Race directors, are you tired of typing data from paper registration forms? Are you frustrated with big online registration services' inflexibility and excessive fees? Welcome to Racer Pal, a low cost, flexible, and powerful solution to event online registration provided by Andi Berger.
Racer Pal provides:
- Custom registration forms set up for you based on your race flyer and instructions
- Paypal payment handling (registrants are not required to have a Paypal account; Paypal deducts its fees for each transaction)
- Custom confirmation emails to registrants upon successful payment
- Optional notification emails to the race director upon attempted registration, successful payment, and/or completion of specific fields (i.e. comment)
- Downloadable registrant data that can be easily imported into an Excel or similar spreadsheet
- Optional Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption to secure registrants’ form information
- Available link to publish list of paid registrants on your website
- Powerful Administrative Utility for race directors
- View, download, and edit registrant data
- Separate paid and unpaid registrants
- Send payment reminder emails
- View payment details
- View Paypal pending payments and charge backs
When you choose to use the Racer Pal service, I will develop a prototype online registration form and race overview page based on your race flyer or instructions. You will have the opportunity to review the prototype forms and request changes to field names, field types, field order, descriptions, prompts, labels, colors, logo, etc. I will integrate your choices into online forms hosted on the Racer Pal website and place an entry for your race on the Racer Pal event calendar. If your race qualifies to be listed on the Macon Tracks Running Club calendar, a link can be placed there for you.
Racer Pal Software Features:
- multiple registration cutoff times with separate fees (i.e. early, late, final)
- discount/coupon codes with optional limited number of uses
- Macon Tracks Running Club membership verification
- add-on fees/discounts for specific items (i.e. discount for club members, extra fee for XXXL shirts)
- participant limits
- optional service fee charged to registrants (flat rate, percentage, combination of flat rate and percentage, or none)
- conditional fields and pages
- optional links to your web site
- group/team support
- coupon code purchase for large groups
- customized "behind-the-scenes" logic as requested
When an individual registers for your event, Racer Pal stores the registration information in its database, and directs the registrant to Paypal for payment. Registrants choose to pay with their credit card or Paypal account. Payments (minus Paypal transaction fees) go directly to your own Paypal account without Racer Pal's knowledge of your Paypal password. Your Paypal account must be a Premier or Business account in order to accept credit card payments from registrants who do not have a Paypal account. Paypal accounts are free and simple to set up. Paypal fees currently start at 30 cents per transaction plus 2.9% of the transaction amount and go down as your monthly revenue goes up. For a $20 race fee, the Paypal transaction fee would start at 88 cents. You may choose to absorb this fee into your race fee or pass it on to the registrant. When Racer Pal receives notification from Paypal that the registrant has successfully paid, it updates its database and sends your custom confirmation email to the registrant. You will be able to download up-to-the-minute registrant data as a comma separated value (CSV) file that can be easily imported into an Excel spreadsheet.
The Racer Pal fee is $35 for set-up of the online form plus 5 cents per paid registration record after the first 100 records. Racer Pal does not deduct fees as transactions occur, but requires separate payment from the race director (via check or my Paypal account). If you list multiple races with nearly identical forms concurrently, the set-up fee for each subsequent race is $7.
I am a semi-retired software developer with over 20 years of experience designing, coding, and testing sophisticated software applications. I began regularly participating in local races several years ago, and soon became frustrated with the available online registration services. After handling online registration for the Macon Tracks Running Club as a volunteer, I decided to develop Racer Pal to simplify my task of setting up registration forms for the running club and to provide a lower cost online registration alternative to racers and race organizers. The software has evolved from its initial use for the 2010 Labor Day Road Race (with over 2000 participants) to a feature-rich automated solution. More features can be added as needed.
Please visit the Racer Pal race calendar, from which you can view active Racer Pal registration forms. Also visit the Racer Pal Administrative utility description, which details the functionality of the race director's administrative tool.
Best regards,
Andi Berger
Email: andi@racerpal.com
Website: www.racerpal.com