QuickScores does allow you to create a form with zero base value, meaning someone can fill out the form and submit it without making any kind of payment.
Because of the flexibility of a totally customizable form which may or may not have dollar values, this new “registration” feature can also be used for other purposes. For example, you can gather information about coaches and volunteers so that you can conduct a background check. You can take surveys where you ask your athletes questions and gather feedback from their responses. Or you can even create a store. A form can have a picture and a description of an item, followed by either a checkbox to buy one, or a dropdown list to allow purchase of multiple items.
Athletes will be able to go to your website and click on the name of a registration form. On their screen they will see a list of data entry fields with captions such as Name, Street Address, and Home Phone. When they have filled in all of the fields, they will click a Submit button and be taken to a secure web page where they can pay with a credit card.
You will be able to create and maintain as many different forms as you need. You may have one form for each sport, age group or league, or you can have a combined form where one of the questions asks the athlete to select which sport or league they are signing up for.
A form can have any number of fields, in any order with any caption, and each field can be any of eight different types. While simple text fields will be most common, your forms can also have checkboxes, dropdown lists, text areas, and several other input types. You can assign a dollar amount to any form, so that when an athlete fills out the form, they will be required to pay a certain amount. In addition to the base value connected to the form, you can also assign additional dollar amounts to some fields. For example, you may have a base fee of $60.00 to play in a soccer league, but if the athlete clicks the “I want a soccer ball” checkbox, an additional $8.00 could be added to their bill.
While the most common use of this feature is expected to be for registration where money is collected, QuickScores does allow you to create a form with zero base value, meaning someone can fill out the form and submit it without making any kind of payment.
Because of the flexibility of a totally customizable form which may or may not have dollar values, this new “registration” feature can also be used for other purposes. For example, you can gather information about coaches and volunteers so that you can conduct a background check. You can take surveys where you ask your athletes questions and gather feedback from their responses. Or you can even create a store. A form can have a picture and a description of an item, followed by either a checkbox to buy one, or a dropdown list to allow purchase of multiple items.
There is no cost to have the online registration feature enabled on your website. Nor is
there any cost to create or use forms for which no money is collected.
If you create and use a form for which money is collected, QuickScores will automatically add on and keep a small “Internet Convenience Fee”. This fee is added on to the credit card and paid by the athlete, not by the client organization. The internet convenience fee is set to be 2.50%, with a minimum of $2.50 and a maximum of $5.00. This means that for any registration costing less than $100, the fee will be $2.50. For registrations between $100 and $200, the fee increases (rounding to the nearest quarter) until it reaches $5.00. For any registrations over $200, the fee is a constant $5.00.
Does the organization collect 100% of the base fee? No. All credit card companies take out a small portion of every transaction. Because credit card companies don’t allow vendors to raise their prices for credit card versus cash transactions, many people aren’t aware that the vendor actually loses a little money on every credit card transaction.
The amount kept by the credit card company always has two parts – a percentage called the discount rate, and a fixed fee. We have worked hard (and will continue to do so) to find the credit card processor with the lowest rates. At this time we are withholding 2.50% plus 28 cents from every transaction for the credit card company.
Here is one example. A youth signs up for a sports league costing $50.00. We add the $2.50 internet convenience fee, so $52.50 appears on the parent’s credit card bill. Of the $52.50, QuickScores keeps the $2.50 fee, and also withholds $1.59 (2.5% x $52.50 + .28) for the credit card company. The client organization thus receives $48.41.
Here is another example. An adult signs up his softball team. The base fee is $350.00. After adding the $5.00 internet convenience fee, the credit card bill will be $355.00. The amount of $9.16 is withheld for the credit card company, and the client organization receives $340.84.
If an organization feels they cannot afford to lose the amount taken by the credit card company, when you define the registration form, you can add an additional amount onto the internet convenience fee automatically charged by QuickScores. Of course, the higher the fee, the less likely the athlete will use the online registration feature.
If you create and use a form for which money is collected, QuickScores will automatically add on and keep a small “Internet Convenience Fee”. This fee is added on to the credit card and paid by the athlete, not by the client organization. The internet convenience fee is set to be 2.50%, with a minimum of $2.50 and a maximum of $5.00. This means that for any registration costing less than $100, the fee will be $2.50. For registrations between $100 and $200, the fee increases (rounding to the nearest quarter) until it reaches $5.00. For any registrations over $200, the fee is a constant $5.00.
Does the organization collect 100% of the base fee? No. All credit card companies take out a small portion of every transaction. Because credit card companies don’t allow vendors to raise their prices for credit card versus cash transactions, many people aren’t aware that the vendor actually loses a little money on every credit card transaction.
