Making a Purchase
Participant Payment and Checkout Process
The zFairs platform includes an integrated point-of-sale and registration module that allows participants/students, attendees, and teachers to pay registration fees. The specific payment options available to a user depend on the configurations set by the individual fair's administrative team.
Payment Locations
Participants generally encounter the payment interface in one of two locations within the zFairs system:
- The Registration Wizard
During initial account creation, participants fill out required fields, submit project details, and sign digital waivers. The final step of this registration wizard typically directs the user to a checkout screen where mandatory registration fees are calculated and collected.
- The Store
Users who bypass the initial checkout, or those who wish to purchase optional items (e.g., event T-shirts, guest meal tickets), can access the Store from the primary navigation bar. This section functions as a standard e-commerce cart, displaying pending fees and available merchandise.
Supported Payment Methods
Fair administrators can toggle various payment gateways and methods. The most common options presented to participants include:
Online Credit and Debit Cards
Fairs can integrate built-in merchant processing (supported by Stripe). Processing a payment via credit or debit card clears the fee immediately, updates the user's dashboard status to "Paid," and automatically issues an email receipt.
Invoices and Offline Payments
Participants can select Generate Invoice to create a printable PDF. This document contains the participant's name, Order ID, itemized costs, and the host organization's remittance address. This method is utilized for offline payments, such as personal checks, money orders, or cash payments. Fair staff must manually reconcile and mark these invoices as paid within the zFairs system upon receiving the physical funds.
Bulk School or Teacher Payments
Many fairs allow educational institutions to absorb the costs for their students. In this workflow:
The participant selects an option indicating their school or sponsor will pay.
The linked teacher or sponsor logs into their zFairs educator portal.
Under the Store > Students menu, the teacher selects multiple student accounts, aggregates their fees into a single cart, and completes a bulk payment via credit card or generates a master invoice.
Fee Waivers
If enabled by the fair administration, financially eligible participants can select a fee waiver request or enter a specific authorization code during checkout to bypass the registration cost.
External Payment Portals
Some host organizations (such as universities or school districts) are restricted from using third-party payment processors. In these instances, participants are often configured to redirect users to an external portal (e.g., a university bursar site, district web store, or external PayPal portal) to complete the financial transaction.
Payment Verification
Users can confirm their transaction statuses directly through their account:
- Navigate to "My Profile" under your name.
- Click on the "Orders" tab.
- Click on the blue invoice to review your invoice.
- A green "Paid" box will show when the invoice has been paid.
By clicking on the "Store" in the menu, users can also see their order history.
