Knowledge Base — Timing Vendors

Article 1

Getting started: create your vendor account

Applies to: timing companies running meets for clubs
Where: /register, then /vendor/signup

The vendor portal is free. You are not billed for having an account — only a small surcharge per splash on meets your company runs. See article 5.

Step 1 — Create a personal account

Go to meetdirector.online → Create an account, enter your name, email and a password, verify your email address from the link we send, and sign in. This is your login; the company account comes next.

Step 2 — Register your timing company

Go to Become a timing vendor (/vendor/signup) and fill in:

Field	Required?	Notes
Company name	Yes	How you appear to clubs
Code	Optional	Short code (e.g. `STI`) — coaches use it to invite you
Website · Contact email	Optional	Contact email defaults to yours
Legal business name · Business type · EIN	As applicable	Used on invoices and receipts
Street, city, state, ZIP, business phone	Yes	Your business address

Read the fee agreement — it states the rate that applies to your account — tick the box to agree, and click Create vendor account.

You land in the Vendor portal (/vendor), whose tiles are: Client meets, Host a meet, Clients, Staff, Company profile and Billing.

Pick a code you'll be happy to say out loud. Coaches invite you by typing your vendor code into their coach portal, so something short like STI beats a long company name.

Early access: creating meets is being switched on account by account. If you see the "Meet hosting is in early access" notice when you try to host, open a support ticket and ask us to enable your vendor account.

Article 2

Client clubs — getting connected

Applies to: vendor accounts
Where: /vendor/clients

You can only set up and run meets for clubs that have approved you. There are two ways to get connected, and either side can start it.

You request the club

Open Clients (/vendor/clients).
In Request a client club, enter the club code (e.g. CA) and, optionally, a note to the club's coach explaining who you are.
Click Send request.

The club's coach approves it from their coach portal. Until then the row shows Pending.

Request sitting unanswered? Coaches often don't recognise a timing-vendor request and leave it. A site administrator can approve it on the club's behalf — open a support ticket naming the club code(s) and it's usually done the same day.

The club invites you

Give the coach your vendor code. From their coach portal they use Invite a timing vendor, pick their club, enter your code and submit — that link is live immediately, no approval needed on your side.

Reading the clients table

My clients lists each club with its Status (Approved / Pending / Rejected), How (We requested or Club invited us) and the date. Once a club is Approved, its meets appear in your Client meets console and you can create new ones for it.

Stuck on Pending? The request sits with the club's team admin — usually the head coach. A nudge by phone is faster than anything we can do; if the club says they can't find the request, open a support ticket with the club code.

Article 3

Running your clients' meets

Applies to: vendor accounts
Where: /vendor/meets (Client meets)

The Client meets console lists every meet you're timing across all your client clubs, with the host, dates, status and current entry count.

Creating a meet for a client

Click Host a meet for a client (/coach/host-meet).
Upload the client's Hy-Tek event file (.ev3, or the .zip as exported).
Under Who is hosting, choose Another club (I'm setting it up for them) and pick the club from your client list — or type a new name and code, which sets up the client relationship for you.
Fill in Where is it? — facility / pool, street address, city, state and ZIP. The event file doesn't carry the location, and it's what the public Find a meet search matches on; a meet without it reads Location TBC. Ask your client for the pool's address if you don't have it.
Submit. The meet is created as a draft.

Pools you've timed at before are on the list. Above the address boxes, Use a venue you've used before offers every pool already on the system with its town and courses — Carolina Natatorium — Columbia, SC · SCY, LCM. Picking one fills the address in, which matters for a vendor: the same half-dozen pools come round every season across several client clubs, and you type each one once. Typing the same pool again isn't duplicated — the same name in the same town is recognised.

You can add or correct the location later from the meet's Details page, where the same picker appears. Re-uploading an event file to update the events won't wipe a location that's already there, and if a venue's address is corrected, every meet held there picks it up.

Once the meet is out of draft it appears in Find a meet, the public search on the front page and at the top of /meets, matching the meet name, the host club's name or code, the facility, and the town, state or ZIP — worth telling your client, since a fully filled-in meet advertises itself.

The meet lifecycle

From each row in Client meets:

Status	Button	What it does
Draft	Open for entries	Teams can start entering
Open	Close entries	Entry deadline reached — this locks your billing count
Entries closed	Re-open entries	Take late entries; the count re-locks when you close again

Other actions on each row:

Entries file — download every entry as .hy3 / .cl2 / .sd3 to load into Meet Manager.
Entries — add or change entries by hand.
Details — edit the meet's name, dates, facility, course, sanction number and timing system.
Payments — entry fees and payment status for the meet.

If the entry deadline passes and nobody closes the meet, a nightly pass closes the meter for you so billing doesn't drift — see article 5.

