Shirt Reporting Configuration and Best Practices

Best Practices, Feature Highlight, Value of LeagueApps

LeagueApps partners frequently express the important role of t-shirts within their sports organization. Many partners almost feel like they moonlight as t-shirt vendors since they spend so much time and energy on shirt ordering, distribution and customer service.

Shirts serve multiple purposes. Many sports programs will provide shirts to their teams and/or participants as uniforms for their sports activities. The shirts are often included as part of the registration fee. An added benefit for both the leagues and it’s members is that individuals will rock the shirt beyond the playing field. It’s great marketing (a human billboard!) as the participants are proud to show off their athletic and/or social super-stardom to their friends!

LeagueApps enjoys collecting our partner shirts and we plan to hang them up on the walls in our office. We’ll be sure to share photos once we actually hang them up.

Unfortunately, dealing with shirts can be exasperating for a league organizer. Shirt quantities, colors and sizes all have to be collected and managed properly. Shirt ordering is often time-sensitive. Shirts need to be printed and delivered by the start of the sports programs. If a players doesn’t get their correct shirt, watch out!

LeagueApps can help with the t-shirt process. Here are some of the best practices.

Collect T-Shirt Sizes (With Customized Form Fields)

Customized form fields can be utilized during the registration process to obtain the t-shirt size for each participant. The most practical way to do this is create a mandatory drop down form field with all of the different shirt sizes. As each of your members register for a new program they will enter their shirt size.

We recommend to add this form field to each program registration. You may also consider adding a form field to the member profile information when new accounts are created (although player shirt size may change over time). This way you will also have an additional listing of a players t-shirt size as a backup.

Generate a Shirt Report (Individual Program)

As the registration period ends it’s time to tally up all of the team and player information in order to create a t-shirt order. Within each program you can extract a spreadsheet (.csv) report of all of the player data. This will include additional form field information such as t-shirt size. You might even want to delete some of the fields that are unnecessary to create a shirt report. Often, it makes sense to sort by team and then by size and manually tally the totals for each program. Below is an example of how a spreadsheet might look.

Generate A Shirt Report (All Programs)

Shirt reporting and ordering gets way more complicated when multiple leagues or programs all need to be processed and ordered at the same time.

The new registration report within LeagueApps should be helpful. Instead of having to pull a report of each individual program you can now pull a report of multiple programs. Programs can be sorted by status, name, sport or type. For example, a report can be pulled of all upcoming basketball leagues. Reports can even be saved for future use.

Similar to the individual program report, a spreadsheet (.csv) can be generated that includes player name, program, team as well as form field information that would include t-shirt size. Actual t-shirt sizes by team still need to be calculated from within the spreadsheet so be sure to find an excel guru if you need help!

What’s Next

We know there are ways that LeagueApps can improve how it can help leagues with their t-shirt reporting to make it even quicker and easier. A few enhancements on the list include:

• Incorporate team colors into the reports
• Automatically tally t-shirts by size, team and program within LeagueApps and .csv files
• Enable the ability to send a report directly to your shirt vendor
• Collect additional fees for special shirts or sizes

Let us know how your organization uses LeagueApps to help with shirt reporting. Or hit us up if you think we can help configure LeagueApps to make this process more efficient.

Is Your Sports League Getting The Best Credit Card Transaction Rates?

Best Practices

LeagueApps offers and integrates with multiple payment solution options to fit the needs of all types of sports organizations. This LeagueApps blog post breaks down those options in more detail including the recent addition of the Stripe platform.

Another option is to use the Authorize.net payment gateway with their own merchant account. This solution may be ideal for an organization that processes large transaction volume and is looking to get the most competitive rates.

LeagueApps has teamed up with an expert to help navigate the complex world of online payment solutions. Meet our friend and partner John Stevenson. We originally connected with John through a LeagueApps partner that worked with him. Since then, John has helped numerous LeagueApps partners secure the right payment solution for their organization and then he ensured they properly integrate within the LeagueApps platform.

