Step 1: Set up a Twilio Account. Go to www.twilio.com and click “Sign up”. Enter your contact information, select “SMS” for “Which Product Do You Plan to Use First”, “Account Notifications” for “What Are You Building”, “My Language Isn’t Listed” for “Choose Your Language”, and “Less than 100,000” for potential monthly interactions. Then click “Get Started”. Once you submit the form, you’ll need to use your mobile number for verification.

Step 2: Get the Twilio account info. From your Twilio dashboard, you’ll see a card representing your first Project. Click on “Project Settings” to see more detail on the project.

The trial account has some limitations, for example a tight limit on the number of messages you can send and each includes a “From your trial account” note on every message sent. Upgrade to a full account and add a payment method to unlock all the features.

The last thing you’ll need to do is get a phone number for outgoing texts— this will be the number that is displayed on the recipient’s device. Go to the “Dashboard” on your Twilio account and click on “Buy a Number” under “Phone Numbers”.

Click on the red plus sign and purchase a number, they tend to be around $1 per month. You can select your local area code if you want.

One you get the phone number, record that as well. You’ll enter the phone number, SID, and Auth Token in your Registernation account soon.

Step 3: Update the auto-reply. Twilio is a one-way messaging service, so we need to set up an auto-reply in case someone responds to the text. From the Dashboard, click on “Manage Numbers” and click the number you set up in the previous step. You’ll see a bunch of fields listed, scroll down to the “Messaging” section. Under “A message comes in” there should be a default URL starting with “demo.twilio.com”. Replace that URL with the following— replacing “yourdomain” with the first part of your Registernation URL.

http://yourdomain.registernation.com/n/smsreply.html

For example, if you’re registration account is located at “http://acmecamps.registernation.com” the URL to enter at Twilio would be http://acmecamps.registernation.com/n/smsreply.html.

When someone replies to an SMS from you, they’ll get the following reply: Thanks for the message, this is an outgoing messaging number. Please contact us via email or phone for immediate assistance.

Step 4: Update your Registernation Account. Login to your Registernation account and go to the “Manage Business Info” section (link is at the top of every Admin page). At the bottom of the page you’ll see a section labeled “Twilio SMS Service”. Check the “Activate Twilio on my account” and enter the SID, Auth Token, and SMS Number you got in the previous step.

Step 5: Update your registration form. When people register on your account, they need to give you their mobile number and authorize you to send them sms updates. So you need to add a mobile phone field to your form and identify it as the field that will be associated with sms messages. To do this, go to the “Form Design”. Click “Add a Field” and give it a useful name (e.g. “Mobile Phone Number”, make sure the “Field Type” is “Phone Number”, check “Yes” for “SMS Notification (for Phone Fields Only”, and make the field required.

Note: The field you use for the SMS number MUST be of Field Type “Phone Number”.

Once you do this, your registration form will be updated with the new field and a radio button asking registrants if you can send them updates related to the class.

Step 6: Send an SMS Message. From the “Quicklinks” dropdown at the top of every admin page, select “Send a Message”. Then click “Send a Message” and enter the text for the email and SMS. Once you hit Submit, a message will go to all of the email addresses for the class and an SMS will go to anyone who has opted-in to SMS notifications.

We highly recommend testing your integration, for example by setting up a free or $1 class or camp and using your own information as the registrant. Then send a message and make sure you receive it. You can also login to your Twilio account to see a record of all your sends.

That’s it! It may seem a bit overwhelming, but it’s a pretty straightforward process. And of course if you need help, feel free to reach out to us and we’ll help you get up and running.

• If you want to collect recurring Credit Card payments, you’ll need to add “Enhanced Recurring Payments” to your PayPal account (otherwise registrants will need to use their PayPal balance to make automatic payments). It’s around $20 per month and you can go here to get more information.
• If you do upgrade your PayPal account you need to activate that feature on our end. Login to your RegisterNation account and click on the “Manage Business Info” section and change the “Account Type” value.
• Any cancellations or changes to recurring payment profiles need to be made in PayPal.
• RegisterNation automatically applies recurring payments to the registrants’ account (you don’t need to do anything to keep track of them).
• You can offer recurring payments for an event under the “Payment Info” when you add or edit an event. See the screenshot below.

