Forms: Event registration for free events

Overview

You can set up an LGL form to accept registrations for a free event in a few different configurations:

Single registration with no registration limit (can include guest names)
Single registration with submission cap (cannot include guest names)
Single registration with submission cap (can include guest names)

NOTE: For the purposes of this article, we’ll use this terminology:

Constituent registering for the event = Event registrant
Guest names = Additional people the event registrant indicates in the form that they will bring (their names will be added to the event registrant’s invitation in the Guest Names field)

Do not use the Additional Guests feature in a free event

The “additional people” referred to in the second bullet above are not “additional guests” as defined when using the Additional Guests feature, so be aware that the form mapping shown and discussed later in this article will not generate an additional constituent or guest record for any constituent name submitted through the form. Please do not attempt to use the Additional Guests feature when you are registering guests for a free event in any of the scenarios described in this article.

Adding an optional donation to a free event form

You can add an optional donation field to any of the forms discussed in this article.

In each case, you’d need to set the form up to accept payments. Then you can add an Amount field for the optional donation. Be sure you set that field so it is not required (in Edit mode, make sure the “Required?” checkbox for that field is not checked). Otherwise, anyone not making the optional donation won’t be able to submit the form.

Connect your form to your event in LGL

For any of the scenarios in this article, be sure you connect your form to your event in LGL, as shown here.

Offer registration for a free event

Single registration with no registration limit (can include guest names)

To collect registrations for a free event, you can set up a non-payment form to capture each submission as one person RSVP’ing.

Keep in mind that it is not possible to configure a non-payment form to apply a submission cap or limit to the number of people who can submit the form, so setting up an event registration form in this way would be applicable only if you don’t need to limit the number of registrants.

Here’s an example of how this form can be set up.

You can then add defaults for the event and the RSVP status.

Any constituent submitting this form will be registered to the event and have an RSVP status of “Yes”.

Adding guest names

To offer the option to bring guests, add a “Guest names” field to the form. You can use a multi-line input field (click the green "+Add a field" button and select the multi-line input option) to accept the guest names, as shown here.

Then map that form field to the “inv. guest names” field:

If guest names are included in the submission using this setup, the names will be added to the event registrant’s invitation record, within the “Guest names” field.

Single registration with submission cap (cannot include guest names)

Say you are offering a free bird watching tour that can accommodate up to 20 people, and you want to accept event registrations through an LGL form. You can place a limit on the number of registrations coming through your form by setting a submission cap on the form in Edit mode.

You can then add your defaults:

NOTE: It is not possible to set up this form to accept guest names because the submission cap does not apply to the number of guests but rather to the number of form submissions and you would not be able to limit the number of people registering.

Single registration with submission cap (can include guest names)

To build a form allowing someone to register for a free event and also bring guests, you can set up a payment form (no payment will be required to submit the form), as shown here:

Your Amount field, with the amount preference set to “Suggested with quantity”, will offer a zero ($0) option only. You can then select the “Suggested with quantity” Amount preference, as well as set an inventory limit on the Amount field.

On the Set Field Limits tab, check the Set an inventory number? box to set your inventory number. Then enter your total number of tickets into the “Enter total tickets available here” field.

You can then add your defaults:

Also add a multi-line input field to accept your guest names, with a display rule set to display this field only when the inventory entered is greater than 1.

When the event registrant completes this field with the guest names, those names will be added to the "Guest Names" field within the invitation record.

Offer registration for multiple sessions of a free event

If you want to offer signups of different sessions of a free event such as, say, five separate sessions of a bird-watching tour with limited open spots in each, your options are to:

Build five separate forms, one for each of the sessions (you can use a submission cap in each form to keep submission totals within your limit)
Build one form with a separate Amount field for each session (placing your ticket limit in each Amount field and making sure to mark all Amount fields as not required)

Each of the Amount fields will offer only one choice, the $0 option. So if you are offering 10 sessions, you would add 10 Amount fields to the form. Each one would have a limit in place corresponding to the number of tickets or spots for that session that are available.

Your Amount field, with the amount preference set to “Suggested with quantity”, will offer a zero ($0) option only. You can then select the “Suggested with quantity” amount preference, as well as set an inventory limit on the Amount field.

On the Set Field Limits tab, check the Set an inventory number? box to set your inventory number. Then enter your total number of tickets into the “Enter total tickets available here” field.

A note on capturing guest names for multiple sessions

In a form offering registration for multiple sessions of a free event, if you also want to capture guest names for each session you would need a separate Guest Names field for each session. Each Amount field would need to contain a display rule that would display the Guest Names field only when the ticket amount is greater than 1.

We also recommend creating custom guest name fields within the event to track that data given that capturing guest names for multiple sessions of an event in a constituent invitation record could quickly become unmanageable.

If your scenario is not described in this article…

Little Green Light will provide troubleshooting support for the scenarios discussed in this article. Other options for configuring LGL Forms mapping to offer event registration for a free event that are not described in the article sections may not be supported.

If the scenarios do not meet your event registration needs, we recommend evaluating other event registration solutions (which would allow importing data into LGL).