Collecting Entry Fees Online: A Practical Guide for Tournament Organizers

Ask organizers what they enjoy least about running events and the same answer keeps coming back: money. Chasing transfers the night before, making change from a cash tin between matches, the awkward conversation with the pair who "will sort it after". None of it is why you got into organizing — and all of it disappears when payment happens at registration.

Why payment-at-registration changes everything

• Commitment is real. A paid entry is an entry; a free sign-up is an intention. No-show rates collapse when money moves at sign-up, which means your draw on Friday is the field that turns up on Saturday.
• Your entry list is your accounting. Who paid, when, and how much — answered by the registration list itself, not a notebook.
• Match day is about matches. No cash tin, no card reader queue at the desk, no chasing. You run sport, not a till.

Setting the fee

Price to cover courts, balls and prizes, and say what the fee includes on the registration page. Per-team pricing suits doubles events (one payment per pair avoids the half-paid team problem); per-player suits individual formats and leagues. If you run both free socials and paid competitions, keep them clearly separated — mixing the two confuses regulars.

Have a refund policy before you need one

Withdrawals happen. Decide the rules while nobody is upset: full refund until the draw is published is a common, defensible line — after the draw, a refund only if a replacement fills the slot. Publish it on the registration page and every conversation gets shorter.

Keeping cash as the exception

Some entrants will always prefer cash, and there are events where taking it makes sense. The mistake is running cash as a parallel untracked system. Record cash entries in the same list as online ones, marked as paid-on-the-day, so one list still tells the whole financial story of the event.

What good looks like on the day

• Registration closes with every entry paid or explicitly marked otherwise.
• The draw is built only from paid entries — no placeholder pairs.
• After the event, the money already adds up; there is nothing to reconcile.

Built-in payments

ScorePal connects your own Stripe account so entry fees are collected automatically when players register — card payment on the public sign-up page, paid status visible on every entry, cash entries trackable alongside. Set the fee once on scorepal.co and registration handles the least fun part of organizing for you.