Manage Event Registrations

Goal: Adjust registrations after they're made — fix details, transfer seats, cancel, refund, or add walk-ins — without losing the audit trail or breaking budget tracking.

Common adjustments

A few things that come up routinely:

• An attendee's name was misspelled on the public form
• Someone bought 8 seats but only 6 will show; we want to release 2
• A couple registered, now it's just one
• A sponsor wants to swap one guest for another
• A registration was paid by check that has now been received

Edit a registration

From the event's registrations list, open any registration to edit:

• Attendee names (one per seat)
• Meal / dietary preferences
• Table or seating assignment
• Notes for catering, AV, or check-in

The registration's ticket level is shown for reference but can't be changed — it's set when the order is purchased (through the system or manually) and reflects what was paid, so it stays fixed.

These edits don't move money. They update the registration record.

Viewing and editing question answers

If the event has custom registration questions, each attendee's answers appear on their registration and can be changed from the Edit Attendee dialog — open the attendee's row, adjust the answers alongside their name and contact details, and save. Typical uses:

• A guest calls to switch their meal choice from fish to vegetarian
• An answer was mistyped on the public form
• A blank seat (an "Anonymous Attendee" placeholder on a table purchase) skipped the questions at purchase time — when the sponsor sends over the guest's name, fill in their answers in the same dialog where you fill in the name

Editing answers never touches the financial side of the registration.

Once-per-order answers ("How did you hear about this event?", a billing reference, a table name) belong to the purchase rather than to any one seat, so they don't sit on any attendee row. Look for them on the order group header in the By Order view, just under "Order by [purchaser name]" — switch views if you're in Flat and don't see them. Long answers are shortened to fit the header; hover to read the whole thing. These are shown for reference and can't be edited after the order is placed; the per-attendee answers on each row remain editable as above.

Every answer of both kinds is also a column in the CSV export — see Reports and exports below.

Transfer or substitute attendees

When sponsor X bought a table for 8 and now wants to swap two of the names:

• Open the registration
• Edit the attendee names
• Save

The seat count is unchanged; the names are updated. No financial action needed.

Adding to a registration

When a registered attendee asks to bring a plus-one (and your event allows for it):

• Increase the seat count on the registration
• Charge the additional amount through the registration's payment method, or take a separate gift
• Update the attendee names

If your event is at capacity, you'll need to release a different seat first or accept that the plus-one doesn't fit.

Adding attendees to an existing order

When a sponsor bought a table of 8 and only gave you a few names up front, you can backfill the rest later without touching the original payment:

• Switch the registrations list to By Order view
• Find the order and click Add attendees in the order header
• Fill in any names you have, leave the rest blank
• Save

The new seats automatically take the order's existing registration level — the one set when the order was purchased — so they're shown read-only rather than picked again. (If the order has no single level to inherit, you'll be asked to choose one.) This keeps a sponsor's table of guests on the level the purchaser paid for, with no per-guest charge added. The new seats land in the same order as the original purchase. Blank rows are stored as "Anonymous Attendee N" placeholders that you can fill in later from the per-attendee edit dialog. No money is moved — reconcile any payment owed separately.

A blank seat has no email address — the list shows "No email yet" next to it — and it isn't added to your Constituents directory, person search, or communication audiences, so unfilled table seats don't clutter your records. Blank seats don't get confirmation or update emails. Once you fill in a real name and email for a seat, that person becomes a normal constituent.

Older individual registrations

Registrations added by hand before orders existed show up under the Individual registrations group and don't have an order header to add seats to. To add guests under one of them, click the Add attendees (person-plus) icon on that registration's row. The registration becomes its own order — with the original registrant as the purchaser, and their recorded payment carried over untouched — and the Add Attendees dialog opens so you can add the extra seats. From then on it behaves like any other order.