John is an expert in the credit card processing world. He switched over from the mortgage insurance business because he wanted to create ongoing relationships with his clients where he could support their business finance needs for years, instead of a one-time mortgage transaction. John has lived all over the country and currently resides in Madison, Indiana. John enjoys what he is able to offer business people who are starting or growing their companies and takes pride in the service he provides to small businesses.

John provided a few answers to some of the most popular questions we hear about payment solutions.

What is the difference between a merchant account and a payment gateway? Does an organization need both?
An organization needs both accounts to complete online transactions. The payment gateway is essentially an electronic routing center that transfers the cardholder information to the credit card processor (where you have your merchant account). The processor then moves the money from your customer’s bank and deposits it to your checking account. We typically work with PowerPay for merchant accounts and Authorize.net for payment gateways for most LeagueApps customers.

What is the typical process to secure a merchant account and payment gateway? How long does it take?
An online application that can be completed in minutes is all that’s needed to apply for a merchant account. Once an application is submitted, we normally get approval back from underwriting within 48 business hours. The payment gateway is automatically linked to the PowerPay merchant account, so all that a user needs to do is set up a gateway username and password.

How can an organization obtain the “best rates”?
The best rates are found in a cost-plus pricing model. I always recommend it whenever possible since it saves an organization the most money. The most important factor is to find a time-tested, trusted partner to be your advocate who has a track record of exceptional support and great prices. In working with LeagueApps partners, we have found numerous ways to lower the processing costs for most partners.

What are the best rates?
All credit card processors have the same cost that is set by Visa and MasterCard. With cost plus pricing, (as opposed to flat-rate pricing) you pay what the processor pays, plus a small fixed markup. It is the most transparent and cost effective way to process — there are no hidden fees or extra charges to surprise you. Some LeagueApps partners experience processing rates of fewer than 2%. The alternative option is flat-rate pricing but that typically doesn’t offer as good of rates.

Payment gateways, merchant accounts and everything else — why is it so confusing?
Just like insurance or the mechanics of how your car engine works, credit card processing can be confusing: there are many moving parts (shopping carts, secure check-out pages, payment gateways and merchant accounts) that are designed to work together to move money from your customer’s card to your bank account. Add banking regulations and government oversight and the entire modern electronic payment system is a complex enterprise. In many ways that’s good: If it were too simple it would be more vulnerable and fewer people would willing to spend money online and that’s not good for your business!

It’s my job to help simplify this complex, confusing world and walk you through each step of the process so you don’t have to worry about it. You can concentrate on bringing folks together to play sports and socialize, and League Apps and I will make sure that registrations and payments happen seamlessly.

I’m Interested. How can I get started?
If you have an existing merchant account and payment gateway, I’ll be happy to do a free analysis and evaluate your current terms to see if you have a good deal, or if we can save you money. Please complete this form on LeagueApps if you are interested.

If you’re just starting your business, or switching from PayPal, you can rest assured that our $0.00 set up fee, $0.00 early termination fee, $0.00 monthly minimum program along with our cost-plus pricing will give you some of the best pricing available anywhere.

Any tips or guidance for first time online merchants?
Yes — rely on the partner support system that is in place specifically for you. Don’t be afraid to ask questions and get support. Our partners (PowerPay and Authorize.net) are available with great support staff who are friendly, knowledgeable and well prepared to help you start accepting cards in your new venture. In addition, I will always remain a point of contact for you and am available to answer questions and help you navigate this new and interesting world! Fill out this form to get in contact with me.

Complete this form and LeagueApps will put you in touch with John.

Fully Hosted Website vs. Integration and Widgets

Best Practices, Feature Highlight

LeagueApps is developed so that our partners can get the most value and benefit from the platform and features based on their needs. The truth is that LeagueApps technology and software is only as good as how well it serves our league partners. You’re the Karl Malone to our John Stockton.

One major item that we often discuss with new and existing partners is the decision to implement the fully hosted website solution or integrate the LeagueApps features and backend system into their exisiting website. Since this is an important aspect of utilizing LeagueApps, we figured it would be worthwhile to openly share the framework of how we like to think about it.

