At the Rotary Club of Bolton, we’ve been running our tournament the “traditional” way for many years. This meant, lots of excel documents and multiple committee members collecting checks and cash. Checks and cash were even accepted the day of the event which left us quite worried leading up to the big day. Our committee spent countless hours on data entry. This took time away from some of the more important tasks such as; finding players, sponsors, and improving on the overall experience of the event.
When our club was first introduced to Event Caddy, we were super hesitant as we’d been running a successful event for so many years prior. Transitioning to an online system seemed like a giant leap but we knew it had to be done. Event Caddy made the whole process super simple. Our team is not very tech savvy but we actually had a lot of fun setting up our tournament website on Event Caddy as a team. It was simple and anytime we got stuck or had a question, the support team at Event Caddy was there to guide us.
We’ve been using Event Caddy for the last four years and it’s been a huge help for our club. Event Caddy helped streamlined the registration and management process. Event Caddy not only gave our players/sponsors somewhere to go to signup and pay, but more importantly gave our committee a central location to manage and track this information.
Prior to using Event Caddy, the emails and communication between committee members seemed to never end. With Event Caddy, all committee members have access to the application and with the click of a mouse can instantly find what they needed.
Our financials use to be quite unorganized. It would often take weeks (sometime months) to calculate event totals. Event Caddy’s live financials has made it super easy to stay on track. Payments were also directed straight to our bank account which makes life much easier on our committee as they no longer have to hunt down missing payments.
Creating an account on Event Caddy was super quick and easy. Our team simply signed up for the free account at eventcaddy.com, entered in our tournament details and we were able to begin the planning.
Creating an account on Event Caddy takes mere minutes. Here’s how you can get started:
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Navigate to EventCaddy.com
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Click the ‘SET UP YOUR FREE TOURNAMENT’ button which can be found at the top of the page.
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Input your desired account login details then press continue
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Enter the company information
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Fill out your tournament info (this can always be changed at a later time if need be)
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Congratulations, you've signed up! You can now begin to create your tournament website and your registration packages/options.
Our committee eventually decided to upgrade to the PRO version for $199. We typically charge $200 per player so we were able to cover this cost with a single registration.
Most importantly, the PRO upgrade allowed us to accept donations, sell sponsorships, mulligans, and other non-golf items, as well as give us the option to accept cash and check payments online.
Full list of PRO features can be found at www.eventcaddy.com/features
We’ve always wanted a website for our tournament but didn’t necessarily have the know-how or team to accomplish this. The Event Caddy website builder was very intuitive and allowed us to get a site up and running in no time.
We loved the customization of the tournament website. The other services we reviewed simply request information and automatically added it to their site without control. When it comes to adding custom content, Event Caddy uses a word style editor which required no coding whatsoever. If you’ve used Microsoft Word before, you can build a website on Event Caddy.
Here’s a quick video to show just how easy building a website on Event Caddy can be:
Our finances use to be a tangled mess. We would have to call in each credit card we accepted. This consumed a lot of our time. With Event Caddy we were able to quickly get setup with a Stripe account and begin accepting credit cards directly on our tournament site. Stripe would then deposit the funds directly to our bank account a few days later. It made life so much easier!
Setting up a Stripe/PayPal account on Event Caddy
Event Caddy has made it easy to accept payments online. No large application forms, no waiting process and no monthly fees. Here’s how you can get setup with a Stripe or PayPal account right from the Event Caddy dashboard:
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Click the "SET UP NOW" button found on the tournament home screen.
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Once on the setup page, you’ll need to choose between Stripe or PayPal. Both have no monthly or setup fees and offer the same rate of 2.9% + $0.30 per credit card transaction. (Lower fees available for non-profits)
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Once you’ve chosen your payment gateway, simply click on the "Get Started" button at the bottom and fill in the necessary business details.
Promoting our tournament each year has become a very simply process now that we’re using Event Caddy. All our information is stored in the system year after year. We simply log in and send out an email to all previous guests.
Once guests start signing up we can communicate with them through either the email or text messaging tool. We loved the text messaging feature as it allowed us to communicate with the players the day of the event.
Event Caddy is packed with great marketing tools to help you communicate with players and sponsors through email and text. Here’s a quick video to show you exactly how you can properly communicate with your tournament guests:
While Event Caddy has certainly made our lives as tournament organizers much easier, we’ve also had raving reviews from our players. The signup process for players/sponsors is a much easier process now. They love the fact that they can pay online with a credit card or reserve their spot via the cash or check option.
We love using the Event Caddy, it’s been a huge time savings for us and has helped us increase revenues, while eliminating all the time consuming tasks. Our committee is as organized as ever.
Since using Event Caddy our tournament has increased net proceeds by over $25,000. We’re super pleased with this increase but what we love the most is how effortless each year now seems. We wished we had found Event Caddy sooner!