We are releasing a new Voucher system that allows races to create vouchers that participants can use as a credit when they sign up for an event.
For example, you might give Allison a voucher for $30 that she can use on any of your events. In the example on the right, she signs up for a $25 event with a $1.00 add-on item, and uses $26 of her voucher to sign up for free. She will still have $4.00 on her voucher to use for another event registration at a future date.
Note, we do not charge a processing fee on the voucher portion of a transaction – this is yet another free service from RunSignup | GiveSignup.
One of the key reasons we are introducing this new feature is that we have many new customers moving over to RunSignup | GiveSignup to take advantage of the robust features we have for Hybrid events with a combination of live, virtual and challenge options to maximize revenue. Many of these new customers have promised deferrals or credits to participants from last year’s cancelled or deferred events.
There are plenty of use cases for vouchers. For example vouchers for the local running store and other partners and sponsors, or for an ambassador program, or as an alternative for giving refunds, etc.
Our new voucher system makes it easy to create a bulk set of vouchers for different participants. For example, you may want to give your 5K participants a $25 voucher, and your Half Marathon participants a $75 voucher and your Marathon participants a $100 voucher. You can use our free email system to send out those vouchers.
Our voucher system is integrated with our integrated payments system. This means that is participant use the voucher for partial payment and credit card for partial payment, we keep track of that. And if you want to issue refunds, we split that refund up appropriately and can add back to the voucher total.
Using Vouchers
Users will get a 12 digit code that is provided by RunSignup | GiveSignup. If vouchers are enabled for an event, a “Voucher” button will appear in the checkout section.
Entering the voucher will recalculate the totals:
Note, participants can use multiple vouchers. And if the voucher does not cover the entire cost, we will calculate the appropriate amount to charge their credit card.
Setup – Voucher Pools
We are introducing the concept of Voucher Pools, which allow vouchers to be easily shared between race directors and multiple events. We introduced this powerful next-gen concept to our GiveSignup Ticket platform previously.
Adding a new pool is simple, and many users will just have one pool. In this example, we are going to create a pool for our 2020 Deferrals. This allows us to organize our vouchers for different purposes as an example – one for vouchers we are giving to the local running store and other partners and sponsors, one for an ambassador program, one as an alternative for giving refunds, etc.
Create Individual Vouchers
Once you have set up or picked a pool, creating individual vouchers is simple:
Once the voucher is created, we create a unique 12 character voucher code. You can see this in the “Vouchers” tab in the 2020 Deferrals Pool we created.
You will note that the voucher will show the initial amount as well as the balance. So after Allison uses her voucher in that transaction, the Voucher report shows the balance:
Note, we do not automatically send an email with the voucher to individuals at this time. You can download a csv here and then use our free email marketing system to send the codes out. You will upload the Voucher Code field as a special replacement tag as outlined in this Help Article. Matt Sinclair recommends using his favorite tag – %Corral_Description%, but you can pick your own.
Bulk Voucher Creation
You can also add any number of vouchers of equal value at once:
Note, we do not automatically send an email with the voucher to individuals at this time. You can download a csv here and then use our free email marketing system to send the codes out. You will merge the spreadsheet with your list of people with first name, last name and email address. With that merged file, you will upload the Voucher Code field as a special replacement tag as outlined in this Help Article. Matt Sinclair recommends using his favorite tag – %CORRAL_DESC%, but you can pick your own.
Refunds
We also keep track of voucher usage for refunding purposes. Refunds will first refund against the credit card, and then against the voucher. Here is an example where there was a partial refund given, and the voucher was credited with the refund amount. You can see the history on each voucher, with the use of the voucher and then the refund adding back $8.13:
Vouchers 2.0
We have plans for a next generation version later this year with more features and automation. We are interested to get feedback on what features you would like to see. Send those to info at runsignup.com.
