Teams have varying degrees of complexity in their fee structures. Determining how to set up a registration form can be daunting when working under these constraints. We have been working with teams for decades to understand their fees and provide guidance on how our system can support their requirements.
In many cases, creating separate seasons to manage your various programs or using multiple registration forms is the simplest approach to keep your fees and reporting organized. However, features such as sibling discounts, age-range fee override, acknowledgments with conditional fees, and athlete roster groups may allow you to accomplish what is needed within one form.
» Note: If you do not find your specific scenario or need clarification, reach out to our support team. We will do our best to provide direction based on your specific requirements and will update this article any time new scenarios arise that could benefit other teams.
Covered in this Article:
- Managing Lessons and Clinics
- Fall and Winter Programs with Limits
- Early and Late Registration Fees
- Discounts or Different Fees for Specific Groups (Siblings, Older Athletes, Board, Coach...)
- Custom Athlete Roster Group Fees
- Member/Non-Member Fees (Residence, HOA...)
- Family Sponsorships/Donation During Registration
- Pay in Installments
Scenario: Managing Lessons and Clinics
Many teams ask about the ability to manage swim lessons/clinics in addition to their seasonal teams. There are a few ways you can manage both, but the best option for your team may depend on a few factors, such as:
- Do you need to limit signups?
- Are these pre-season lessons/clinics, or will they be held at the same time as your regular season?
- Do you only want to offer lesson/clinic signup to families signing up for the regular season?
- Would you prefer your families sign up for lessons/clinics while registering for the regular season?
- Do you want to communicate with families that sign up for lessons/clinics separately from your regular season?
- Do you want your lesson/clinic purchases and reporting to be separate from your regular season payments and details?
➧ Option 1: Use a Separate Season to Manage Your Swim Lessons/Clinics
In many cases, we find managing your lessons/clinics separately from your regular season is the best solution.
For example, let’s say we have a 6-week pre-season Spring Clinic that is offered in the weeks leading up to the Summer season. Registration for both may be open at the same time, but some athletes may sign up for the clinic and then decide not to sign up for the swim team (or is deemed not ready). This is a perfect situation for setting up two seasons.
By using a different season for lessons, you will have the ability to:
- Create a separate season called "Swim Lessons" or "Swim Clinics" to differentiate seasons.
- Assign Athlete Roster Groups and Roles for each lesson/clinic (labels display on your People page).
- Communicate with each group individually and separate from your regular season members.
- Manage your payments and reporting separate from your regular season data.
- Limit signups per registration, per season, and/or by age-group, separate from your regular season forms. (limits by athlete roster group is not supported at this time)
➞ See our Multiple Seasons in a Year (Seasons, Clinics, Lessons...) article for general information on managing multiple seasons.
➞ See our Swim Lessons article in the Community section of our Help Center for step-by-step instructions to set up your lessons/clinics season and use Athlete Roster Groups with custom fees for signups.
➧ Option 2: Manage Swim Lessons and Clinics in Your Current Season
Managing your lessons/clinics in the same season as your regular season may work better for you if they occur at the same time as your regular season, you only want athletes in the lessons/clinics if they are also signing up for the regular season, or you want families to sign up while they are registering for the regular season, not separately.
We have a few options to help you efficiently manage these signups:
Configuration A: Set Lessons/Clinics up as Merchandise Items (With or Without Limits)
Instead of using Athlete Roster Groups as described above, which does not support limits, you can set the lessons/clinics up as "merchandise items" to add to the registration form's Merchandise section. Even though "merchandise items" support setting limits in your different lesson times, this is optional.
You can either create a new registration form called Swim Lessons with a $0.00 registration fee since they will be signing up for their lessons/clinics on the merchandise section OR, you can add these signup options to your current team registration form and allow parents to sign up for lessons at the same time as they register for the team.
To communicate only with your lesson families, you can create a Role called Swim Lessons/Clinics and then automatically assign it to parents during registration.
➞ See our Swim Lessons (or Clinics) - Limit Number of Participants article in the Community section of our Help Center for step-by-step instructions.
Configuration B: Create Separate Registration Forms for each Lesson/Clinic (With or Without Limits)
If there could be some athletes who would want to do the clinic but not the Summer team, or you want to limit sign-ups to one lesson/clinic option, or just want to keep each lesson/clinic completely separate, that's when you would be better off creating separate registration forms.
This could create a long list of forms to manage if each lesson/clinic slot is managed by a separate form, but you can copy and edit each one to expedite the setup process. If you allow families to sign up for multiple lessons or clinics, it would be easier for them if you set them up as merchandise items as detailed above, so they can purchase what they want at the same time they are registering for the season.
