Fees
Understanding how you want people to pay to participate in your program is a prerequisite to setting up the approrpriate pricing structure in AlumnIQ.
Every attendee will be charged an event fee even if it is $0. Think of the event fee as something of a cover charge - not optional, not revocable, and not really visible until later in the registration process.
Event Fees are charged, without any options presented, to every registrant based on the "best fee" determined by the system for each party member.
Activity Fees are presented in a dropdown for each attendee to choose a fee that is appropriate for them based on a subset of applicable fees as determined by the system based on your configuration. Most of the time Activity Fees are all you need!
Product Fees are charged straight up based on the option(s) configured on the product.
Fee Applicability
The system uses a combination of active/expiration dates, registrant type attributes, relationship type attributes, class year, and membership status flags to filter down the set of fees to only the one (or ones) that are applicable for a given registrant. If none of the fees are appropriate, the system returns the default fee for that individual. You have control over which fee is considered the default fee at all times - and you can selectively deactivate fees if/as needed too.
Required no matter what:
fee name (which is publicly visible)
amount (even if zero)
FMV (even if exactly the same as amount)
display order (so you're not locked in to alpha exclusively)
start/end time (since not all fees are forever available; don't be shy about extending expiration past the end of the registration period)
time zone id (just in case you want to play price timing games with the fees outside of the event or activity itself - i somehow doubt this will be used frequently)
for whom (must be set to at least one if not all three registrant types)
Optional for selective employment:
members only
person type (if you're checking all boxes, check none instead - they're equivalent)
class year restriction (only applicable to alumni and students)
relation (if you're checking all boxes, check none instead)
Fee Configuration
The Fee field is required. 0 is a perfectly valid value. See the FMV page for information on setting the FMV/gift splits when you're employing that capability.
Start Time and End Time are the dates during which the fee is available. This can be used for limited time pricing, such as an early bird special. Please be sure to select both a date and a time or leave the fields blank. BLANK IS SAFER THAN HAVING A FEE EXPIRE PREMATURELY. If you set dates, extend your fee expiration dates out past the end of the event (unless they're special purpose or an early bird rate, in which case you know what to do)
Applies to (Type) and Applies to (Relation) denotes which relationships to the university or the primary registrant are elligible for the fee.
For Whom? Controls whether or not the fee is applicable to Adult Primary registrants, Adult Guest registrants, and/or Minor registrants. This allows you to target fees at each applicable audience should circumstances require. If your event is simple and the fee applies to everybody, be sure to check all three boxes.
When Minor is selected, the Age fields will become available. This allows you to restrict a fee to a certain age range of children.
Note however that the Child option for Applies to (Relation) does not control the Age Fields. All it does is denote that a party member is a child of the primary registrant, which is not necessarily a minor: Consider adult children or current university students.
Discounts
We handle discounts a little differently than you might expect. Discounts are simply predefined activity fees with a different rate.
This is actually really, really helpful for you.
all fee applicability rules can be applied to discount fees (including the members-only flag)
the ledger for this event will reflect all as-received revenues without adding new line items to manage ad-hoc discounts
automatically/implicitly tied to participation in a specific activity
yes, you can use them in combination with FMV (which makes these fee types that much more useful!)
The simplicity is where the magic is. Think of it as "just another fee" that is magically unlocked when the right code is entered. Easy as can be - especially for post-event accounting!
Configuration
Click into the activity and scroll to the activity fee section. Then Add Fee.
set the fee name to something attractive ("Members Only - $10 off")
set the fee amount to the actual cost to participate
some of you will try to set it to the amount to be discounted - NO! - set it to the actual, charged amount
don't forget to set active and expiration dates on the fee (not all discounted fees are available in perpetuity)
the fee must be marked active in order for the discount code to work
Scroll down to the Discount Code Activation section.
Click the checkbox to mark this as a discount code-enabled fee.
Give it a reasonable code, max 20 characters. Don't worry about case sensitivity - we're kind about that.
Discount codes exist to drive registration and participation. With that in mind, read the next section:
If you're concerned about overuse, the max uses field is (as is our practice) a gentle limiter. We check the number of completed registrations that have used the code when assessing whether this party is permitted to apply it. The only purpose for max uses to be used is as a safety against misuse - imagine 1000 people trying to cash in a code that you realistically only expected 200 to use - and will stop approximately around that number. 198 people complete registration using a code? A party of 4 right behind them registering together will be allowed to use the code - because, again, the purpose is to drive participation. Once that party completes (bringing use count up to 202), the next party to attempt to use the code is not going to be able to.
Don't forget to make any other applicability selections in the section below if any.
Remember, because these are simply activity fees with a little less visibility you can apply the same rules for applicability that you would any other fee - making them extra powerful.
How do I use a discount code?
The button to apply a discount code appears on the checkout screen. This is to accommodate express registration scenarios where we skip over the selection screen. Most ecommerce platforms save discount code applicability for the checkout step too, so we're not that deviant for using this model too.
If the event has active discount codes, the total party balance is > 0, and any party member has not yet attempted to apply one, you'll find the button just above the gift ask and/or grand total fields.
Click it to launch the input:
If you submit a non-existent or expired code, we'll reject it.
If we find exactly one, we'll auto-apply it:
If, due to your config, a code is on more than one qualifying and applicable fee, we'll prompt the registrant to pick which rate they wish to pay.
We expect that to be rare, but there are some prior event builds that needed something like that (ex: a family rate vs an individual rate) where both could conceivably be discounted using the same discount code.
If all goes well, we'll swap the selected activity fee with the discounted activity fee, recalculate the total, and show this beacon below the personal subtotal for the registrant.
Repeat the process for each member of the party. Once all party members have received a discounted fee (assuming they were eligible for one), you will not see the Apply Discount button to initiate the process anymore.
That's all there is to it!
Q&A
What happens if i then go back and "Change Selections"?
We'll force you to re-enter the discount code. We need to recalculate eligibility based on your new or updated selections
Can I add new discounted fees after registration opens?
Yes!
Can I change a discounted fee amount after registration opens?
Only if the fee hasn't been 'used' by a real registrant. If that's the case, deactivate the current one and create a new one (with the same applicability rules) to replace it.
This sounds complicated.
No more so than the current fee structures which have accommodated a very broad set of rules-based applicability screening for years. As long as you force yourself to think of a discount code as a special key that unlocks a special rate you'll have an easier time of it. Thinking of them as coupons will take you into a dark, confusing, and likely incorrect place.
What can we use discount codes with?
Thanks for inviting the answer again: activity fees only. Not event fees, not product fees, not activity option fees - JUST activity fees. And that'll cover 95% of your use cases easily.
Testing
Be absolutely sure to use the Preview button (on the event view screen) to create party members of varying ages and relationships to test the fee visibility for your activities before going live. With more options come more possibilities and it's best you see the impact on registrants before they find holes in your pricing for you.
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