• Go to Paypal.com and click on “Sign Up”
• Select United States (for country) and US English (for language). Select “Business” account.
• Choose “Website payments standard”.

Follow the process outlined in the next page, it’s a three-step process that takes a few days to verify your bank account. Be sure to send an email to info@registernation.com when your Paypal account is set up so we can make sure you get the discounted transaction fees.

Once your account is confirmed, you’ll need to link your Paypal account with your Registernation account. For the instructions below, replace “yourdomain” with the URL you were provided (e.g. http://yourdomain.registernation.com would translate to http://acme.registernation.com). Here are the instructions:

• Login to Paypal, and from the “My Account” tab click “Profile”, then “My Selling Tools”.



• Under “Getting paid and managing my risk”, update the “Instant payment notifications” section. Make sure IPN is turned “On” and use the following for the Notification URL: http://yourdomain.registernation.com/n/ipn.cfm. Go back to the “Profile” page.
• Click on the “My Selling Tools” link on the left, then click “update” for “Website Preferences” (this link is in the “Selling Online” section). Set “Auto Return” to “On” and use the following URL: http://yourdomain.registernation.com/n/paypalprocess.cfm. Scroll down to the “Payment Data Transfer” section and turn it on. Once you save this information, you should see your “Payment Token”. Copy that token– you’ll use it in the next step.
• Save all of your settings and login to your Registernation account. Under “Manage Business Info” (at the top of every page), scroll to the bottom and enter your PayPal email address and the Token you received in Step 4.

Make sure the “Online Payment is ACTIVE” and “I am Open for Business” boxes are checked once you’re ready to go live. It’s also important that you use the PRIMARY email address on your PayPal account for the “Payment ID” field in Registernation.

Finally, test the registration process from start to finish. Create a “test” camp or event that costs $1 and register for it. Make sure you get passed onto Paypal correctly and the registration shows up when you login to the admin dashboard.

As always, if you run into problems, email or call and we’ll help you out!

To make changes to your payment options, click on the “Manage Business Info” link at the top of any page after you login. And please note that you need to have accurate PayPal information entered into the system to offer online payments.

Scroll down the page and you’ll see two big text boxes, one for a registrant and one for someone added to the wait list. There should be some default content in there, but you can write your own message. It’s good to mention your payment policy or anything you want registrants to do before the first session. Note that this content is used for all confirmations that go out from your account– so it needs to be general enough to be relevant for all of your sessions.

This is the first phase of supporting monthly payments, and the system simply 1) lets you inform registrants that they must pay monthly and 2) lets them return to the receipt page to make subsequent payments. The system does not yet create an monthly “invoice” to update the amount due for registrants. This means that your revenue collected will not match your expected income after the first month– for instance, a registrant who has made 4-$80 payments will show up as overpaid since the system only believes they owe $80 in total.

In the next phase of supporting monthly payments (coming soon), monthly payments will be more fully supported. We’ll automatically create an “invoice”, email the registrant when a payment is due, and let you manage the duration of the monthly invoices. This will ensure that the “Amount Due” and other reporting is accurate– not to mention make things less tedious to administer.

Insiders’ Hint: If you don’t need to offer a monthly payment schedule, we recommend waiting until the system is more complete.

To create a coupon, click on the big “Coupons” button in the Administrative section of the site (you’ll need to login first). From there you can view, edit, and delete your current coupons and create new ones. Click “Add a Coupon” to get started.

Complete the form, hit Submit, and your registrants can start using the code immediately (be sure to set the expiration date sometime in the future). Remember that anyone can use the code, so be careful how you distribute it.

Fill out the Message form completely, hit “Submit”, and your email is on its’ way. Note that the message will go out to the email address parent’s used when they registered– but you can always change this if you need to update their information first.