Online entries are certainly worth encouraging, even if it costs clubs a bit more. And for an event that would normally have been EOD anyway, entries can be left open right up until the night before, so it needn't be that much of a restriction.
But other approaches could also reduce the contact normally found at registration. Volunteers could type entry details direct to a laptop (from a safe distance), rather than handling EOD registration slips. Clubs could offer contactless payment with an appropriate card terminal - and if there is mobile reception.
The best solution might be to permit EOD via online entry /payment systems on a smartphone actually at the event - but this would only work if SI-Entries, Fabian4 etc facilitate live update of entries in the event database during the event. Does anyone know if this is possible?
For regional and national events, I would expect clubs to do pre-entry only.
However these are only a minority of events. I'm interested in what clubs are thinking of doing for local events. Normally these are EOD only and low cost (£5 or less) so the minimum transaction fees for online entries would be a big percentage of the revenue if these became pre-entry only.
Has anyone thought about or tried more innovative ideas? Such as a season ticket for a local event series? Or competitors simply emailing their details to the organiser pre-event, and paying by BACS direct into the club account?
Simple.... 99% of the country has a mobile signal (it say's that but it doesn't actually mean that) so clubs just need to by a 'square' and accept contactless payment... you're not allowed to add the 1.75% fee onto the transaction cost but I'm sure you can add 50p like JustEat etc...
If a Big Issue seller in Sweden can use Square I don't see why O clubs here can't.
Just before times changed we discussed getting a card reader and at our last zoom committee meeting we agreed that we should do this. We considered a few different types and decided on 'sum up' (sumup.co.uk) as that has a built-in internet connection so no tablet/phone needed. The transaction fee is 1.69% and the reader costs £99.
We should be able to use it for all our local woods/parks events close to Nottingham ie for our local events. Our larger areas which we use for 'forest' regional and national events could be a problem depending on where the registration is re the possible internet reception.
The driving reasoning behind this wasn't Covid19 but the fact that some organisers were uncomfortable taking home £1000 in cash.
My club has used an iZettle for two years now, so long before Covid-19. We felt that many people were moving to being cashless, and that our club should embrace that trend. Interestingly, a surprisingly high number of orienteers (up until March!) still arrive without a payment card and want to pay with cash.
We have found the iZettle works well - although, as the machine ages, battery life is starting to be an issue. It just needs to be plugged into a USB port. Ensuring a decent mobile signal is the greater issue.
Were we to be starting now, we would probably pay the extra for a SumUp, to avoid being limited to one network.
But back to Sean's original question, in a Covid-19 world I would want to minimise contact between volunteers and competitors. So I would strongly encourage pre-entry and pre-payment. It could be a requirement for larger events where competitors are mainly seasoned orienteers. It is a bit more challenging for events attracting newcomers. Nevertheless pre-entry for those events could be left open until 6am on the morning of the event, with the registration team downloading the data before leaving to set up at the event. You would then need to deal with payment at the event (and entering their details!) only for those who did not realise they had to pre-enter or had not decided to attend until that morning.