Showing the purchaser and order total

The registrations list shows who placed each order — useful when a sponsor buys a table and their guests are different people. In the By Order view, each group header reads "Order by [purchaser name]", and in the Flat view each attendee row picks up a "via [purchaser name]" subtitle. The attendee whose email matches the purchaser also gets a "Purchaser" badge so you can spot them at a glance.

In the By Order view the list pages by order, so every attendee on an order always appears together on the same page — a table of eight is never split across two pages. The Flat view instead pages by individual registration, which is better for scanning a long attendee list. Use the page-size dropdown to control how many show before the list paginates (5, 10, 20, or 50; the default is 5) — it counts orders in By Order view and registrations in Flat view. The count in the header always reflects the total number of attendees.

The amount shown for an order is always what the purchaser actually paid — a single purchase, not a charge per head. Adding guests to an order never increases that amount: the extra seats are covered by the original payment, so a $250 ticket with three guests added still reads $250, not $1,000.

By default, that total shows once — on the purchaser's row — and every other attendee shows their Paid status with no per-seat amount. That keeps a $1,500 sponsor table from looking like six $250 transactions on the list. Public-flow orders default to this behavior.

When you do want the per-seat breakdown (e.g., for finance reconciliation), flip the Split $ toggle in the order group header. This divides the order's total evenly across its attendees (a $250 order with four attendees shows $62.50 each) — it splits the one payment, it doesn't multiply it. The flag is per-order — it remembers your choice and can be set during admin order creation too, via the "Split cost between attendees" switch in the Add Order dialog.

Cancelling a registration

To remove a registration entirely:

• From the registration page, click Cancel
• Decide whether to refund (depends on your event policy and how close to the date you are)
• The seat returns to inventory; the attendee no longer appears on lists

If refunding, follow Refund a Donation — the registration's underlying payment record is treated like any other donation for refund purposes.

Cancelling a seat that's part of a package

When the attendee's seat was purchased as part of a bundle tier (a sponsor table, a "couples" package), the cancel dialog tells you so and asks which you want:

• Only this seat — the attendee comes off the list, but the rest of the package stays registered. No refund is issued: the package was bought as one purchase, so freeing a single seat doesn't move any money. Use this when a guest can't make it and the table is otherwise still coming.
• The entire package — every seat purchased together is cancelled as a block. If the order was paid by card, you can issue a refund for the package price.

The dialog shows exactly how many seats are affected before you confirm, and the confirm button spells it out (e.g., "Cancel All 8 Seats") — so cancelling one guest can never silently take the whole table with it.

Admin-creating a registration

Sometimes a registration needs to be entered manually rather than through the public form:

• A donor mailed a check with their RSVP card — record it as an admin-created registration
• A staff member processed a phone call — same flow
• A walk-in at the event — same flow but with day-of context

Capture name(s), level, payment method, payment status. The registration counts the same as a self-served one.

Turning off the confirmation email only turns off the email. The payment is still recorded, the revenue still lands in the event's fund, and the journal entry is still written — a cash or check registration entered quietly is on the books exactly like one that sent mail.

For single attendees, leave Multiple attendees off and fill in the one set of fields. For a sponsor table or any purchase covering more than one seat, switch on Multiple attendees — the dialog grows to a purchaser block plus an editable attendee list. Picking a bundle tier (e.g. "VIP Table — 6/unit") auto-expands the list to one unit's worth of seats; leave any row blank to fill in later. Submit and you get one order, one payment row, and N attendee rows linked together.

When an organization buys the tickets

Often a company — not a person — is the real purchaser: a law firm sponsors a table, a bank buys a block of seats for staff. You can attach the order to a managed organization so the purchase rolls up to that org alongside its gifts and sponsorships.

In the Add Order dialog, switch the purchaser from Individual to Organization and search for the company. If it isn't on file yet, create it right there — no need to leave the dialog. You still fill in a purchaser contact (the person who placed the order); that contact is automatically affiliated to the organization, so next time they're already linked.