You can set a limit overall or by age group if needed.
➞ See our Help Center articles for details: Registration Limits and Registration Waitlist - Create and Manage (if you want to allow waitlist signups when limits are reached)
Scenario: Fall and Winter Programs with Limits
Let's say you are setting up a registration for your off-season program. You offer a Fall session and a Winter session. You want parents to be able to sign up for - only the Fall, only the Winter, or BOTH sessions, but be able to set the registration limits appropriately. (i.e., a parent registers a swimmer for BOTH and you need the registration to count toward the limits for both sessions individually.)
➧ Option 1: Create Separate Seasons and Forms with Limits
We recommend splitting up your Winter and Fall into separate seasons:
That would allow you to use the overall season registration limit on your registration forms for Fall and Winter separately.
You will want to become familiar with how to change your "current" season under Schedule > Seasons to view your roster for that season and become familiar with how to use the groups "Members" and "Members - Previous Season" when composing messages.
Your parents would need to complete more than one registration form (one in each season), but the advantage of separate seasons is they allow you to work with a distinct group of people for communications and reports while in the season, which is not the case for Option 2.
➧ Option 2: Use a Merchandise Item for Signup
➞ Separate Registration Form: If you want to keep these signups separate from your regular registration form, you can create a new registration form called Swim Lessons or Swim Clinics, for example, with a $0.00 registration fee and create separate Merchandise items or Options for "Fall" and "Winter" sessions and enable an Order Limit. Then add your lesson or clinic dates/times as "Athlete Merchandise Offers"on the form.
➞ Same Registration Form: If you would rather use one registration form so parents can add on any lessons/clinics while registering for the season, you would just add the clinic dates/times as "Athlete Merchandise Offers" to that form.
Example of Swim Lessons Setup in Merchandise Catalog:
➧ Relevant Help Center articles
➞ Option 1: Create Separate Seasons and Forms with Limits - Multiple Seasons in a Year (Seasons, Clinics, Lessons...), Registration Limits and Registration Waitlist - Create and Manage (if you want to allow waitlist signups)
➞ Option 2: Use a Merchandise Item for Signup - Swim Lessons (or Clinics) - Limit Number of Participants (limiting signups is optional)
Scenario: Early and Late Registration Fees
Many teams offer an "early bird" fee to entice early registration, and then raise their registration fee at a specific date. Changing the amount due on the early registration form will affect the balances displayed on the list of registered families, so this is not recommended.
We have two options for late fee setup to accommodate this process:
➧ Option 1: Copy Early Form to Create Late Fee Form
You can copy your existing form to make a late registration form with the higher price and then close the regular form and open the new form when ready to capture the late fee.
You can view your registrant data on a per-form basis from the report links provided at the top of the list of registrants (accessible by clicking on the Registrants#):
Or view combined registration data in one season-based report from the Reports tab.
➧ Option 2: Add an Acknowledgement to Early Form
At the time you wish to capture a late fee, you could create an acknowledgment in your current registration form for the extra fee and set it to required so that families joining after a date will be charged that amount.
You select to Include additional fee and decide if you want to charge on a per registration or per athlete basis, provide additional athlete discounts for siblings, determine a max per family, and whether you want a different fee for athletes based on their age.
This would have to be added at the time when you are ready to charge the fee, so you want to close the form to add it and then re-open it (it cannot be set up ahead of time and activated automatically based on a date).
➧ Relevant Help Center articles
➞ Option 1: Copy Early Form to Create Late Form: Create and Manage Registration Forms - Copy
➞ Option 2: Add an Acknowledgment to Early Form: Registration Form - Main Section
Scenario: Discounts or Different Fees for Specific Groups
➧ Athlete Roster Groups
Using the Athlete Roster Group feature you can define multiple athlete groups within your team and require group selection during registration, including the ability to assign different pricing based on the selected group.
➧ Sibling Discounts / Multiple Athletes
If your team wants to gradually reduce registration fees for multiple athletes in one family, you can click Add Additional Athlete Fee in the registration fee section of your forms to customize each fee for each additional athlete.
➞ See our Help Center articles for details: Registration Form - Registration Fees section
➧ Maximum Charge Per Registration
If your team likes to help large families participate without breaking their bank accounts, you can set a Maximum charge per registration. This will activate an upper fee limit (only applies to the registration fee, not acknowledgement fees, league fees, merchandise, or other fees).