Article 4

Uploading entries and results

Applies to: vendor accounts
Where: /vendor/meets (entries) and /import (results)

Entry files from teams

On a Draft or Open meet, expand Upload entries on the meet's row and select the teams' entry files — you can select them all at once (.hy3, .cl2, .sd3, .zip). Each file is processed as its own team, registering the team if it isn't in the meet yet.

Click Review & import. The Review entries by team screen shows exactly what each file will do before anything changes — new entries, changes and removals per team. Confirm to apply, or Cancel.

Results after the meet

Use Upload results (/import) to import the meet's results file — .hy3, .sd3, .cl2, .ev3, .hyv, or the .zip straight out of Meet Manager. Teams, athletes, events, results and splits all import.

Set the Meet LSC for LSC/USA-Swimming meets; leave it as none for high-school or rec-league meets.
You can upload a meet only if its host is one of your approved client clubs and that club swam it. A file whose clubs include none of your clients is refused — "None of the clubs in this file is a client of your timing company" — and a meet already hosted by a club that isn't your client is refused by name. Connect to the club first (article 2) and try again.
If the file doesn't clearly match an existing meet, you'll be asked "Which meet is this?" — pick the right one so results stay together. Only a same-name meet on that day is offered.
"Which of your clubs hosted this meet?" — asked only when more than one of your client clubs is in the file; with exactly one, it's the host and the question is skipped. The import preselects from the file when it can (an SDIF host record, or the Meet Manager licence name when it matches a club) — confirm or change it. The host is what the director report, meet finder and payments read, and a meet that already has a host is never asked about again.
A meet already on the site with no host on record can't be written into from a file; the host club claims it first (their coach's My meets → We hosted this, approved by an administrator), then the upload goes through.
Every club with swims in the file is notified that you uploaded it, and can flag a problem for an administrator. Each club's coaches are also emailed within the hour that the results are posted, with a link to download their own club's .hy3/.cl2 files from the coach portal — you don't need to distribute results files to the teams yourself.
Re-importing a corrected file updates the existing meet rather than duplicating it.

After importing, check Data review for the meet (/meets/{id}/review) — it lists unmatched swimmers and data to fix, grouped by team, which you can send to the clubs to clean up.

Article 5

Billing — the per-splash surcharge

Applies to: vendor accounts
Where: /vendor/billing

The portal is free. You pay a small surcharge per splash on meets your company runs — billed to you, never to the club or the families.

How the charge is worked out

A splash is one swim in the meet: each individual entry counts once, and each relay team counts once.
The count locks when a meet's entries close — that's the moment your charge is fixed. If you re-open and close again, it re-locks on the new count.
If the entry deadline passes and the meet was never closed, a nightly pass locks the meter for you.
Your rate is shown on your billing page, under Your rate, and on the fee agreement you accepted at signup. Rates can be set per vendor, so check there rather than assuming — and talk to us if you're running a volume that warrants a different one.

Paying

Card on file — add one from the billing page. Open charges are then billed automatically after a grace period (7 days by default).
Pay now — clears the open balance immediately, any time before the auto-charge.
The Charges table lists every meet with the date the count locked, the entry and relay counts, the rate applied, the amount, and a status of Open, Paid, Waived or Payment failed.

A failed payment is retried, but the charge stays open in the meantime. Replace the card from the billing page if it's expired — nothing is cancelled, and the retry picks up the new card.

Disagree with a count? Open a support ticket naming the meet and what you think it should be. We can see the same locked figures you can.

Article 6

Staff and company profile

Applies to: vendor accounts
Where: /vendor/staff and /vendor/profile

Staff

Staff lists your operators and timers, who each get vendor-portal access. Add one with their email, first and last name, and an optional role label. They sign in with their own MeetDirector account and see your client meets.

Add the people who actually run meets — anyone who needs to open or close entries, load entry files, or import results.

Company profile

Company profile holds your business details — company name, legal business name, business type, EIN, address, phone, website and contact email. These appear on invoices and receipts, so keep them current if you change address or entity.

Article 7

Getting help — submitting a support ticket

Open a ticket at:

➡ support.meetdirector.online

How to submit a ticket

Go to support.meetdirector.online.
Sign in (or create a support account) using the same email address as your MeetDirector account — it lets us match you to your vendor account immediately.
Click Submit a ticket, choose the topic, describe the problem, and attach any files.
Submit. Replies come by email; reply to the email to add to the same ticket.

What to include

Your company name and vendor code.
The club code and the meet name and date involved.
The page URL where the problem happened (e.g. /vendor/meets).
The exact error message, or a screenshot.
For import problems: attach the entry or results file.

Common vendor requests

Enable meet hosting for our vendor account (early access).
A client club hasn't approved our request — can you check it went through?
A charge looks wrong — the entry count doesn't match what we ran.
Our card was declined and the charge is still open.
Change our rate, company name or billing details.
Results imported against the wrong meet — please move or reset them.

Please don't send swimmer dates of birth or USA-S numbers in ticket screenshots. The meet name and the swimmer's name are enough for us to find the rest.