Casual/Race Entrants in TES and Payment Issues
The keel-boat version of TES allows boats to enter one race at a time; these are “Race Entrants” / “Casuals” / “Visitors”.
A boat can only enter the next available race i.e they cannot pre-select a number of races in advance.
Each Race Entry incurs a fee (unless the club does not have race fees.)
These fees tend to be smaller amounts.
If the entrant does not pay for a Race Entry fee for (say) race 1, then enters race 3 several weeks later; then they will now owe the club fees for both races.
So when they go to the payment screen at race 3, they will be asked for a combined amount to cover both races.
If they have paid for race 1 and this has be marked as PAID in TES, they will only be asked to pay for race 3.
If the payments are done exclusively online using a payment gateway, then the payments should be marked off as paid automatically once the payment (e.g. for race 1) has been made.
If the payment is made by any other means, then it is up to the club to mark the particular race, e.g. race 1, as PAID, otherwise TES has no way of knowing what has been paid. It will assume it has not been paid and the sailor is asked to pay for races 1 and 3 at race 3.
Occasionally the payment gateways do not tell TES that a payment has been made. This occurrence is rare but can happen. This can come from a number of different technical issues but in essence, it is the bank corresponding with the gateway company which in turn corresponds with TES. This is all done over the Internet and on occasions, the Internet fails thus breaking this process.
So what impact does this have on the club?
- It is very important that any over-the-counter payments are marked off in TES as having been paid, along with the amount, in a timely manner – i.e before the next race.
- Regularly check the Payments report from TES (Event Data page) to see if there are outstanding Race Entry payments.
- When a sailor claims to have made an online payment but it is not marked off as PAID, check with the gateway provider for proof of payment. Once verified, mark the race as paid and edit the amount. Also put a note in the Note column
For further reading see –
TES ~ Check or Mark off Payments