On the public registration page, a buyer can tick "Registering on behalf of an organization?" and type the organization's name (and EIN if they have it). We match that against your existing organizations — by tax ID first, then by name — and either attach the order to the right one or create a new record for you to review. A conflicting EIN never silently merges two companies.

Either way, the order's amount, attendees, and date appear under the organization's Involvement → Event registrations, so the org's profile shows the full picture of how they support you.

Mark payment received

When a registration was created with payment status pending (e.g., they registered with intent to pay by check), and the check arrives:

• Open the registration
• Mark the payment as received with the date and reference (check number)
• Status moves to confirmed

This creates the corresponding journal entry on the books and frees the seat from "pending" purgatory.

Tax receipts

A paid order gets one IRS-compliant tax receipt, emailed to the purchaser with a PDF attached. It covers the whole order — the price paid, the fair market value of what the attendees receive (meals, entertainment, swag), and the deductible difference — because the purchaser is who parted with the money, whether they bought one seat or a table of ten. The document is titled as an event registration receipt, not a sponsorship receipt, and shows the purchaser's name and address.

The fair market value comes from the registration level. Every paid level has to state the value of what an attendee receives before it can be saved — enter 0 only when attendees genuinely receive nothing of value, because a 0 makes every receipt for that level say "no goods or services were provided". The level editor warns you when a paid level is set to 0. The same applies when you put a price on a level that used to be free: a free level carries no fair market value yet, so you are asked for one at the point it starts charging.

This is separate from the confirmation email, and independent of how your event is set up to send them. Some affiliates mail one confirmation to the purchaser listing every attendee; others mail each attendee their own. Either way the purchaser gets exactly one receipt for the order.

A registration paid by bank transfer is receipted once the transfer settles, usually a business day or so later, rather than at checkout.

Two cases produce no receipt, both deliberately:

• A $0 comped seat, which recognized no revenue. When it came from a sponsor's registration code, the money and the fair market value were already handled on the sponsorship — see Issue Registration Codes.
• A payment that failed or is still pending. Nothing is receipted until the money is actually in.

Discrepancies between registration and the books

A paid registration creates a payment record and a corresponding journal entry, and its revenue is attributed to the event's designated fund — so per-event and per-fund totals include ticket and table revenue, not just direct donations.

The entry is written whenever the money is recorded, not when the confirmation email goes out. A registration paid by bank transfer is the one case where the two are apart: the entry appears once the transfer settles, usually a business day or so later, because until then no money has arrived.

If you see a paid registration that still isn't on the books:

• No payment captured yet. The registration was created admin-side with the payment left pending. Record the payment (see Mark payment received above) and the entry follows.
• No account mapping for event registrations. Nothing can be posted until Ayuna knows which GL accounts to use. See Configure Account Mappings.
• A comped seat. A $0 registration recognized no revenue, so there is deliberately nothing to post. When the seat came from a sponsor's registration code, the money was already recognized on the sponsorship.

For a table or bundle purchased as one payment, the deductible and fund amounts are based on what the purchaser actually paid (the single unit price), not the per-head price multiplied by the number of seats.

Reports and exports

The registrations list supports filters and CSV export. Export downloads exactly what the list is showing: if you've set the status filter to Registered or typed in the search box, only the matching registrations go into the file. Set the filter back to All Statuses and clear the search to export everyone, including people who were only invited. Useful exports:

• All registrations for tonight's check-in
• Sponsor-level registrations for recognition lists
• Cancelled registrations (for understanding patterns and refund totals)

The CSV includes one column per custom registration question, so a meal-choice question exports as a ready-made catering count and once-per-order answers appear on each attendee row of that order.

Day-of changes

The list keeps working through the event itself. Walk-ins added on event-day, last-minute cancellations, payment captures — all flow through the same screens. After the event, a final reconciliation against catering attendance and Finix settlement closes the loop.