First, it’s important to note that the LeagueApps team is impartial to either setup. There is no difference in pricing, features or setup. Both solutions allow for leagues to customize the look, feel and design of their website. Both work with our mobile and social media products. So our main goal is to help our partners understand all of the aspects of both solutions and then help determine what works best for their organization.

Fully Hosted Website

In the fully hosted solution, a partner will use LeagueApps to develop and design their complete website. This means that the actual website will be completely hosted on LeageuApps. Partners will utilize LeagueApps features including homepage templates, content tools, theme editor and custom domain settings to build out their full website. Partners that use our full website solution include Midwest Sports Complex, KC Sports Leagues and Coed Sports Arizona

The fully hosted solution is optimal for partners that are looking to create a brand new website and start from scratch. In the future, we hope to further assist these partners by also recommending professional design partners to help create all of the unique aspects of design that enable a partner to further promote their brand and culture.

Integration & Widgets

This configuration is best suited for leagues that have already invested in developing their website and are more interested in utilizing LeagueApps features such as online registration and payments, schedule, results and standings modules, messaging tools, database management, etc. These features can either be linked to directly from within your existing website or can be incorporated through javascript widgets (generated by LeagueApps). This help article explains widget integration steps and procedure in more detail. LeagueApps offers widgets for online registration, schedules and standings, member login and email subscription lists. Properly using widgets further ensure a seamless experience by adding dynamic content to your site.

A major goal of the integration solution is to make sure the experience for participants and members is smooth and seamless. If integrated properly, league members will remain within the same, or very similar, look and feel of the league website with all of the added functionality of LeagueApps baked in! Checkout this list of some of our partners that use widgets for an integrated solution.

Integration also works well for leagues that are utilizing a full Content Management System such as Joomla, WordPress or Drupal that have powerful website development tools. Integration is also a good option for a partner on a tight launch deadline that needs a quick solution. We originally helped Big D Sports in Dallas launch their integrated solution in less than 72 hours so that they could open registration on time.

While the LeagueApps teams can share examples and make recommendations this is a decision that should ultimately be made by our partners. There’s no commitment though. A partner can start one way and then change at anytime based on their needs or comfort level. Social Boston Sports originally used a integrated solution (with a special single sign-on widget) but ultimately decided to become a full solution partner when they relaunched their website. Overall, our partners are actually split pretty evenly between the full and integrated solutions.

Regardless of what solution our league partners utilize, it’s our goal to provide the best platform and service possible to help our partners operate their organization and reach their goals. So call us at anytime at 1-800-257-3681 or shoot us a note. I’m confident we can find a way to work together.

Bracket Scheduling: Bringing March Madness to your LeagueApps Site!

Best Practices

Any avid sports fan eats, sleeps, and breathes the NCAA tournament come March Madness. We have all become bracket crazy!

The Bad News: March is eight months away.

The Good News: Your sports league’s playoff season or next tournament is just around the corner or a lot sooner than March 2013, and you are the head of the selection committee!

Paper brackets are quickly becoming outdated in a digital world where players access everything online. We know it can be a hassle to constantly update and communicate playoff or tournament results to all teams involved. The time lag can be frustrating for teams that want to start prepping for their next opponent sooner rather than later. That is why we at LeagueApps want to help keep participants connected to tournament information at all times.

Our platform allows you to create a tournament online via the Add Single Game feature found under the tournament’s Schedule tab. It’s as easy as choosing two opponents, the type of game, game time/day and location. OR you can use our Schedule Generator to create a tournament yourself. Feel free to add additional information to the notes section to identify byes, rounds, or seedings. Read up on our Scheduling tips and suggestions.