The amount kept by the credit card company always has two parts – a percentage called the discount rate, and a fixed fee. We have worked hard (and will continue to do so) to find the credit card processor with the lowest rates. At this time we are withholding 2.50% plus 28 cents from every transaction for the credit card company.
Here is one example. A youth signs up for a sports league costing $50.00. We add the $2.50 internet convenience fee, so $52.50 appears on the parent’s credit card bill. Of the $52.50, QuickScores keeps the $2.50 fee, and also withholds $1.59 (2.5% x $52.50 + .28) for the credit card company. The client organization thus receives $48.41.
Here is another example. An adult signs up his softball team. The base fee is $350.00. After adding the $5.00 internet convenience fee, the credit card bill will be $355.00. The amount of $9.16 is withheld for the credit card company, and the client organization receives $340.84.
If an organization feels they cannot afford to lose the amount taken by the credit card company, when you define the registration form, you can add an additional amount onto the internet convenience fee automatically charged by QuickScores. Of course, the higher the fee, the less likely the athlete will use the online registration feature.
There are two ways we can get the money to you. First, we can send you a check via the
post office. Given the bank’s delay in creating the check and US Post Office delivery
times, you will receive your money 5 to 7 days after we submit the request for you to be
paid.
The better approach is to do a direct deposit. If you will give us your bank account number and your bank’s routing number, we can directly deposit the money overnight into your account. Doing a direct deposit is easier, safer, less expensive and a lot faster.
The payment method determines how frequently we send the accumulated money to you. If you choose direct deposit, we will send money to you once a week with the money appearing in your bank account Friday morning. If you choose to receive a paper check, money will be put in the mail once a month, on the first Thursday of each month.
The better approach is to do a direct deposit. If you will give us your bank account number and your bank’s routing number, we can directly deposit the money overnight into your account. Doing a direct deposit is easier, safer, less expensive and a lot faster.
The payment method determines how frequently we send the accumulated money to you. If you choose direct deposit, we will send money to you once a week with the money appearing in your bank account Friday morning. If you choose to receive a paper check, money will be put in the mail once a month, on the first Thursday of each month.
While we have tried to make the creation of a form as simple as possible, creating a long
form from scratch can be tedious. For that reason we have provided a few ways to
simplify the process. First, you can start with a template form defined by QuickScores,
and just customize it to meet your needs. Second, once you have a form looking exactly
the way you want it, you can make a copy of your own form and customize the copy.
Third, you can copy forms from any other client. (YMCAs in urban areas quite often
share resources among the branches in their association.) And fourth, if you need to add
new fields to a form, not only can you insert any of eight different types of fields
anywhere in the form, but you can also insert predefined fields or groups of fields. For
example, you can insert a Shirt Size dropdown field that is already filled with all shirt
sizes from YXS to A3XL. You can also insert a single chunk of fields that has name,
street, city, state, phone, and email.
QuickScores templates were created by reviewing nearly 100 registration forms uploaded to QuickScores by our clients. The forms were divided into general categories, such as Individual Youth or Adult Team, and the template for that category includes all of the field types found on those forms. No single form we found has all of the fields in the template, so the template probably has more fields than you need, but everything you need should be there. This “overkill” approach means you can customize a template form by simply deleting the fields you don’t want. A few single-click deletions are a lot faster than having to add fields from scratch.
QuickScores templates were created by reviewing nearly 100 registration forms uploaded to QuickScores by our clients. The forms were divided into general categories, such as Individual Youth or Adult Team, and the template for that category includes all of the field types found on those forms. No single form we found has all of the fields in the template, so the template probably has more fields than you need, but everything you need should be there. This “overkill” approach means you can customize a template form by simply deleting the fields you don’t want. A few single-click deletions are a lot faster than having to add fields from scratch.
If you have one or more registration forms that are active, your athletes will see a new
menu item on the left titled Registration. Clicking on Registration will display a page
listing all of your active forms. When you first create a form, it has a status of Inactive.
When you have finished creating the form, you can change the form’s status to Active.
Just because a form is Active doesn’t necessarily mean that an athlete can use the form to
submit their information. You have the option to limit the use of the form in two different
ways. First, you can define an upper limit on the number of entries. Many events have an
upper limit on the number of participants. A new form defaults to allowing an unlimited
number of submissions, but if you enter a number in the Maximum Entries field,
QuickScores will only accept that many submissions. When the number of submissions
hits that max number, the form will still be listed on the Registration page for the athlete,
but it will be gray and unclickable.
