PKRA is in the process of migrating from our current web purchasing to MotorsportReg.com.

Reasons for Change
Our previous product, Magento, has not been upgraded in years, and as is will not meet credit card processing requirements (PCI certification) this fall.  Upgrading and ongoing support for Magento are cost prohibitive.  Several functions in our implementation are currently broken, and it’s not practical to fix them.

Rewriting with a different tool was explored, but would ultimately suffer from the same support issues. Using a third party product will significantly reduce our support requirements and overall risk. MotorsportReg was evaluated against it’s nearest competitor and was found to better meet our needs and at lower cost.  Many other karting and autosports groups use MotorsportReg, and user account/driver profile information may be shared aross the multiple organizations.

We previously managed memberships manually in a spreadsheet, and there was no intelligence in the system to set options based on membership status.  Using MotorsportReg allows maintaining the membership status entirely in the system, and using the Account Relationship capability allow parents / primary members to manage registrations / purhcases on behalf of family drivers.

Idiosyncracies
While MotorsportReg is clearly the best alternative, there are a number of restrictions as well as additional functionality beyond what we previously had.

  • You will need a MotorsportReg Account, and profiles for each Family Member Driver.  There will be no logins to the PKRA site itself, which will be used to display static content only.
  • MotorsportReg Memberships are created as events for set dates. The PKRA membership administrator will need to adjust each one as members join or renew.  Note that messages to members will be misleading regarding the dates.
  • The proper profile must be used to register the right person.  This includes Membership – Family Member Drivers must be registered through their own profile.  In most cases, this will be done by the Primary Member through a single login.
  • Due to the manual effort required by the PKRA membership administrator, there will be some delay before the system shows the membership as valid to get discounts. Users won’t be able to join/renew the last minute.
  • Family members can be registered in a single transaction, but there is no way to give a multi-driver discount (multi-entry discount for an individual driver does work).
  • We split the Driver Fee (e.g. current $50 each) from the base membership instead of including one driver (e.g. at current pricing Bronze Primary Membership base would be $190, but at least one Member Driver would need to be purchased at $50).
  • For proper race entry operation and validation, users will need to create at least one vehicle, and enter their transponder number if they have one. If someone rents, they still need to create a vehicle, leaving the transponder number blank, but need to do only once.  Vehicles may be shared amongst those in an “Account Relationship“.
  • Discounts can be fixed dollar amount or % of entire order, but not just free race entry.
  • Amex will charge 4% instead of 3%. There is no way to pass that on to the purchaser.
  • Users will be able to change registrations up until the close of registration.
  • We will be assigning all family members exactly the same membership number (no suffixes for family member drivers).  This is the tie for family memberships.

Timeline
The timeline for implementation is as follows:

  • Begin using MotorsportReg exclusively for Membership – That is now the master data.
  • Begin using MotorsportReg events for club meeting and publish minutes there – June
  • Begin using MotorsportReg exclusively for Race Entry – July 1 (for Race #7, July 13)

Common Issues:

  • Duplicate Account Profiles. This may be confusing for you – only one carries the membership.
  • Missing Primary Member profile.  This is beyond what other groups require because of the PKRA Family Membership concept, and our use of MotorsportReg as the master record of membership.
  • Missing Family Driver profile.  Registration pulls information from the particular driver’s profile.
  • Creating a profile and not adding Phoenix Kart Racing Association.  PKRA can’t see your profile unless it is associated with PKRA, though we can add it if we know the email address.
  • Missing Birthdate.  This is used to validate both Primary Members and Drivers.
  • Missing Emergency Contact Information or yourself listed.  No one expects accidents to happen, but we won’t know who to contact if you don’t provide it.
  • Requesting kart number reservation before driver profile set up.  Kart Number Reservations are tied to a specific profile, even though they can be shared with others in the same “Account Relationship”.
  • Not setting up vehicle to pull transponder from.  You will be prompted during race registration to create a vehicle to pull your transponder number from, even if you rent your transponder.

Support
Support for account management and payment is provided by MotorsportReg through self help functions, documentation, and email support.  Support for Membership status and specifics of event registration is provided by PKRA through links to the event Registrar.

You may contact membership@pkra.com to delete duplicate accounts.  We can create separate logins for “child” accounts after you change their email address.  We can also tie an existing profile to yours as a “child” account.