CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

From what I can tell, the only way to register and charge the credit card of a participant is to look up their name, go to the event tab and select register with credit card.  I have some feedback:
1. This is somewhat hidden.
2. There are several links for registering a user, but it's not clear that they are NOT with a payment processor
3. During registration, it's not clear that a payment processor might come up at the end of the process (when it's too late!)

I suggest, if possible. to add the payment processor option as part of the registration process.  If CC is selected as the transaction type, the admin will be offered to process payment DURING the registration.  Also, note that the receipt may need to go to the person making the reservation and not necessarily the participant (ie. parent making registration for child.)

Also, selecting the event from the dropdown is not efficient.  Suggest an event lookup by name / date range to limit the list.

This would be the logical workflow if someone calls and says "I'd like to register for an event." ie:

admin goes to dashboard or Register a Participant link
profile form opens up for that event
admin selects or adds the contact
admin selects payment method
if CC, then get cc info
process in real-time
generate receipt to caller (not necessarily participant.)

I agree -- the admin workflow for registration is not ideal for advance phone-in registrations, nor for onsite at-the-door registrations.  We've discussed some improvements in this past thread:

http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,22799.0.html

I and kmarkley did do some work on the in-person registration use case, including support for a USB credit card swiper:

http://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-9904
http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,23761.msg99825.html

We can definitely contribute toward sponsored dev or seed funding for improvements in this area.