Show Organizers: Online Entry Experiences?

[RedmondDressage]

I’d love to hear from show secretaries and organizers about their experience with EqEntries or other online entry systems. Do you find them more or less difficult to work with? Positive/negative feedback?

Our regional championships is still requiring paper entries as though it’s 1996. As a competitor I find it really inconvenient. I’m not great with paperwork to begin with and I hate having an entry and check floating out there in the mail when I can file my entry online and pay a small fee to ensure it gets there and receive confirmation that the submission was successful. I think every other show in our region offers online entries and based on my conversations, our competitors are strongly in favor of having that option so it’s odd/irritating that the most important event does not. Apparently the board declined to even consider the option of offering online entries this year despite the issue being raised. I’d love to know if this is backed up by actual challenges in dealing with online entries or if it’s just a discomfort with technology on the part of our board.

[Curly_Feather]

I’m in South Africa, so we don’t use the same system you do, but my entries are all done online. It’s convenient, mostly, except that the payment part is not completely integrated, so the show-holding body still has to manually match up proof of payments against entries received.

[Draftmare]

I really wish that more organizers would do online entries. The GMO that I show with started doing online entries for a couple of their shows, but for the most part many of the shows are still paper entries. I always have anxiety over if my entry got there or not. As a show organizer I think it would be annoying to be getting tons of mail before a show too. Online entries save trees, and I get the instant gratification of knowing that my entry has been received. They use paypal, and do charge a small fee to cover the PayPal costs, which is totally worth it IMO.

[yaya]

Online entries do NOT save trees - you still have to print out the entries for the TD to go over, and the expense of printing out all the sheets falls on the show secretary! I had to write Equestrian Entries and suggest they tone down all the black bars on the printouts because it was eating up all my printer ink, and pages were coming out wet!Equestrian Entries generates more sheets of paper than I need, which is a pain to go to each entry and specify which pages to print out so I don’t end up throwing out a ream’s worth of paper.

It is nice to just push a button and have an entry autofill instead of having to type each one in, but you have to be really careful with your initial setup to make it easy for competitors to enter correctly and not miss anything. REALLY appreciate the inclusion of the Coach card - why can’t Eqverification include that? It’s part of the entry and part of the rules, and the one thing (other than Coggins) that people forget to include in a mailed entry.

As a show secretary, online entries are growing on me, but I guess I’m just weird, but as a competitor, I still prefer filling out a paper entry.

[Silverbridge]

I am just coming to the end of my second show season and I’ve done every single entry of every show I’ve been in so far, via online.

I find Equestrian Entries far superior to horseshowoffice and much more intuitive to use. Primarily because EE allows you create and then to save an entry at any step of the process, and then come back and pay whenever you have things finalized. Also, EE takes a credit card and HSO doesn’t.

I discovered after awhile that several of my barnmates have never done online, and have always mailed in an entry form and a check. I’d much rather pay the small handling fee and know that everything is received and confirmed.

And it does at least save paper on the entrant’s end of the deal, if not on the show secretary’s end.

[kcmel]

Ugh. I hate paper entries. Sadly, walking out to the mailbox to put an entry in the mail is too much for me! And my printer cartridge has dried up, and I don’t want to buy another one because they are expensive I am thinking about getting a new printer. So I have to print at work, and usually I forget.

[Lucassb]

[QUOTE=Silverbridge;8813094]
snip

I find Equestrian Entries far superior to horseshowoffice and much more intuitive to use. Primarily because EE allows you create and then to save an entry at any step of the process, and then come back and pay whenever you have things finalized. Also, EE takes a credit card and HSO doesn’t.
.[/QUOTE]

TOTALLY agree with this. As a competitor, I love using EqEntries and I am happy to pay the small convenience fee. Not a fan of horseshowoffice at all - it’s poorly designed, and I hate that check copy coming back in the mail, not secure at all.

[RedmondDressage]

[QUOTE=Lucassb;8813837]
TOTALLY agree with this. As a competitor, I love using EqEntries and I am happy to pay the small convenience fee. Not a fan of horseshowoffice at all - it’s poorly designed, and I hate that check copy coming back in the mail, not secure at all.[/QUOTE]

Good to know. Looks like they’re going to look at doing online entries for next year so fingers crossed that happens I’ve only used EqEntries so I don’t have anything to compare it to but I’ve found it super easy and intuitive. Good to have this input to pass along to our board.

[equiscape]

Ditto on preferring EqEntries. I love being able to upload my coggins and other documents (like Test 3 over 60% for freestyle entries) and just include them in a show entry. And the additional fee is worth the peace of mind of knowing my entry arrived on time.

[SBrentnall]

LOVE EqEntries! I can enter a show in under 5 mins, and rack up airline points on my credit card to boot!

[dressagediosa]

EqEntries charges 5% of the entry fee which, for the CDIs, means $40-50 in fees. I think it’s absurd, especially since no other system I’ve used charges a fee anything close to that, and I won’t use their system.

