Open Events (opens in a new tab) and choose your event. Use Guests to manage registrations, and Scan tickets when you are ready to check people in.
Prepare your guest list
- Search by name or email and use filters to find the people you need. The list shows fifty guests at a time, and a filtered view is a link you can share with your team.
- Filter by Check-in to see who has arrived and who is still to come. Not checked in lists confirmed guests without an arrival record.
- Review Needs approval requests and approve or decline them. Confirmed guests receive their tickets.
- Waiting-list entries and Maybe / Can’t go answers are not bookings, so each has its own view under Guests, beside the guest list, rather than appearing in it.
- Export the guest list if you need a working copy. An export reflects the list at that moment, so download it again after significant changes.
Invite your door team through Team settings (opens in a new tab) and check Roles & permissions (opens in a new tab) to make sure their role gives them the access they need. Have each person open the event and scanner on their own device before the event starts.
Guest list
The day before your event
A day before each published event, its owners and admins get an email from RealEvents saying where it stands: how many are going (by ticket type when there is more than one), how many places are registered against your capacity, and, when there are any, requests waiting for your approval, people on the waiting list, Maybe answers and comps not claimed yet. Its buttons open the requests to review, the guest list, or the scanner. It gives numbers only, never names: open Guests for those.
Each person sets this for themselves, team by team: use the link at the foot of the email, or turn off Day-before brief under As an organiser in Notifications (opens in a new tab). Your guests’ own reminders are not affected.
Before that, on any morning after something happened at an event, owners and admins get one email about it: who asked to come and is waiting for your approval, new guests going, comps claimed (and any that expired or were declined), people who joined the waiting list, and cancellations, newest first, with where the event now stands. Nothing happened, no email. It stops on the day of the day-before email, which takes over. Turn it off under Guest activity in the same settings.
Send complimentary tickets
To give someone a free place — crew, press, a speaker’s plus-one — open the Comps tab and choose Send comps. Paste their email addresses, one per line or separated by commas, with a name if you like (Ana Silva <ana@example.com>). Choose the ticket type, which can be a hidden one, and how many places each guest gets. If you have held places for that ticket type on the Config tab, Places from lets you take them out of that hold instead of the places on sale. Choose Any ticket type to let each guest pick one of the event’s ticket types when they claim (a guest with two places can pick two different ones; hidden ticket types are left out); Hold places then keeps their places in the capacity pool you choose, so there is still room for them if the rest sells out, or out of one of your holds, or not at all. They can still pick a ticket type that uses another pool, and claiming releases the hold either way.
Review shows who will be emailed and who is skipped, such as someone already going, and checks there are enough places free. Each guest’s places are held for them straight away, so they cannot sell out from under them.
Each guest is emailed a link to claim their place. Nothing is theirs until they claim it: the link works only for that guest’s email address, and claiming gives them their ticket in My Events and by email. If you set a claim-by date, the guest is reminded the day before, and unclaimed places go back on sale after it (the guest is told it expired); otherwise they are held until the event. A comp that came out of a hold goes back on sale, not back to the hold. If you cancel or reschedule the event, guests who have not claimed yet are told too.
The Comps tab lists everyone you added: who has not claimed yet, who has, and whose place ended. Send again emails a new link (the old one stops working). Revoke takes a place back and puts it on sale; the guest is not emailed. If a guest tells you the email was not for them, you cannot add that address again.
A guest whose RealEvents account uses a different email can sign in and claim with that account instead; the address you sent it to is told which account claimed it, and the Comps tab shows it. Claimed places appear in Guests with a Comp badge, and as Comp in Orders. Sending comps needs a role that can add guests to the guest list, which owners and admins have.
Scan a ticket
- Open Events (opens in a new tab), select the correct event, then choose Scan tickets.
- Start the camera and allow camera access in the browser. Use the scanner inside RealEvents to read the guest’s QR code.
- In Standard mode, review the guest details and choose Check in. The result stays on screen until you tap it.
- In Express mode, a valid ticket without a warning is checked in automatically. Read the result before moving on to the next guest.
Successful check-in
Read warnings before confirming
Every result tells the person at the door what to do, under what happened: green says Grant access; amber asks you to look first, for example to check for a copied ticket when a ticket was already checked in; red says Do not grant access. If the scan itself failed, such as a dropped connection, it says Scan again instead.
The scanner warns about situations such as a scan too early or after the event is over, a cancelled ticket or a previous check-in. Tickets scan without a time warning from one hour before the start time (from 21:00 the evening before an all-day event) until the end time, or until 06:00 the next morning when the event has no end time. Outside those hours you can still check a guest in by confirming. A warning is not a successful check-in; review it before using any confirmation action offered.
A ticket for another event, including another date in the same series, is refused in red: the scanner only checks in tickets for the event you have open. It names the event and date the ticket is for, so you can point the guest to the right one.
If you check someone in by mistake, use Undo on the result. Their ticket remains a booking; undoing check-in only removes the arrival record.
If your registration form has questions marked Show at check-in, the guest’s answers to them appear on the result under their name. In Express mode a result with answers waits for your tap instead of clearing itself, so there is time to read them. To read a guest again later, tap their name in Recent or in the search results: it shows their answers without changing anything.
A ticket already checked in
If the camera or QR code is not working
- Check the browser’s camera permission and try again. Ask the guest to increase screen brightness or open the original ticket.
- Enter the confirmation code from the ticket in the code field.
- Use Search guests to find the booking by name or email, then check in the correct seat.
- You can also check a guest in from their row in Guests. RealEvents asks you to confirm first and shows any warning, such as a ticket for a different date. Undo check-in is in the row’s menu.
- If a guest says someone else has their code — a forwarded email or a shared photo — choose Reset ticket code in their row’s menu in Guests. The old code stops working at once, and the guest is emailed a new ticket; a pass already in their Apple Wallet or Google Wallet updates by itself. Their place and any check-in stay as they are. Guests can also do this themselves from their booking.
- Keep an internet connection available. Check-in needs to reach RealEvents to verify and record arrivals.
Find a guest without a QR code
Your followers
Guests who register for your events follow you, unless they choose not to, and anyone can follow you from your organiser page — or follow just one of your series from its page. When you publish new public events, RealEvents tells the people following you, or that series, in one email a day at most. Private events are never announced.
The Overview shows how many people follow you; Followers (opens in a new tab) lists their names, what they follow (everything, or which series), when they started following and how many of your events they have attended. Each series’ page in Series shows how many follow it. Following does not share their email address with you and does not let you email them.