In addition to tournament scheduling on LeagueApps, we also wanted to open your eyes to how our platform can help you deliver even more value to your players and make your life easier. Free bracket building tools offered online, including sites like Challonge and Better Bracket Maker, let you build interactive brackets that are visually similar to the countless number of March Madness brackets you have printed out over the years. By creating custom content tabs on your LeagueApps site, you can link externally to these outside resources from your homepage. Alternatively, you can save your league members time by seamlessly integrating these bracket tools into LeagueApps, as seen below:

Integrating a more visual bracket keeps all your tournaments under your LeagueApps site and lets your players access everything in one place.

Now is your chance to feel like the head of the NCAA selection committee. We like to share these innovative methods for structuring your playoffs and tournaments to help you add value to your league and delight your participants. Players should not be the only ones excited about participating in the playoffs or next tournament. You should have fun too. The ball’s in your court!

Have an exciting tournament coming up? Ask us how we can help. For questions or feedback, please contact our League Partnerships team: contact@leagueapps.com or (800) 257-3681.

This blog post is written by Mike Riley. Our newest superstar and league partnership coordinator, Mike is focused on developing solutions for local sports organizations. Catch him on Twitter @LifeofRiley29.

LeagueApps Teams Up with Serve® From American Express To Make Team Payments A Whole Lot Easier!

Best Practices, Press

LeagueApps is excited to announce a partnership with Serve from American Express. LeagueApps is offering all of our league partners an opportunity to participate in a marketing program that lets our partners share the benefits of Serve with all of your members and participants.

While LeagueApps provides functionality for online registration and fees paid by teams and players to your organization, several payment use cases are still not covered for your players. There are various costs to divvy up for sports activities including additional league fees, equipment, uniforms, ref costs, and field or gym time. Even those watermelon slices are being paid for by someone! It’s often inefficient for your team captains or players to collect payments from a large group and it can leave him or her in a bind.

Serve is a digital prepaid account designed for all of us that lets users securely send and receive money by email, txt and Facebook. Through this partnership, teammates and group members that are part of the LeagueApps platform will be enabled to easily share payments or fees.

Serve callouts and banners will be incorporated into both Sportsvite.com and the LeagueApps platform to drive awareness and connect with your members when they may need to collect money from or send money to teammates. This includes LeagueApps integration through the registration confirmation page, team homepage, team messaging feature and website footer.

Each league partner will also receive their own page with creative assets and best practices to incorporate into your website, social media profiles, emails and promotions in a way which best suits your league and will track all the accounts generated from players in your organization.

Complete this survey application form if your organization would like to be considered for this marketing partnership. You can also learn more about the Recreational Sports Network (RSN) and how LeagueApps attracts marketing partnerships around local sports.

Benefits that will make it easier for your members to manage their team or sports activities include:

Send & Receive Payments Through Mobile Devices
Players interact with their teammates on the field, not in front of their computers, so it’s important to have a flexible multi-platform solution to share payments. With the Serve mobile app, players can manage their account and send or receive money while on the go.

Make Team Purchases With Your Serve Card
When players set up their Serve account, they will also receive a digital prepaid card that can be used to make purchases wherever American Express® Cards are accepted in the U.S. This allows your team to keep funds in a Serve account and make purchases using Serve throughout the season.

Interested in working with Serve? Fill out the form now!

5 Ways to Customize your Privacy Settings

Best Practices

Like most software platforms, LeagueApps takes privacy very seriously. We strive to accomodate our league partners’ privacy needs and want to make sure their members feel comfortable and secure on LeagueApps. Below are a few key measures you can take to keep things in the “clubhouse” and ensure your privacy settings are configured exactly how you want.

1) Change Member Profile Fields Settings

LeagueApps allows you to easily customize the membership form your members fill out when they create an account on your site. We shared some ideas on how you can use form fields to collect key information from your players.  As admin, you can change the privacy setting of each member field you add to your membership form.

