Pre-reg

Pre-registration involves taking people's money in advance of the event.

Why bother?

1. To put some money in the bank to pay for early costs such as deposits. Usually this is not strictly necessary as there is a pool of funds from previous events that you can borrow. But it's very comforting to have a big bank balance before the event starts.

2. To create a group of people who are committed to coming, who hopefully act as your walking adverts.

3. To help forecast numbers. In 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 (at least), attendance was almost exactly double the pre-reg numbers. Even if this doesn't happen for your event, 400 people pre-registering means nearly £30,000 in your bank account that you can be certain of.

To encourage people to pre-register, tickets are normally sold at a discount to people who pre-register compared to the prices charged on the door. This discount has varied between 10-20% (for more details see Ticket prices). Some conventions (e.g. Huddersfield BJC and Cardiff BJC) have had early pre-reg prices and standard pre-reg prices to encourage people to pre-register earlier, rather than just leave it to the last week before the pre-registration deadline.

BJC 2012 kept on selling tickets online at the door price right up to the event. About 100 people took advantage of this, but it didn't seem to make an appreciable difference to the final figures and it cost the convention in credit card fees.

Payment methods

Bank transfers

Bank transfers are a bad idea. There's no reliable way to work out who has paid what, and it requires the person handling pre-reg to have access to the company's online banking.

Many conventions have occasionally accepted bank transfers from individuals who are having problems paying another way or who are making a large one-off order for a group.

Credit card payments

The advantage of credit card payments is that it requires almost zero work from the team once a shopping cart is set up.

Emily Winch has a shopping cart licence which organisers can borrow, and she knows how to set it up to process credit cards from your website.

Each credit card payment can cost you £2-£3 in fees, and there are initial costs of perhaps £30 (depending on how your website is set up).

Cheques

If you have someone who's good at boring but important admin tasks, and who really couldn't be doing anything more important, then going cheques-only will save you a lot of money. Ask people to send you an SAE with their cheque - this will save you even more money. Someone will need to track all the cheques, pay them into the bank, and maintain an accurate spreadsheet of who has paid.

If you have someone that you trust to do all this work, then it's possible you could use their time more productively on (for example) planning the evening entertainment, which is a pretty big job and can't be done by a computer.

You need to stop accepting cheques well before the event, otherwise some of them may still be in the post when people arrive.

Even if you accept credit cards, a few people (fewer every year) still like to send cheques. The shopping cart software used by 2008, 2009 and 2010 allows customers to fill in all their details online, even if they are paying by cheque. Cheque payers are then presented with a form (with all those details) which they print out and send in the post with the cheque. This has the advantage that nobody on the team needs to decipher any handwriting, cope with missing details on forms, or type everything into the database. All they need to do is use the order number from the form to find the order in the database and mark it as paid.

There are plans to phase out cheques by 2018, and they are likely to become less common as that date approaches.

Cash

It's good to be able to take cash at regional conventions. It's very very easy to lose track of who handed you it. Write everything down! Carry pre-registration forms and do not accept money unless people fill out a pre-reg form.

Tickets

People like to have a ticket as a souvenir. Tickets cost money to print, and a lot of someone's time to post out. Sending emails is just as effective; you can cross-reference people's names against a list on the front desk.

Lots of people forget to bring their tickets, so even if you send them out, you still have to keep a database on the front desk to avoid a pandemonium of forgetful people.

History

If you are planning on organising a BJC then there is a spreadsheet with all the pre-reg data back to 1999, available by request from Mini Mansell.

Only three people have attended every BJC, they are referred to on this wiki as the Gold three.