➞ See our Help Center articles for details: Registration Form - Registration Fees section
➧ Older Athletes - Age-Range Fee Override
Each registration form offers flexible preferences for setting fees and sibling discounts per swimmer, but you can also override those fees for certain age groups. For added flexibility on other team fees, the age-range override is also available in Acknowledgements that require a fee, and for event RSVPs.
➞ See our Help Center articles for details: Registration Form - Age-Range Fee Override
➧ Acknowledgements
You can use Acknowledgements to charge a different fee depending on the answer to a question. For example, if there’s a discount for members of the neighborhood, you can use an acknowledgement, “I am a member of the neighborhood” and use a fee with a negative price (either by registration, or individual athlete).
➧ Board/Committee, Coaches, First-Time families, or Scholarship families
Many SwimTopia teams offer these groups a discounted pricing structure. We have a few suggestions for managing these discount offers below.
Option A: Separate Forms
If you want to manage these separately from your main form, you can create additional forms for each option that applies. Your team can have as many registration forms open as you like in a season. Simply copy your team registration form, and change the relevant sections to suit your group.
Want to keep these private? If you'd prefer to keep any registration form private, you have that option on the main registration section. When you mark a registration form private, only those who have the private form link will be able to access it. You will see this link when you click the Registration tab of the Manage Team console. It's up to you how you make this link available, either through an email message or on a private login-only page on your website. Private forms must still be in an Open state to be accessed.
When your users click the Register Now button (activated by the Registration Alert snippet), they will get a list of open/active registration forms for that season. Private forms are NOT displayed in this list (see below).
Option B: Discount Codes
Discount Codes are useful when you want to provide a discount off the registration fee, but want to manage these through your regular registration form to avoid managing many different forms. The discount you create is the amount subtracted from the total at checkout. You can create as many codes as you want, but a person can only use one code per form.
➧ Relevant Help Center articles
➞ Option A: Separate Forms: Registration Checklist (for Teams)
➞ Option B: Discount Codes: Payment - Discount Codes
Scenario: Custom Athlete Roster Group Fees
(Guppies, Swim, Dive, Swim and Dive, JV, Varsity, etc.)
If your team uses the Athlete Roster Groups feature and you need to charge specific fees for some or all of the athlete groups, you can do so by enabling the Athlete Groups tab on your registration form, checking the group(s) with custom fees, and entering your custom fee amount.
However, if you use a custom fee on your Athlete Groups there are a few important points to consider:
- Groups selected that have no custom registration fees specified are charged the standard registration fee.
- Custom group fees trump any other registration fees (i.e. regular registration fee, age-range override) configured except for any family caps on registration fees - those caps will still apply.
- Custom athlete group fees overriding the registration fee means that sibling discounts will not be taken into account during registration.
- Allow the selection of 'none' option to have standard registration fees apply if no group is selected.
So you only want to use this feature if it’s a specific fee you want to be paid for that group that is not the same as your regular registration fees.
➧ Relevant Help Center articles:
➞ Registration Form - Athlete Groups
Scenario: Member/Non-Member Fees (Residence, HOA...)
If your team charges different fees for your members versus non-members or residents, we have a few options to consider:
➧ Option 1: Create Two Forms
Create two separate forms to manage signups from these groups. You could create one form and then copy it to edit the title/fees and anything else you need. This may lessen confusion, and if you have a limit to your “non-member” group you could use the registration limit feature just for that form.
If you have more than one registration open, clicking the “Register Now” button will provide a list of registration forms instead of just starting the registration.
➧ Option 2: Add an Acknowledgement
A second option would be to have one form, use your member fee as your registration fee, and then use an Acknowledgement form to ask if they are non-members. Then set up the fee as the additional amount they should pay from the registration fee.
Do not require this acknowledgement, so your members don’t have to select this option. This is a possible downfall of using one form - If a non-member “accidentally” forgets to select this, they would pay less than they should so you would have to watch for these. You can’t pay twice on a form, so you would either have to reject their registration and deal with a refund so they can register again, or have them pay the difference via check/cash.
A benefit, however, would be that you could create a Role for this group and set your acknowledgement to assign them to this role. This would allow you to communicate directly with this group if you want by adding the role name in the To box of your communications.
