Setting up registration: fees, the form, the window, and what registrants see

Where the settings live

Settings, then Registration, holds nearly everything on this page under the heading “How people sign up, what they pay, and who gets told.” It is one form with one Save button, and every setting is per show, so a cars-and-coffee meet and your annual show can run different rules under the same account. The two exceptions are the form fields themselves, which are built on the Forms page, and the categories, on the Categories and awards page.

When entries open and close

Leave both dates blank and registration follows the show’s stage: entries open when you publish and close when the show ends. Registration opens lets you publish early, so the page is up and people can plan, without taking entries yet. Registration closes stops online entries at a moment you pick, in the show’s own time zone, and while it is ahead the show page and the register page count down to it: “Registration ends in 3 days”.

After the cutoff both pages say “Pre-registration closed” with the date, and under it whatever you put in Registration closed message: where to register at the gate, what it costs there. There is also a stage for this. Close registration, the next step on the dashboard after Registration open, moves the show to Registration closed without needing a date. Either way the kiosk keeps taking day-of walk-ups, because closing online entries must never turn away the car that drives in on Saturday morning.

The same clock runs voting: Voting opens and Voting ends sit with the show’s dates on the Show details tab, and the show moves through its stages on its own as each time passes. Testing your show walks the whole ladder.

The entry fee

Require payment to register is on by default. Under it: the Registration fee in your show’s currency, an optional Day-of entry fee charged at the kiosk instead (blank means the same price either way, and a higher gate price is shown to registrants as a reason to book now), the Currency, and the Payment provider, which only lists the accounts your organization has connected. Fees settle straight into that account; Car Show HQ never holds the money. Turn payment off and registering is free and confirms right away.

Allow paying at the event adds a question to the form, pay online now or pay in person at the show. Someone who picks in person is confirmed with payment pending, and staff mark it paid at check-in or the gate. Under Extras you can add a donation box to the form, turn on the public donate page with its QR code, and accept discount codes. A code that covers the whole fee makes a free entry with no payment step, online and at the kiosk alike; cap its uses and you have a group registration for a club that is bringing ten cars.

Car numbers

The Car Number is the one identifier staff and voters use all day: it is hand-written on the windshield card and typed into the ballot. First car number sets where the sequence starts, up to 9999. Registrants can pick their own car number adds an optional field to the form; taken numbers cannot be chosen, and Fee to pick a number can charge for the privilege when payment is on. A cancelled entry keeps its number, so a printed card is never reissued to someone else.

The registration form

The Forms page has two tabs, Pre-registration and Day-of / kiosk, each its own field list. Five fields are always on and cannot be removed: name, vehicle year, make, model, and category. Email, phone, car club, and address are catalog fields you switch on or off and mark required or optional; changes save as you flip them. Your own questions come from Add a custom field, with four types: text, text area, select with comma-separated options, and checkbox. Drag rows to reorder. The donation and waiver-consent fields follow their settings rather than the switches here.

Two settings on the Registration page shape the form too. Cars can enter more than one category turns the category choice from a dropdown into a checklist. Registrants must sign in requires an account before registering; most shows leave it off and take a name and an email.

Categories

Categories are the classes cars register into and spectators vote on. Add one by name on the Categories and awards page; each gets a Best-of award automatically, and renaming the category renames the award. A description and a picture per category show up on the registration form as a which-class-is-my-car guide. Best of Show is always there as one overall winner across every car, and People’s Choice appears on shows with closed voting. A category cannot be deleted once cars or votes are attached to it. If judges score a class instead of voters, tick Judged class on that row.

The waiver

The liability waiver has its own tab under Settings. Require the waiver adds a consent checkbox to the form, and the text comes from either the editor or a PDF you upload, up to 10 MB. Requiring it with neither text nor a PDF is refused, so nobody signs a blank.

What the registrant sees

The public register page shows the show date and venue beside the form, the fee, and the note that a confirmation email is on its way. On a paid show the registrant goes to your payment provider’s checkout and comes back to a page that says “Confirming your payment” and updates on its own; the confirmation is driven by the provider telling us the payment settled, never by the browser coming back. If ninety seconds pass with no word, the page changes to “We couldn’t confirm your payment”, says plainly that nothing was charged, and offers Try payment again, which restarts checkout for the same entry rather than creating a second one.

The confirmation email, “You’re registered for {show}!”, carries the car, the date, the venue, the amount paid when a payment completed, your Welcome message for registrants, and either the gate pass, if the show runs a gate, or a line asking them to stop by the registration table for their windshield card. The Car Number is never in it and never on the success page. If a card payment was left unfinished, one reminder email goes out after about an hour, while online registration is still open, with the same retry link; one per registration, never a second.

Who gets told

Who hears about a new entry lives on its own tab, Settings, Notifications. Every team member with alerts on gets an email for every confirmed entry, and New-registration alerts adds addresses that are not team members. Sponsorship inquiries go to lets a sponsorship chair take those separately. At the foot of that tab, a Where messages land card shows exactly who receives new registrations, contact form messages, and sponsorship requests today, and why, so a message that lands nowhere is never a surprise.

The registrant list

Registrants is the working list. Search by name, email, car, or number; a number on its own matches the Car Number exactly. Filter by status (pending payment, confirmed, checked in, cancelled) and by payment. By default the list hides unfinished checkouts and withdrawn entries so a healthy show does not look broken, and offers them as counts you can show. Each row leads with the Car Number, large, and carries the actions: Mark paid, Check in, Print card, Resend email, and for owners and admins, Cancel and Erase data. Cancelling never refunds; money comes back through your payment provider.

What registration does not do

• Car numbers stop at 9999.
• There is no cap on entries per category or per show.
• The kiosk is never closed by the online window or the Registration closed stage.
• Custom fields come in four types; there is no file upload, date, or number type.
• Cancelling does not refund; that happens in your payment provider.
• Paying at the event does not collect money online; it confirms the entry with payment pending.

Next, connect the payment account the fee settles into, on Payments, before you publish; a paid show with no provider is held at Draft until it has one.

Keep reading

• Check-in and cards
• Emailing registrants
• Gate Mode
• Gear & services
• Group entries
• Importing entrants
• Judged scoring
• The location check
• Payments and payouts
• Recurring shows
• Results and awards
• Roles and staff access
• Security and reliability
• Spectator donations
• Spectator voting
• Sponsor invoices
• Sponsors and tiers
• Testing your show
• Your own pages