Running an event

Beyond a name, date and location, an event can carry a capacity (so it stops taking signups once full), a minimum number needed to go ahead, and a signup deadline. Multi-day events can have several dated sessions under one listing, "Saturday morning", "overnight", and so on, rather than being one single time slot.

Add an Event logo or picture too. It shows at the top of the event and next to it in the family portal, so families recognise it, and a good logo helps sell a camp.

While you're on an event, Events stays highlighted in the left-hand nav, and the section it belongs to is a link at the top of the page.

Pick Who can sign up?: the young people in the sections you tick, every young person in the group, or leaders only for things like leader meetings and training, which parents never see.

Add whatever questions you need: text, a dropdown, multiple choice, a date, a number. Questions can be made conditional, so a follow-up only appears when an earlier answer needs it (asking for dietary detail only if someone ticked "yes" to a dietary requirement, for instance), instead of everyone wading through every question.

Record a cost per person, and, if you want to split payment, a deposit amount with its own deadline, and a balance amount with a later one. There's a free-text field for your refund policy too, shown to parents before they commit.

For a camp paid monthly, set up a payment schedule for it under Finance → Income & Payments → Schedules, then Purpose & splits and choose A payment plan for an event and the event. Its payments count towards the event's money (as Payment plans on the Budget tab) and show as event income in your reports, not subs.

The same screen can send part of each instalment elsewhere, such as £20 of each £50 into the Minibus fund; the event gets the rest.

Pick which consent types this specific event needs, from the ones your group asks parents for (set under Settings → General settings → Consents). Parents give consent per signup with an in-app digital signature, no printed slip, and any standing consent the event needs that a child doesn't have yet is listed on the sign-up form for the parent to tick. Leaders can see and record each young person's consents under Consents on their record. For anything medical, you can also ask for details to be reconfirmed closer to the date, so a form filled in months ago doesn't go stale by the time you're actually away.

A new event starts as a draft, so you can get everything right before anyone sees it. Press Publish and it opens in the family portal, and every parent of a young person it's open to gets an email with the details and a link to sign up. Email parents again reaches families who've joined since.

A meeting is different: publishing it shows it in the family portal but doesn't email anyone, and meetings don't send reminders either. Tick Email parents when publishing if families need to know something, like a change of venue.

Changed your mind, or published too soon? Unpublish takes it back to draft. It leaves the family portal, so parents can't sign up or pay for it there, but anyone already signed up stays signed up. Publish it again whenever you're ready.

Events lists every event, newest first. Search by name or place, or narrow it to one section, a type (meetings, camps, events, activities) or a range of dates; Show more loads the next lot, and it says how many match.

Once you're in an event, its own menu sits under Events in the sidebar: Edit details (name, type, dates, place and description), Manage (sign-ups, money, consent and the rest) and Attendance, so you can move between them without going back to the list.

Parents sign up and pay through the family portal, answering your questions and giving consent as part of the same flow. If the event's already full, the signup goes straight to the waitlist in order automatically, nobody has to manage a queue by hand.

You can also add a young person yourself from the event's Signups tab. Either way, the parents who've joined the family portal for that young person get an email saying they're signed up (or on the waitlist). A family who hasn't joined the portal yet isn't emailed, and you don't get a copy of each one.

Add signup lists everyone the event is for: every young person in each of its sections, or the whole group for a whole-group event, not just the section whose money it is.

Not signed up on the Signups tab lists the young people the event is open to who haven't signed up yet. Email their parents sends the invitation again, with the link to sign up, only to those families. Copy emails and Download CSV give you their parents' email addresses for anything else.

A leader (or the parent themselves) can request an invoice for the full amount, just the deposit, or the balance. These are ordinary invoices in the group's normal finance, the same system used for membership subs, not a separate one-off payment tool bolted on for events.

Adding someone yourself and they've paid on the group's card reader? Choose Already paid, then Card, and pick the sale from the list of card reader sales. That sale becomes their payment, so it isn't counted twice. See Handling payouts.

The event's Budget tab keeps a running tally of the real money: places paid, refunds, and anything spent that's tagged to the event, plus what's still owed on confirmed places. Add planned lines to compare planned with actual. If several sections are involved, Whose money is this? decides which section's pot the surplus or deficit goes to, or the group's. When it's all done, Close budget.

Card fees on the event's payments come off its money, unless the group has chosen to pay card fees itself under Settings → Financial connections. Then the event keeps the full amount, and the Budget tab says how much the group covered.

On the Budget tab, Log an expense for anything bought for the event: what it was, how much, the date and category, and a photo of the receipt. Say how it was paid for: from the group's bank account, on a group expense card, from a cash float, or I paid, and need paying back.

Out-of-pocket spend goes straight onto the treasurer's list to pay back, and counts in the event's spending as Owed to leaders until it's repaid. See Paying leaders back.

Nobody moves off the waitlist automatically. When a space opens, a leader offers it to the next person in line, a deliberate step, so a leader always knows exactly who's actually coming before numbers get relied on.