Deep Dive – Change Rules

Participants can make changes to their registrations and personal details based on a set of rules that you – the organiser – control through settings on the administration system. This article describes in detail how to creation Change Rules and how the different types of Change Rule can be used.

You can control the ability of your participants to make changes to their registrations using “Change Rules”. These are set per event and can be accessed on the Admin system at Registrations -> Change Rules. Each Change Rule that you create includes “from” and “to” date/time parameters to control their available. These parameters are set using a number of days counted back from the event date – to make the rules easy to create and copy – but the system converts them to absolute dates for the list screen.

Some Change Rules support an Administration Fee which, when specified, must be accompanied by an SKU selection for the fee to be billed on. The selection list for SKU will show any currently active SKU on a Product of type Administration.

Most Change Rules support an information display where you can describe the particular rules, conditions and actions for your specific event scenario. For instance, you may want to explain that for a Race Transfer, the difference in fee when transferring to a cheaper race is not refunded. You can do this by selecting a Document to display with the Change Rule.

A description of each of the types of Change Rules available appears below …

Add To Cart

This rule allows participants to add merchandise items to their registration. This can be very useful as participants will often change their mind and want to purchase a tshirt, cap or bus ticket after they have created their registration. Although it is possible to achieve the sale using a standalone merchandise store, this would not connect the sale to the registration so an Add to Cart change rule is far preferable – particularly if the sale of this item is only open to participants.

How is it accessed?
To use this function, the participant should view their registration on Dashboard. At the top of screen, a Make Change button will appear with a drop-down list attached. An item on this list will be “Add Items to Registration”.

Which products are available for selection?
To determine which products are included, Director first finds the default store for the registration event. If you have not chosen a default store (you can do this on Event Dashboard) then no products will be available. Once the default store has been found, the Store Contents are examined. Each Product of type Merchandise – which also has the switch enabled for Can Add Later” and “Active” – is available for selection, provided it has stock available.

How are payments recorded?
The Payment Methods available to complete the selection are those set for the default store and “Public” checkout. Any surcharges defined for the payment method will also be applied when adding items to cart.

When items are paid for in this way, they are billed on a new cart, so it is important to realise that they will not appear when viewing the primary cart for the registration. The newly purchased items will appear on the Registration Editor -> Cart Items tab as well as in any registration downloads which include merchandise.

Address Update / Emergency Contact Update

These two simple Change Rules allow the participant to update the Address or Emergency Contact details attached to their registration. Note: although the change rule is termed “update”, this process always creates a new address or emergency contact record and attaches that to the registration. So if the registration was created as part of a composite entry (e.g. series pass, family, etc) then the address or emergency contact update will only affect the current registration.

Person-to-Person Transfer

This Change Rule allows the registration to be passed from one person to another. This is the only way that participants can directly change the personal details of their registration such as name, date of birth or email address. It is not possible for participants to make even minor corrections to any of these properties. Instead, a person-to-person transfer must be completed.

How is it accessed?
To use this function, the participant should view their registration on Dashboard. At the top of screen, a Make Change button will appear with a drop-down list attached. An item on this list will be “Person-to-Person Transfer”.

Which details are updated?
Only the personal details for the registrant are updated during this process. That is; name, date of birth, email and telephone. If you require the entrant to review and update any additional registration questions, you should advise them of this using the instructions in the Change Rule document and they will have to make these changes using a Registration Answers change rule.
Important! if a waiver exists for the event, it will be shown on the form and must be accepted prior to proceeding with the transfer.

Registration Ownership
By default, the registration ownership is not changed during this process so the registration will still be available within the Dashboard account after the transfer is complete. However, the participant can elect to “Transfer Ownership”. If they do this, the owner ID for the registration is set to null (meaning it can no longer be accessed by the current Dashboard account). The next time a user account logs in to Dashboard with the email address specified for the new person, the registration will then be attached to their account.

How are admin fees processed?
If you are charging an Administration Fee for this person-to-person transfer, Director will check for an SKU defined for this change rule and will also check for a Default Store for the registration event (set on the Event Dashboard). Provided these exit, a new cart will be created in the default store and the fee will appear in the cart attached to the SKU selected in the Change Rule. The available payment methods for the participant to make payment of the fee will be those defined in the default store for Public checkout. When payment is successful, Director will complete the transfer.

Update Registration Answers

Use this Change Rule to allow registrants to update the answers to questions they are prompted for during the normal registration process.
Important! Even with the change rule in effect, only questions which are marked as “User Editable” will be available for the participant to update (the User Editable flag is set on the Event Dashboard -> Questions tab).

How is it accessed?
To use this function, the participant should view their registration on Dashboard. On the Event Questions tab, a blue edit icon will appear next to any question which is available to edit.

Withdrawals

Use this Change Rule to allow registrants to withdraw their registration.
Important! A withdrawn registration is not available for further update by participants or administrators. This Change Rule should be used with caution and the Change Rule document should be used to highlight to the participant that the action is final and cannot be undone.

How are admin fees processed?
If you are charging an Administration Fee for withdrawals, Director will check for an SKU defined for this change rule and will also check for a Default Store for the registration event (set on the Event Dashboard). Provided these exit, a new cart will be created in the default store and the fee will appear in the cart attached to the SKU selected in the Change Rule. The available payment methods for the participant to make payment of the fee will be those defined in the default store for Public checkout. When payment is successful, Director will complete the transfer.
Important! The withdrawal process does not currently support full or partial refunds.

How is it accessed?
To use this function, the participant should view their registration on Dashboard. At the top of screen, a Make Change button will appear with a drop-down list attached. An item on this list will be “Withdraw Registration”.