[high_hat]

[QUOTE=dressagediosa;8815816]
EqEntries charges 5% of the entry fee which, for the CDIs, means $40-50 in fees. I think it’s absurd, especially since no other system I’ve used charges a fee anything close to that, and I won’t use their system.[/QUOTE]

I am in the camp that I prefer Horse Show Office over EqEntries. I pay a $5 fee in addition to the percentage. This times 2 as they charge separate fees since it is 2 shows. I can’t stand giving away that money.

I will use it to generate my entry though and print it out.

[GreyGelding]

As an organizer, I use FVD which has a fairly seamless integration with EqEntries. Also, like mentioned earlier, the drawback to me is the extra pages that get printed. I believe they are working on a report to spool all entries into one .pdf to send to a copier/Staples. Which would be an additional cost, regardless. Receiving one check from all credit card entries has been a good thing for me. Drawback to competitors - the processing fee is handed down to the competitor only.

I have heard really good things about HSO from the scoring perspective, but like many of these reviews, not good things from the competitor/end-user view point. It is on my list of things to look into over the winter. I don’t know if EqEntries integrates with HSO.

[swgarasu]

Wondering why a TD has to look at paper copies, do they not have an electronic device that can display a pdf? Laptop, smartphone, ipad, etc?

I am surprised that USEF, USDF, GMO, etc, have websites where your application, membership, and payment are done online, but horseshows seem really behind on the technology. Maybe it’s a money thing, and that is something that membership fees should pay for- an online system that could not only store your entries but could also query databases such as USEF for names and numbers to pre-populate some of the fields.
The technology DOES exist, I work in IT for a university, and 90% of our forms these days are electronic. It may not have been tailored for equestrians, but then every institution is different from one another in higher ed, so customizations can be done. Even if they did not go with an existing product, a good web developer and SQL DBA ought to be able to hammer something out, a company could be hired to develop the product.

[yaya]

@swgarasu;8820604

Wondering why a TD has to look at paper copies, do they not have an electronic device that can display a pdf? Laptop, smartphone, ipad, etc?

Many times things are added to an entry when a competitor arrives (signatures, Coggins, etc.) and the TD needs to see the full entry. Our showgrounds is in an area that has poor cell reception, no internet connection, and no WiFi, so there would be no way to send a pdf to the TD during the show. Maybe when I got home on Fri or Sat night it could be sent, but if something was added or changed on a Sunday entry, it wouldn’t be able to be sent until the show was over, which would be too late for the TD.

Also, each entry is separate in the online entry system, and I don’t want to have to send 150 separate pdfs to somebody.

[swgarasu]

I can see how the lack of connectivity would be a problem. However, it sounds like only late entries or entries missing info would need to be printed, complete entries could be reviewed ahead of time electronically. I don’t think you would need to send any pdfs, the TD should have access to the system to view them online (if the system is designed well).

[rothmpp]

[QUOTE=dressagediosa;8815816]
EqEntries charges 5% of the entry fee which, for the CDIs, means $40-50 in fees. I think it’s absurd, especially since no other system I’ve used charges a fee anything close to that, and I won’t use their system.[/QUOTE]

Totally agree. I went online to do my Region 2 championship entry a couple of weeks ago. I have been a show secretary over the years and can appreciate the value of info that I do not have to enter myself. My $650 entry was going to cost my an additional $32. No freaking way.

I get shows not wanting to absorb the 2.5-3% fee from their bank to accept credit cards, but EqEntries selling their software by not charging the show, which gets the bulk of the benefit from it, rather charging the competitor really irks me. Doing online entries makes the show secretary’s job way easier - don’t make your competitors pay for that, too.

I think which system you like better also has to do with the one you use more often as a competitor. The shows I go to use HSO - my information is all stored in the system. It takes me about 2 minutes to enter a show. Whether you can use a credit card with that system is dependent on whether the show accepts credit cards. I have definitely been able to use credit cards on HSO.

[Come_Shine]

In our area, we use showmate. It is a fantastic system. www.showmate.net

[yaya]

[QUOTE=swgarasu;8820707]
I can see how the lack of connectivity would be a problem. However, it sounds like only late entries or entries missing info would need to be printed, complete entries could be reviewed ahead of time electronically. I don’t think you would need to send any pdfs, the TD should have access to the system to view them online (if the system is designed well).[/QUOTE]

Well as it stands now, the info on EqEntries is protected under my password, which I’d have to give to the TD for access, and then change each time.

And we don’t require entries to be done online, so many are paper entries anyway. (Not everyone wants to pay the fee for online entries, and some don’t want their credit card number given out online.)

[swgarasu]

[QUOTE=yaya;8821147]
Well as it stands now, the info on EqEntries is protected under my password, which I’d have to give to the TD for access, and then change each time.

And we don’t require entries to be done online, so many are paper entries anyway. (Not everyone wants to pay the fee for online entries, and some don’t want their credit card number given out online.)[/QUOTE]

Yes, there are always exceptions. But changing your password takes maybe a minute? You might also contact the vendor and let them know this is a feature people need- “Hey EqEntries, dressage shows need TDs to have access. Can you add a role to grant read-only access for TD accounts?” This type of request is usually very easy to accommodate. Software is never really “done”, it undergoes constant development and feature additions. You can use what system you like, electronic or otherwise, but that is the direction things are going, newer riders coming into the sport are going to want to go electronic.