Another option would be to set this acknowledgement up asking if they ARE a member and then create a discount fee by entering a negative number. This fee will be subtracted from their overall fee at checkout. In this case, you’d make the main registration fee the price a non-resident would pay:
➧ Relevant Help Center articles
➞ Option 1: Create Two Forms
➞ Option 2: Add an Acknowledgment
Scenario: Family Sponsorships/Donation During Registration
To offer a sponsorship or donation purchase to your parents during registration, you can either:
➧ Option 1: Set up a Merchandise Item
Create the donation or family sponsorship option as a "Merchandise" offering under Manage Team > Merchandise. You could check for it to be personalized if you want them to enter how they want their name displayed. Then choose to display the “item” for purchase on your Merchandise page in your registration form.
You cannot offer an “arbitrary” (open) amount, so if you want to give parents amount options, you would create a separate "item" for each level.
The system is going to automatically display a Quantity box, so if you don’t want to provide specific amount options (like $25, $50, $75, $100...), you could offer a donation amount that is small enough that people can “order“ multiple amounts, so for example, you could set the donation amount to be $5 and if they wanted to donate $25, they could order 5 of them. The "More info" can include an explanation that pops up as seen below.
➧ Option 2: Add an Acknowledgement
This acknowledgemnt on the main page of your registration can ask if anyone would like to donate to an athlete scholarship fund, coach gift, etc. Make it optional and add the specific fee amount for those who select it.
This is an optional step, but you could also create a Role for these called "Sponsor Family" and select to have anyone who chooses to do this assigned to the Role to then have a good list to communicate with if you want.
➧ Relevant Help Center articles
➞ Option 1: Set Up a Merchandise Item - Merchandise
➞ Option 2: Add an Acknowledgment
Scenario: Pay in Installments
The payment process initiated to our payment vendor (Stripe) when a registration form is submitted is a one-time action. We don't have a way to continue sending payments to our online payment vendor from the initial registration form.
Billing management functionality is on our roadmap. In the meantime, we can offer 3 workaround options:
➧ Option 1: Registration Form with Acknowledgement and Conditional Fee
Charge an initial fee as the registration fee, and add an acknowledgement with a conditional fee that equals the rest of the fee. This would only work if you only had two installments (initial payment + final payment) since you can only capture the remaining fee one time.
- You can set up your general registration form so all members would pay in installments, or create two forms -- one form with the full amount, and a separate form just for those who need installments with the first installment as the initial fee, and the second installment using an acknowledgement with conditional fee.
- If you choose the latter, you can copy your general form to save time and just change the initial fee to the first installment, and add the acknowldgement.
- You can choose to make the installment form private (checkbox on the form) if you want to limit who you provide this option to. You would copy and send the private link (displayed on the forms screen) via an external email program if they are not already affiliated with the current season.
- You'll want to check the "Require acceptance..." so they cannot register without this pre-authorization for the remaining balance to be collected. Choosing to require a signature is up to you.
- If you offer a sibling discount, you'll want to set up your conditional fee on a "Per Athlete" basis to capture the remaining fees based on what you used for the initial fee for each athlete.
Here is an example:
➧ Option 2: Use a Merchandise Item for Installment Payments
- Step 1 - Add the first installment to your registration form.
- Step 2 - Create installment fees as “items” in your Merchandise catalog for the remaining installments (.Manage Team > Merchandise > Catalog)
- Step 3 - Display this payment item on your online store (requires set up) or a private page you can set up on your site using a Merchandise snippet.
- Step 4 - Direct parents to the online store each time they need to make a payment, or if using the private page option, you would send the URL to the parents to pay.
These payments will be listed on your Manage Team > Merchandise > Orders (also reachable from your Reports tab > Online Store Orders).
➧ Option 3: Registration Form with Check Payment Option
Although online payment is ideal to lessen the money management work on your part, some teams suggest parents pay by check in these situations.
➞ Track Payments Externally: Keep the original registration in the Pending status until all payments have arrived, keeping track of the installments on a list outside of the system as they come in. Then once the final payment arrives, they'll accept the payment and make a note of all checks in the payment record.
➞ Track Payments In Your Site: Log each payment as it comes in by clicking on "Accept Payment" and enter the amount, check#, and note (if needed). This action will put the form in the "Approved" status, so you will need to click "Revert to Pending" to put it back in Pending and then wait for the next payment to do these steps again until all payments are logged.
Either option works fine, so it's your preference.
➧ Relevant Help Center articles
➞ Option 1: Registration Form with Acknowledgement and Conditional Fee
➞ Option 2: Create a Merchandise Item for Installment Payments
➞ Option 3: Registration Form with Check Payment Option
» Note: If you do not find your specific scenario or need clarification, reach out to our support team. We will do our best to provide direction based on your specific requirements and will update this article any time new scenarios arise that could benefit other teams.
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