Understanding event fees in Workshop Butler
This article is for certification brands.
Certification brands usually charge trainers running licenced events for using learning materials or providing certificates to attendees. Workshop Butler helps you automate this process and track all events that require an invoice.
Licensed Event Fees
Event Fee is a fee you collect from trainers for each licensed event. The size of the payment usually varies from event to event. It may depend on different factors which we discuss below.
Types of fees
There are many approaches to charge for events. Admittedly, we do not cover them all here, but only the most popular. What type to choose depends mostly on your business model.
Flat fee per event
This type is the easiest one. You charge a flat amount of money for each event, no matter how long or big it is.
Its plus is its simplicity. Its minus is the lack of connection to a trainer's income. A trainer pays the same amount for a 2-day event with 30 attendees and a 4-hour event with five attendees. As a result, you must carefully select the fee itself: too big and your trainers will run large events rarely, too small and your income will be a way smaller from a desired one.
We recommend selecting this type if your events are short, less than a day long.
Hourly fee
This type is the evolution of the previous one. A final event fee depends on the length of the event.
It reflects the income of trainers better which is a plus. On the other side, it is much more difficult to track and calculate. It does not take into account how many attendees participate in an event.
We recommend this type if you prefer charging for the use of learning materials. A longer event means the more extended use of materials. The more extended use of materials means higher fees.
Fee per attendee
In this case, a final fee depends on the number of event attendees.
As a trainer usually charges each attendee for participation, this type of fee reflects the income of trainers best of all. Its disadvantage is similar to the previous one - it is difficult to track and calculate.
Use this type of fee if others do not suit you.
Another yet very similar type of fee is a fee per certificate. It usually goes hand in hand with some knowledge assessment after an event. If attendees pass an evaluation, they get a certificate.
Workshop Butler supports all types of event fees described above.
Regional Fees
Prices for events vary from region to region. €1,500 for an event is okay for Switzerland but may be too big for Indonesia. Regional fees come in handy when you want to make the event more affordable around the world,
The biggest minus of regional fees is that they are complicated to calculate. If you have no automated system in place, they consume an enormous amount of time. Even if their introduction is an advantage, sometimes it's better to go without them due to the support cost.
Workshop Butler supports regional fees, including the fees for online events.
How to Track and Process Event Fees
When you have more than a handful of events per month, the calculation of event fees becomes a tedious task. As well as the tracking: what trainers ran events last month/last week, how many events they had, what their billing addresses, etc.
To free you from this routine, we added a widget to the Dashboard. It notifies you when there are some event invoices requiring your attention.
How Event Fees are Calculated
There are several simple rules:
- There is no fee for free events.
- If an event is cancelled, no event fee is calculated
- Only confirmed events are charged. Your trainers must confirm the events which take place.
- An event fee is recalculated if a trainer changes the length of the event or the number of attendees.