Booking and paying online for club attendance

[#1]

I am Treasurer for an amateur Photographic Group and receive seat bookings for each meeting (about 80-bookings) by email and acknowledge them by email.
I would like a system whereby members book and pay online, receive an online acknowledgement and provide me with a list of members reservations.
Does anyone know if such an application is available?
Regards

[#2]

I fink what you are after PayPal does, but I may be wrong.
Hope this helps

[#3]

I looked at something similar for payment of subscriptions to the football club I help with running.
You can have a variety of web based booking tools - I was looking at  PHP.  and as Midnight Caller says was going to use papal as the funding mechanism. The problem was that Paypal's charges were too much of a hit on income to make it viable so the money we have still comes in through cash and cheques.

[#4]

Many thanks Midnight Caller and Groundsman.
My initial examination of Paypal's services is a) the charge per transaction is too high for my Group to absorb and b) I presume that all users will have to have Paypal accounts.....not a likely possibility.
However, Paypal Support  has asked me to ring them to discuss the requirement and I will do so early next week.
I'll let you know!
Regards....

[#5]

@fotobits, how did you get on?

[#6]

Thanks Midnight Caller.
I spoke to Paypal Sales and didn't learn anything further.  Their offering is good but the transaction charge of nearly 50p is not!
I have been offered the opportunity to trial the RPS system (Royal Photographic Society) and I am waiting details of their transaction charge (if any).
In the meantime I can see difficulties and disadvantages with online booking and will probably at least shelve the idea!
Regards.....

[#7]

Quote from: fotobits

b) I presume that all users will have to have Paypal accounts.....not a likely possibility.

AFAIK, PP accepts payments from people using credit and debit cards without the need for them to have already opened an account.
It used to be the case someone making a purchase did need an account (I was checking for a client and that was a drawback at the time, because verifying took a few days, using a small debit and getting user to enter digits from the transaction record from their credit/debit card company).  PP is probably still one of the cheapest options online, unless there are regular payments (because some other services have monthly fees rather than per-transaction).  WorldPay and some others have in the past held the funds for weeks or months so they're a pain too if you don't have payments coming into the bank account until a long time after an event. 
Google Checkout might have similar fees to PP, but I've not yet looked into using that, so don't know what they charge.
As for PP charges, I guess it depends on the proposed cost of the tickets... might be more than 10% of cost.

[#8]

The withdrawal of cheques is going to affect a great many groups and charities. 
I hope that some lower charge options come in the meantime.

[#9]

Thank you for your comments WebDude.  As I remember, Pay Pal's charges worked out at about 47p for a £7 payment.  However, I suspect that VAT must be added to that.  You're right, the payer needn't have a PayPal a/c.
Not everyone is happy with online payments and you wouldn't have to have many in a Club to make an online system a nuisance.
The more I look at the idea, the more I think I'll stick with email bookings and my home-made Excel and mail-merge linked Word system!
Regards....