Simply go to your Member Profile Fields in your LeagueApps admin console (“Settings > Member Profile Fields”). Here you have the option to change any field from ‘public’, to ‘protected’ or ‘private’.  Here’s a breakdown of what each of these settings mean:

1. Public – Field information is viewable on their account profile
2. Protected – Field information is only viewable to other logged in members
3. Private – Field information is only viewable to the league admin

This flexibility allows you to tweak each form field on a case-by-case basis. For instance, you may want to keep certain information you collect public, such as Hobbies, or Favorite Sport. On the other hand, certain fields like Address or Income Level might be best kept private. Some of our league partners that push the social element in their leagues like to keep their players’ contact information protected (e.g. Phone Number), encouraging fellow club members to connect off the playing field.

2) Turn “Show Attendee List” OFF

3) Create ‘Private’ Programs

4) Assign Admin Users

As the main admin of your site, you can grant console access to multiple admin users.  This comes handy if you have partners or employees that help manage day-to-day operations. You can assign a specific role to each admin based on their actual role in your organization. This flexibility is key for privacy – you want to make sure your admins have the appropriate levels of access. For example, you probably won’t want a part-time employee who reports game scores to be able to edit your homepage design. On the other hand, you do want your managing partner to have access to all your financial information. Learn how to manage admin users here.

 

5) Disable Site

You have the option to disable your LeagueApps site at any point in time. Disabling your site will hide your homepage and any other content pages you have. This might be applicable if you are implementing a new design that isn’t quite ready for the public. Or you may be transitioning your content from an external site into the LeagueApps CMS.

You can disable your site with the click of a button. Just find the ‘disable’ option on the top right of your site dashboard page.

We hope you use these tips to set privacy settings that best fit your organization. Drop us a line if you have any questions or want to share feedback about privacy on LeagueApps.

Insurance For Sports Leagues and Organizations

Best Practices

An aspect of local sports that the LeagueApps team is learning more about is the insurance needs for sports leagues and organizations. We often receive inquiries about insurance issues or needs. We also are asked about the LeagueApps online waiver form feature. This feature allows leagues to create custom content for waiver forms within the program registration flow and then track completed waiver forms from within the admin console.

Most businesses and organizations have insurance needs but it’s especially crucial for sports organizations. Sports naturally have a fair share of injuries and accidents and there are certainly inherent risks and liabilities. A single mishap can devastate a sports organization if it does not properly protect itself and its participants. In addition, many sports organizations must provide proof of insurance to receive permits for playing fields, gyms or event spaces.

General Liability

The most basic type of insurance is General Liability. This protects against risks including bodily injury or property damage caused by direct or indirect actions of the insured. Most General Liability policies cover the risk of being sued for negligence or strict liability torts. Although the rules do vary by state, General Liability is usually required.

Unfortunately, many General Liability policies for sports organizations include an athletic participant exclusion. This means the policy does not apply to bodily injury to people participating in actual sports activities. In effect, this type of policy covers nothing more than lawsuits arising out of spectator injuries!

Participant Legal Liability

Insurance carriers that specialize in General Liability for sports organizations sometimes provide an affirmative coverage grant called Participant Legal Liability that ensures coverage for all participants. This blog post better explains how this works in more detail.

Accidental Medical

Finally, sports organizations may also consider accidental medical expense coverage. This covers participant’s medical expenses that can arise from a sports accident or injury including slips, falls and broken bones. Accidental medical is often obtained to help enhance General Liability coverage and help deter liability claims since the risk of lawsuits is less likely when medical expenses are covered.

Policy Costs and Pricing

Insurance policies prices are based on the number of unique annual participants within an organization. Prices per player vary based on the sport, location and other variables. General Liability often range between $1 – $5 per player and accidental medical can be an additional $1 – $1.50 per player. Policy premiums and limits also range with a standard policy having up to $1-$3MM coverage for general liability and a $1000 premium and a $25,000 coverage limit for accidental.

Waiver/Release Forms

Waiver forms that are signed or agreed upon by your participants may help protect against lawsuits. Well written forms that avoid common pitfalls can help reduce the ultimate settlement especially if the claim is more accidental and not caused by negligence. Waiver forms rarely bind the participant and more often are used to trigger the assumption of risk defense which may result in a significant reduction in damages owed. A waiver or release form will never take the place of the proper insurance coverage.

