COMPMNGR Registration Fee (FeeCalc) Overview
The year COMPMNGR was introduced, two competitions used it. We (the COMPMNGR developers and sole vendors) attended both on a barter agreement. That is, the dance competition organizers paid our hotel and meal bills (but not airline fare or bar tab) in exchange for using the program. The next year ten competitions used the program, and we attended all of them on a barter agreement. The third year forty competitions used the program. Since it was not possible for us to attend all of them it was necessary to devise a fee schedule for those competitions we did not attend. It was intended that the fee be approximately what the competition organizer would spend on hotel room and meals if we had attended the competition, subject to a minimum of $350. The object was to compensate us for the many thousands of hours (we lost count at around 20,000 hours) spent in developing the program as well as to pay for ongoing operations. We initially calculated that it would take about ten years to amortize the development cost. This was a gross underestimate, as development continues and new features are requested and added.
Initially the fee was the price of two full "packages" to the competition. It quickly became apparent that there were two problems with this approach. First, some competitions didn't offer packages. Second, for the competitions that did offer packages the package price was significantly more than what the organizer would pay for the developer's hotel room and meals. So another approach was developed and used for several years. This approach required the organizer to do a calculation of what he or she would spend on our hotel room and meals had we attended the competition. The license agreement had embedded in it a small form in which the organizer was to enter the data for the calculation. Unfortunately, a lot of organizers didn't do the calculation correctly and often we accepted the incorrect calculation rather than taking the trouble to enforce the correct calculation. So over a period of time some organizers were underpaying and some were overpaying. The FeeCalc web page was developed to rectify this situation by implementing a formula for calculating the registration fee and requiring all organizers to use the same formula. The FeeCalc formula for calculating the registration fee incorporates two separate calculations, and the fee is taken as the smaller of the two calculated results, still subject to the minimum of $350.00. The two calculations are described below.
(1) One calculation is based on an estimate of what the organizer would pay for our hotel room and meals, as described just above, and so depends on the duration of the competition and on hotel room and meal prices. The duration of the competition is calculated from the competition start and end dates. If the competition starts and ends on the same day it is treated as a one day competition; we would stay in the hotel for one night. If it starts on one day and ends on the next it is a two day competition; we would stay in the hotel for two nights. And so on. If the competition is not held in a hotel or does not provide a hotel room, we ask the organizer to make a good faith estimate of what it would cost to put us up in a nearby hotel, and we aren't too picky about estimates that sound reasonable. For most one day competitions the estimates don't even matter because the $350 minimum is triggered. And for most cases, the registration fee calculated by this method is smaller that that calculated by the second method and so is the one actually used.
(2) The second and alternative calculation was made available more recently in order to
reduce the burden on small competitions held at very expensive hotels (like a
one day competition in London). It is based on the
number of entries the organizer wants COMPMNGR to handle. The fee is calculated as
1.25% of the organizer's gross income from that number of dance entries. (For example, 1200 entries at $25
per single dance entry would be a gross income of $30,000 and a fee of $375.) Since COMPMNGR
will limit the organizer to the number of entries estimated, the estimate should
allow room for growth. For example, suppose there were 1200 entries at last
year's competition, but it is expected that this year's competition will be a
little larger. An estimate of 1500 entries would allow for an additional 300
entries. If at some point the number of entries exceeds what the organizer
estimates, the organizer simply reregisters with a larger number. But in most
cases the calculated registration fee doesn't change with the number of entries,
since for most cases the amount calculated by the first method is smaller than
that calculated by the second.