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Add Custom Registration Questions

Goal: Ask attendees the event-specific questions your team actually needs — meal choice, t-shirt size, dietary restrictions — as part of registration, so the answers land on the registration record instead of in a follow-up email thread.

What custom registration questions are​

The registration form always collects the basics for each attendee: name, email, phone. Custom questions add whatever else this event needs:

  • Meal choice for a plated dinner (chicken / fish / vegetarian)
  • T-shirt size for a fun run
  • Dietary restrictions
  • Golf handicap
  • "How did you hear about this event?"

Questions are configured per event. The gala can ask for meal choice, the golf tournament for handicap, and a small reception can ask nothing at all.

Where to configure them​

Open the event's Manage page and go to the Operational tab. In the Registration Settings card, the Registration Questions section sits directly below the registration levels (see Configure Registration Levels for those).

Adding a question​

Click Add Question and set:

  • Question — the question as attendees will read it ("Meal choice")
  • Answer type — how the answer is collected (below)
  • Help text (optional) — a clarifying line under the question ("Served at the plated dinner")
  • Who is asked:
    • Each attendee — one answer per seat. Use for anything that varies by person: meal choice, shirt size.
    • Once per order — one answer per purchase, collected at checkout. Use for questions about the purchase itself: "How did you hear about this event?"
  • Required — whether the registrant must answer before they can continue
  • Choices — for the pick-from-a-list answer types, the options attendees choose among

Answer types​

Eight types cover the usual cases:

  • Short answer — one line of free text (name to print on a badge)
  • Long answer — a larger text box for multi-sentence responses (accessibility needs)
  • Number — numeric answers only (golf handicap, years attending)
  • Date — a date picker (arrival date for a multi-day event)
  • Dropdown — pick one option from a list; best when there are many options (meal choice)
  • Checkboxes (choose many) — tick any number of options (dietary restrictions)
  • Single checkbox — one yes/no tick box ("Add me to the newsletter")
  • Multiple choice (choose one) — pick exactly one option with all options visible; best for two to four short choices

Prefer choice-based types over free text wherever you can — "Vegetarian" from a dropdown gives you a clean catering count, while a text box gives you fourteen spellings of it.

Ordering questions​

Drag questions to reorder them. The order in the editor is the order attendees see on the form.

What registrants see​

  • Per-attendee questions appear under each attendee's contact fields once that attendee's details are filled in.
  • Per-order questions appear once, at the checkout step.

When someone buys a multi-seat level (a table, a foursome) and leaves some seats blank, the blank seats skip the questions entirely — a required meal choice never blocks a sponsor from buying a table before they know who's sitting at it. Required questions only apply to attendee rows that are actually filled in. Your staff can fill in the answers later, right along with the names, from the registrations list — see Manage Event Registrations.

Where the answers show up​

On the event's registrations list:

  • Per-attendee answers sit under the attendee's name on their own row, and open for editing in the Edit Attendee dialog.
  • Per-order answers sit on the order group header in the By Order view, under "Order by [purchaser name]" — they belong to the purchase, so no single attendee row carries them.

Both kinds also export as columns in the registrations CSV, where a once-per-order answer repeats on each attendee row of its order. See Manage Event Registrations for the full walkthrough.

Editing after answers arrive​

You can add, reword, reorder, and re-scope questions freely — until someone answers one. Once a question has answers, parts of it lock to protect the data you've already collected:

  • Answer type can't change — a dropdown answer can't be reinterpreted as a checkbox.
  • Existing choices can't be removed — attendees have already picked them. You can reword a choice's display label and add new choices.
  • Delete is replaced by deactivate — the question disappears from the form for future registrants, but every answer already given stays visible on its registration.

The label, help text, and required toggle stay editable throughout. If a question needs to change fundamentally mid-sale, deactivate it and add a new one — the same advice as changing a level's price.