Here are a few tips to consider in evaluating insurance policies.

• Understand the overall insurance requirements in your state
• Understand the insurance requirements to receive field or gym permits in your community
• Accurately determine the number of annual participants in your organization
• Determine if the General Liability policy has an athletic participant exclusion clause, is “silent” or explicitly states Participant Legal Liability.
• Get quotes from multiple brokers and read the fine print!
• Find brokerages that have special programs setup for local sports organizations. Bell Anderson is one insurance company that does this and they were the main sponsor at the SSIA conference. Track down Jason Webb at jasonw@bell-anderson.com and he’ll be happy to help out your organization.
• The need and use of waiver forms vary by policy. Ask your insurance provide what type of online waiver form and waiver messaging is required or preferred

Twitter For Your Sports Organization

Best Practices

An important theme for LeagueApps in 2012 is helping sports organizations leverage social media. LeagueApps has recently launched some Facebook integration features. We also love to use Twitter and built our first twitter feature within LeagueApps during our Sportsvite team hackathon in NYC last week.

Much like Facebook, Twitter is a popular digital platform that can be effectively leveraged by local sports organizations. With over 100 Million active users, sports organizations are bound to find new and perspective league members through twitter. Twitter is a natural way to make announcements and have conversations with your members as well as attract new players. Twitter is also free to use and easy to setup and manage.

Here are some best practices and tips on how to use twitter for your sports organization. We recommend using a twitter client like Tweetdeck to manage and organize twitter accounts, conversations and searches. Be sure to also download a twitter app for your mobile device.

Tweet!

The most important and effective step is to tweet regularly. This signals that your organization is active and friendly on twitter and helps attract others to follow, read and interact with your tweets. Many sports organizations use twitter to quickly share information or tweet announcements about registration periods, weather conditions or league information. We also encourage leagues to share league highlights and tweet about specific teams, games or players. Peer recognition can be a powerful tool in rec sports. Tweet photos, blog posts or create quick informal polls/questions to your members.

Tip: Be sure to include links in your tweets so readers can easily get more information. Use bit.ly or another link shortener to track clicks.

Follow Your Members

Twitter provides a great opportunity to learn more about your members AND develop direct communications with them. Email address book contacts can be imported into Twitter through their import tool. Once you are following your members, you can monitor their tweets and tweet back or retweet anything that relates to your league. An added bonus of following your members is that they will often follow you back as well.

In fact, your organization should be following anyone that can affect your business including local media, competitors, vendors, employees and trade associations or local government.

Attract More Followers

Most popular twitter accounts grow organically. Regularly publishing interesting and entertaining tweets is the best way to grow. Following your members also leads to getting followed back. Be sure to promote your twitter account on your website (use twitter widgets), facebook page and at all league activities and events. Try rewarding players that follow you by welcoming or re-tweeing them directly. Give them props for sending “in-game” tweets (If and when appropriate). @ messages are a good way to reply since they are public and enable others to see you engaging with your members.

Use Twitter Search

Create and save Twitter searches for conversations or mentions that include your organizations name, brand, or other keyword terms. Follow or engage these people so that they are talking to you instead of about you. Enter the conversation in an appropriate manner (No spam!) by sharing instant coupons or specific individual responses.

Create A League Hashtag

Once you master the twitter basics and are engaging with your league members it’s time to create a league hashtag. Whenever your members tweet about your league they can include the specific hashtag. This allows your online community to all follow the same hashtag and promotes conversation between members in the league.

Additional Twitter Benefits

Twitter can also be a great tool for better customer service, attract and activate sponsorships or partnerships and generate press or media attention.

Shout out to some of our league partners that are already doing a great job with Twitter including @Kickball365, @gameonphilly, @socialboston, @portsports, @TheBigDsports. We’d like to hear how your organization uses Twitter. Please share what has worked effectively. We plan to do more in the future to integrate Twitter into the LeagueApps platform.