Wufoo is a form creation service that allows you to make forms and embed them into your website. In addition to making basic contact forms, Wufoo lets you store and review submitted event registration data and integrate online payments forms onto your site. Wufoo is not a free service, but for congregations interested in these features, it may be something to consider.
This article will cover creating basic forms in Wufoo, with a focus on event registration and payment integration.
For the purposes of this article, we’re going to create a sample form called “Chanukah Gala.” Here are the steps for making this form:
After logging into Wufoo, select “New Form” on the top right of the page.
Towards the top of the screen, you should see the following message:
To change this default title, click on “Untitled Form” and change the information on the left. We’re going to name this form “Chanukah Gala” and use the description “This is a test form.”
Underneath this, fill out the Confirmation Options. “Show Text” is what will appear after the form is submitted. Whether or not people are registering for an event that costs money, it’s a good idea to automatically send a confirmation email. You won’t be able to add “Sent to” just yet. After you’ve created the form, come back to this and add “Email” for “Send to.”
For email customization, select the “Customize Confirmation Email” button and fill out the customization form. Here’s a sample confirmation message:
After filling out the Confirmation Options, in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, go to “Add a Field.” All fields should be checked off as “Required.”
Go down and select “Name,” and you should see fields for First and Last Name appear on the right.
Now select “Address” and several address fields should appear on the right.
To make the United States or Canada the default country, make a selection under “Predefined Country.”
Next select “Email,” which should appear on the right.
Now go to “Section Break.” This will allow you to add instructions for how people can purchase tickets to the event. Click on where it says “A description of the section goes here.”
Erase text from the “Field Label,” and under “Instructions for the User” add ticket pricing information.
After this, select “Dropdown.”
Click on where it says “Select a Choice” and on the left, change the question text and dropdown choices. In this example, the text will read “How many adult tickets would you like to purchase?” and there will be nine choices from 0-8.
Select “Dropdown” again to create another dropdown question and then click on “Select a Choice.”
Again, change the question text and dropdown choices on the left-hand side. For this example, the question will be “How many children’s tickets would you like to purchase” and there will be nine dropdown choices from 0-8.
After you’ve done this, go to “Save Form” on the bottom of the screen.
Select the third option, taking you back to the Form Manager.
For this form, we will be accepting payments. To configure payment settings, under Chanukah Gala, go to “Payment.”
Select your payment merchant (Paypal, Google Checkout, etc.) and put in the email address that’s used with your merchant account.
Choose the currency you’d like payments to be in, and check off “Show Running Total” and “Pre-Populate Billing Info.” Once you check the latter, three additional options will appear. Add “Name” for the “Use this Name Field,” “Address” for the “Use this Address Field,” and “Email” for “Use this Email field.”
The “Show Running Total” option makes the total cost appear at the top of the form. “Pre-Populate Billing Info” will automatically carry the form information over to your merchant for payment processing.
Now we need to assign monetary values for each ticket. In our example, for one adult ticket you’ll need to manually input $20, $40 for two, $60 for three and so on.
To start with the adult tickets, choose “How many adult tickets…” under Select a Price Enabled Field, and then select “Assign Prices to this Field.”
Manually put in the amount for each adult ticket.
Next, choose “How many children’s tickets…” under Select a Price Enabled field and then select “Assign Prices to this Field.”
Manually put in the amount for each children’s ticket.
In the upper right-hand corner, go to “Save Settings.”
Now under the Chanukah Gala form, go to “View.”
This is what the form should look like:
Here is a filled out form with two adult tickets and three children’s tickets. Notice how the total amount appears at the top:
Once the form is submitted, you should see this message before being redirected to the merchant’s website:
Paypal was used for this form. On the Paypal page an order summary appears on the left:
With Paypal, people can pay with their personal Paypal account or enter their credit/debit card information.
If users pay with a credit/debit card, their billing information and email address will automatically be populated from the form they filled out on your site.
You can view everyone that’s registered for your event in the Wufoo Form Manager by going to “Entries.” In this example, “Entries” is the first option under Chanukah Gala.
All entries will be listed on the bottom. When you select one of them, the entry information will appear in the upper left-hand pane:
On the right you can see whether or not the person has paid yet. Since I submitted the form but didn’t add my Paypal account or credit card information, it says “Unpaid.”
Now go back to the Form Manager by selecting the “Form” tab on the top of the screen.
Wufoo forms can be embedded into your website. To get the embeddable code, go to “Code” and then select “Embed Form Code.”
Since Javascript is more prone to breaking, we generally recommend that users embed the iframe code.
That’s it! You now have all the information you need to do event registration and payment integration with Wufoo. Again, this service isn’t free. Users need a “Bona Fide” account with Wufoo to access the features described above. As of the beginning of 2011, this account costs $29.95 per month. However, your congregation may be eligible for a non-profit discount. For more about the discount, go here: https://master.wufoo.com/forms/wufoo-nonprofit-discount.
The URJ does not endorse Wufoo, but we want congregations to be aware of Wufoo and services like it that they might find useful. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at web@urj.org.
We welcome you to share your experiences with Wufoo and other third party form vendors below.
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