Back to School 'Splash & Dash'

[Steel City]

Back to School 'Splash & Dash' :) :)

http://www.sheffieldswimming.org.uk/pages/sprints.htm

[Steel City]

:)
Sheffield City Swimming Club have embarked upon a new idea and for the first time are use an Gala online entry system @
Online Gala Entry (http://www.sheffieldcitysc.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/)

[KatieBun]

:)
Sheffield City Swimming Club have embarked upon a new idea and for the first time are use an Gala online entry system @
Online Gala Entry (http://www.sheffieldcitysc.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/)
Not so! Basingstoke have been there, done it, eaten the pie and bought the tee shirt!....oh, and read the book and seen the film! :D :D :D :D

[Steel City]

:)

[KatieBun]

:)
Terribly sorry. Didn't mean to sound so smug! Too much vino speaking! Well done to Sheffield,too. As someone who has entered online several times with Basingstoke, I must say it's a lot less trouble and very user-friendly. Well done, Mike!

[chris_lamb]

Terribly sorry. Didn't mean to sound so smug! Too much vino speaking! Well done to Sheffield,too. As someone who has entered online several times with Basingstoke, I must say it's a lot less trouble and very user-friendly. Well done, Mike!

Now all we need to work on is being able to accept payment by credit/debit card...

[Steel City]

Sprints Online Entry (http://www.sheffieldcitysc.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/) :king:

Because with the system we are using we can advance to accepting payment by credit/debit card...

:p :D

But seriously how well did the online entry work?

[chris_lamb]

Because with the system we are using we can advance to accepting payment by credit/debit card...

The only thing stopping us is finding an affordable way to do it - the cheapest I could find recently was about £1.50 for a £10 entry fee.

But seriously how well did the online entry work?

It works very well for us - people seem happy to receive information by e-mail and pick cards up on the day instead of having them posted.

[Steel City]

The only thing stopping us is finding an affordable way to do it - the cheapest I could find recently was about £1.50 for a £10 entry fee.



It works very well for us - people seem happy to receive information by e-mail and pick cards up on the day instead of having them posted.

That's pleasing to hear there are some sceptics who believe it won't work.

[GettingFaster]

This system is ideal for Masters meets, where everyone gets into everything and entries are more often handled by individuals rather than clubs. It might be more tricky to implement for age-group competitions as there are often cut-offs and entries tend to be handled per club and so by one person dealing with hundreds of swims.

However, as someone who had to input thousands of entries for the counties, I'd be interested to know more. With on-line entries the onus would be fairly and squarely on the heads of the individuals inputting the times, but that might remove checks that picked up errors. Even when I received diskette entries I still found quite a few errors which I was able to discover by checking the individuals' entry forms. If I hadn't had those forms the mistakes would have gone unnoticed. I know it is the responsibility of the person entering the data to check its accuracy so perhaps the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

As for on-line payments, do clubs tend to have a card or number they can pay with? I thought the norm for this kind of organisation was just to have a cheque account with no card number, though of course I could be wrong.

When it's all completed please give your views on how well it went and what the ACTUAL benefits and drawbacks were, I'd be very interested to hear. It would also be good to see what percentage of entries were done this way over the traditional paper.

[chris_lamb]

This system is ideal for Masters meets, where everyone gets into everything and entries are more often handled by individuals rather than clubs. It might be more tricky to implement for age-group competitions as there are often cut-offs and entries tend to be handled per club and so by one person dealing with hundreds of swims.


Worked well for our Easter Meet too - quite alot of individual entries there. Submitting an entry on-line is only the same as submitting a paper based entry. It does not consitute accepting of the entry. If there were upper/lower time limits you could even automatically reject times outside that range...

However, as someone who had to input thousands of entries for the counties, I'd be interested to know more. With on-line entries the onus would be fairly and squarely on the heads of the individuals inputting the times, but that might remove checks that picked up errors. Even when I received diskette entries I still found quite a few errors which I was able to discover by checking the individuals' entry forms. If I hadn't had those forms the mistakes would have gone unnoticed. I know it is the responsibility of the person entering the data to check its accuracy so perhaps the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

For our county development competition this year we have introduced online entries as a replacement for floppy disk based entry. This is done by the club not individuals. The onus is purely on the club entering the information as we will not be getting paper entry forms. The will be required to print, check and sign a summary of the entries to confirm they are correct.

As for on-line payments, do clubs tend to have a card or number they can pay with? I thought the norm for this kind of organisation was just to have a cheque account with no card number, though of course I could be wrong.

Probably. Online payment would be best for individuals not clubs.

[GettingFaster]

Chris-lamb, I think I need to talk to you in more detail about this, sounds really good. Next Masters meet perhaps?