Payment

Cost

We've managed to keep the cost below £500. It's going to be £495 and include registration, accommodation and all meals. More details of daily registration, etc. later.
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Working Out the Cost

The advertising postcards arrived safely, so that's good. Going to try and work out the cost now. Almost impossible to be totally accurate - how many delegates will we get, how much sponsorship, if any? There are fixed costs, like room hire, which don't vary per person, but costs such as meals, which do. The latter costs are much more straightforward, we know if we get x people at y cost the total amount is xy. It's the fixed costs which are tricky. We just have to make an estimate of how many delegates we are likely to get and divide the cost by that number. But if we get it wrong we either charge more than we needed to and potentially put off delegates or charge too little and end up not meeting our costs. Plus we need a contingency fund for unexpected expenses - even after years of doing this there are still unexpected things happen which cost money!
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Bed Time

Seven hours straight work now. But a lot of progress! I think the registration/paymentt form can go live in the next few days.
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Shopping Cart

Signed up for Google Checkout some time ago and now validated the account. So we can take credit cards via both Google and PayPal. But I now have to find a shopping cart so delegates can choose accommodation, what days they are attending, etc. If everyone just signed up for the whole conference it would be so easy! And the fees Google and PayPal charge for their services are different.

After several hours I think I have the solution to the shopping cart problem. Found a cut down version of FatFreeCartPro, which handles Google and PayPal. Looks like it will do what I want, but I now have to design the form and check the generated html code. Pretty certain it will work with Fuzioned, my hosting company. The contact form works well, so PHP is obviously operational. Also have to design a form for delegates signing up and wanting to be invoiced.

Anyway, time for bed now.
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