Anybody have experience with online registration/sign in?

The club I race with currently only does manual sign in and registration for race events. It delays the race day significantly when you have 200 racers, and sign in doesn't open until 8am. The club guy who handles stuff like this says there's no easy solution. I find that hard to believe. I would be willing to take on the task, although I'm not very strong on the computer. I would even be willing to enter things manually during the week, if it kept people out of line on race day.

Any thoughts or experiences?

What type of racing and are you looking at online registration in advance or software to checkin racers the day of?

The big online processors for registration (In the US) are http://www.dlbracing.com and http://www.motorsportsreg.com both have a decent number of export formats for the registration data and I know motorsportsreg has a free version with somewhat limited options and no online payment.

I have used them both for different clubs and if that is what you are looking for I can go into more details.

At our local club we handle preregistration manually via email and Excel spreadsheet. It's not perfect, but it does help. I think I am going to look into that free version of motorsportsreg since I'm taking over the program this year.

It's motocross. If racers could sign in and pay during the week, then show up on raceday and not have to stand in line, that wouyld be ideal. The other possibility is to allow registration for the event ahead of time, and make payment at the track. There would still be line ups, but it should go much quicker.

In reply to Duke:

That's exactly what I was going to offer, if I can't find something better/simpler

Zomby Woof wrote: In reply to Duke: That's exactly what I was going to offer, if I can't find something better/simpler

That's what we do. We try to fill out the registration list as much as possible ahead of time, but nobody pays until check-in at the event. The free version of motorsportsreg looks pretty good, and I just signed the club up for a free account, but that version doesn't take online payments. they charge a percentage and per-entrant fee to do that.

Correct. You can do payments thru paypal manually but that will require you to update the registration list with who has paid.

My autocross group takes registrations online (you modify a Word document and send it back) and then on the day of the event you just have to sign the filled-out forms and pay (although you can pay ahead of time and it's encouraged).

The one SCCA group here does the motorsportsreg.com thing.... I still have yet to really hear any complaints about it and they have done it for a while now...

GameboyRMH wrote: My autocross group takes registrations online (you modify a Word document and send it back) and then on the day of the event you just have to sign the filled-out forms and pay (although you can pay ahead of time and it's encouraged).

How do they handle payment?

Thanks for all the info, guys.

Zomby Woof wrote:

GameboyRMH wrote: My autocross group takes registrations online (you modify a Word document and send it back) and then on the day of the event you just have to sign the filled-out forms and pay (although you can pay ahead of time and it's encouraged).

How do they handle payment? Thanks for all the info, guys.

For paying at the event, cash goes in a bag and then we check off the little box that says "paid" on the form...the accountants on here are probably cringing now.

Payment ahead of time is at the club office then you bring the receipt.

IIRC (haven't run since the layoff), Atlanta Reg. SCCA (using motorsportreg.com) actually charges your method of payment, and then refunds it if you're a no-show. I had a DNS a couple of years ago, and it was pretty painless.

I just started a free account for our club with motorsportsreg. There is an online form you fill out with basic info about your club and events. They call you back (it was pretty much first thing the next morning) with a short phone interview where they make sure you're not an obvious crackpot, then they send you a service agreement with some details to fill out about your club and first event. Then they set up your first event as a template and review it with you, including how to administer the software. Once you approve, it goes live and open for preregistration, plus you can then duplicate it from the template for your subsequent events.

Not bad for free. They only charge if they handle money for you, or if you want some additional services that are not included in the basic package.

I had another look at motorsportsreg, and it looks really good. I sent an email to the club member that typically handles the IT stuff, and offered to manage the online registration. We'll see how that goes.

Yup, I did the same.

They might see an increase in traffic/use form this post.

MSCC uses MyAutoEvents.com

I run our autocross program and have been very happy with Motorsportreg.

It also has some useful tools for adminsitrators - like batch emails to participants.

dlbracing never seems to work right. Either it's the payment system doesn't work, works only one way, works the wrong way or it refuses to take names, numbers or the cars properly.

We spend more time correcting the issues on the day of than if we'd have just used manual sign in. But for the techies in the club they think that's progress, cause by golly it can be done online in the middle of the night while they are in their jammies.

Most every event I go to uses dlbracing.com. As an entrant I've never had a problem. I like it. Donovan Brown also did the rookie walk through at the very first autocross I ever attended. He was, and still is, a really nice guy at our local autocrosses.