Second, you can define when form submissions will be accepted by defining days and optionally times when you will begin accepting submissions and when you will end accepting submissions.
An athlete can submit information on a form if the it has an Active status, and, if a Publish Start Date/Time is defined, the current date/time is after the defined start, and, if a Publish End Date/Time is defined, the current date/time is before the defined end, and, if a Max Entries count is defined, there are fewer than that many submissions.
Second, you can define when form submissions will be accepted by defining days and optionally times when you will begin accepting submissions and when you will end accepting submissions.
An athlete can submit information on a form if the it has an Active status, and, if a Publish Start Date/Time is defined, the current date/time is after the defined start, and, if a Publish End Date/Time is defined, the current date/time is before the defined end, and, if a Max Entries count is defined, there are fewer than that many submissions.
There are four different ways for you to view form submissions.
(1) As soon as the athlete clicks submit, you will received an email containing all of the form's information.
(2) All of the submissions for a form are visible online in a tabular format. In addition to the entered data, each submission is color coded to indicate whether the form was paid with a credit card, paid by cash or check, or unpaid.
(3) Any one, several or all form submissions can be printed on paper. Each submission is printed on a separate page to facilitate the common method of team building by shuffling papers into piles on a table.
(4) All submissions to a form can be downloaded as a spreadsheet.
Whenever you are dealing with a form, whether filling out a form or reviewing submissions, your connection tp QuickScores is encrypted in order to protect your sensitive personal data.
(1) As soon as the athlete clicks submit, you will received an email containing all of the form's information.
(2) All of the submissions for a form are visible online in a tabular format. In addition to the entered data, each submission is color coded to indicate whether the form was paid with a credit card, paid by cash or check, or unpaid.
(3) Any one, several or all form submissions can be printed on paper. Each submission is printed on a separate page to facilitate the common method of team building by shuffling papers into piles on a table.
(4) All submissions to a form can be downloaded as a spreadsheet.
Whenever you are dealing with a form, whether filling out a form or reviewing submissions, your connection tp QuickScores is encrypted in order to protect your sensitive personal data.
You are responsible for any refunds. QuickScores will not be involved with refunds.
When an athlete submits their credit card for payment and the transaction is approved, the credit card company fee and the QuickScores convenience fee are irrevocably committed. Whether the athlete changes their mind about registering for the event, or you decide to cancel the event, those two fees will still be retained and the remainder passed on to you the same as any other transaction. It is up to you to return the money to the athlete.
If the athlete backed out, you will likely want to withhold these fees from the amount returned to the athlete. If you had to cancel the event, you will likely want to return the full amount to the athlete and your organization will absorb the retained fees as part of the cost of the event cancellation.
When an athlete submits their credit card for payment and the transaction is approved, the credit card company fee and the QuickScores convenience fee are irrevocably committed. Whether the athlete changes their mind about registering for the event, or you decide to cancel the event, those two fees will still be retained and the remainder passed on to you the same as any other transaction. It is up to you to return the money to the athlete.
If the athlete backed out, you will likely want to withhold these fees from the amount returned to the athlete. If you had to cancel the event, you will likely want to return the full amount to the athlete and your organization will absorb the retained fees as part of the cost of the event cancellation.
Over time, we will be adding more template forms that you can use as starting points for
your own forms.
In the “How do I get my money?” answer above, I describe two ways in which to handle the money. In both cases QuickScores collects all of the money and passes the money on to the client organization once a week. Soon I will offer a third alternative. For those organizations that already have a merchant account to receive credit cards, I will customize the QuickScores software so that online registration through QuickScores uses the client’s merchant account. In this way all of the money, including the QuickScores internet convenience fees, will be deposited in the client’s bank account. When this method is operational, QuickScores will need to somehow collect the internet convenience fees from the client.
In the “What do the athletes see?” answer above, I describe how each form has an optional Max Entries count. In the future, I will add optional max entry counts to dropdown items, checkboxes and radio buttons.
In the “How do I get my money?” answer above, I describe two ways in which to handle the money. In both cases QuickScores collects all of the money and passes the money on to the client organization once a week. Soon I will offer a third alternative. For those organizations that already have a merchant account to receive credit cards, I will customize the QuickScores software so that online registration through QuickScores uses the client’s merchant account. In this way all of the money, including the QuickScores internet convenience fees, will be deposited in the client’s bank account. When this method is operational, QuickScores will need to somehow collect the internet convenience fees from the client.
In the “What do the athletes see?” answer above, I describe how each form has an optional Max Entries count. In the future, I will add optional max entry counts to dropdown items, checkboxes and radio buttons.
