I have two sites that I have just created and thought before hand (Prior to last update) that I tried the registration process. I recall being able to turn off manual or offline payments which in turn would only complete event registrations only if an online payment was received.

Now that I have built these two sites and see that "invoices" are being created and people are regsitering without paying online, it is creating a major problem and adding a tremendous burden on our businesses in multiple ways.

1. A bunch of our events have limited registration so when people register without paying, It is closing our events to participants that have no financial committement yet to us, which causes issues trying to receive those payments before the scheduled events.

2. Most of our event participants are not members of our site, and one of our sites we have even used css customization to completely take out the username/password box so when people register for events and don't pay they don't have anyway to do so in the future except the one email they get afterwards showing they have an invoice.

3. A lot of our events are online so we don't physically see the participant. This goes along with the first point in trying to collect payments prior to the event starting and the pain that goes along in trying to collect registration fees from a registered guest.

I don't understand how this is not a larger issue with other sites. For example:

Dinner Events - Multiple guests can register for the event that didn't pay, not show up and the business is out money.

Bracketed Events - We are running a sports tournament that have a max of 16 competitors in each division. The winner of the division gets a paid trip to the world championships. If competitors register and don't pay and don't show up, we are out of the money and have to pay out of pocket for the competitor in that division to go to the world championships.

Online Events - I started a fantasy sports site where each event consists of 10 teams that have a specific online draft date. The winners get the prize money. If a team registers but doesn't pay, then we have to pay winners out of pocket.

I understand invoices are created and we can send them ourselves and spend time trying to collect payments afterwards. However this is very time consuming and risky. If there is a way to limit registrations to only participants that already paid online then I would be extremely grateful if someone would be able to explain it to me. If not, is there anything in the works to fix this issue.

Through creating the site I have used WA support and it has been very helpful...except when I called about this specific issue which the lady was pretty rude. I just want to say thanks for the help so far and I apologize for how large this post got. I just need to find a solution for this issue prior to moving forward with the businesses I am working for/with.