Create an event

Create a free event with a date, time zone, place and seat limit, then publish it. Every field on the New event form, the rules each one follows, and what is locked once people have registered.

An event is made on the Events page. It always starts as a draft that nobody but your team can see, and it takes registrations only after you publish it. Events are not available to merchants yet: there is no Events entry in the sidebar today. Read Events first.

How do I create an event?

Open Events in the SELL menu and click New event. (Events are not available to merchants yet, so this menu entry is not in your sidebar today. Once it opens you need the Manage events permission, which Owners and Managers have.) The form opens in a window over the list.
Fill in the form: Basics, Date and place, Seats and price and Registration. The fields are listed below. The time zone starts as the one your browser is in.
Click Create event. The window closes, "Event created" appears and the event is a new row in the list with the status Draft.
Publish it when you are ready: open the row's menu and choose Publish. Visitors can then register through your storefront, as long as it has an events page. See The registration page and emails.

To change an event later, click its row. The same form opens with the event's values and a Save changes button. The name and the description can also be edited straight in the table. The attendee list, Cancel event, Publish, Back to draft and Archive are in the row's menu, not in the form.

Publishing does not put anything on your website by itself. It makes the event available to your storefront. Your developer builds the page that shows it.

What does the New event form ask for?

Section and field	What it does and the limit
Basics: Event name	Required, up to 200 characters.
Basics: Page address	The event's web address handle: letters, digits and single dashes, Hebrew allowed, up to 120 characters. It must be unique in your store ("Another event already uses this page address."). Made from the name when left empty.
Basics: Description	Optional plain text, up to 10,000 characters. It is never shown as HTML, so formatting codes appear as typed.
Basics: Image	Optional cover picture. Click the square to pick it from your media library (or upload one there); click it again to replace it, or use the cross on its corner to remove it. The picture is stored as a link, up to 2048 characters. An event cover counts as a use of that picture in the library, and deleting the picture from the library clears the cover.
Date and place: Starts and Ends	Required. The event must end after it starts ("The event must end after it starts.").
Date and place: Time zone	A time zone name such as `Asia/Jerusalem`. Every page, email and export shows the event in this zone, whoever opens it and wherever they are. An invalid name is refused ("Choose a valid time zone, for example Asia/Jerusalem.").
Date and place: Where is it	In person (an Address, shown publicly, up to 500 characters) or Online (a Meeting link, up to 2048 characters, which must start with http:// or https:// and is sent only to registered guests in their confirmation email).
Seats and price: Free event	On by default. See Can I sell tickets? A paid event takes a price above zero with at most 2 decimals ("A paid event needs a price above zero.").
Seats and price: Seats available or No seat limit	You must choose: set a number of seats, or tick No seat limit. The number counts seats, not registrations, and cannot be above 100,000. Neither one is refused ("Set the number of seats, or choose no seat limit.").
Seats and price: Most seats in one registration	How many seats one sign-up may take, from 1 to 50.
Registration: Registration opens and Registration closes	Optional. Leave "opens" empty and registration opens when you publish. Leave "closes" empty and it closes when the event ends. Registration must close after it opens. Closing registration never cancels anyone who already registered.
Registration: Ask for a name for each attendee	When on, a sign-up for 3 seats must give 3 names.
Registration: Phone number	Do not ask, Optional or Required.

What the form does not have. Choosing which storefronts offer an event, and translating an event's name and description into other languages, are not on the form. An event made here is offered on every storefront, in the language you wrote it in. A developer can set both through Brainerce's API.

Can I sell tickets for an event?

Yes, through your connected payment provider. Untick Free event and set the Price per seat. You can save a paid event as a draft with no provider, but you can publish it only when your store has a payment provider that opens its own payment page and payments are not paused. The form says "A paid event can be published only when your store has a payment provider that opens its own payment page, such as Stripe or PayPal, and payments are not paused." Editing a paid event that is already published (renaming it, changing the description or the date) does not need the provider; publishing it, making it paid or changing its price does. If your provider shows the card form inside the page (Cardcom and Grow do), publishing is refused with "Your payment provider shows the card form inside the page, so it cannot take event payments."

How a paid registration works:

The seats are held while the person pays. The Hold seats while paying (minutes) field says for how long (15 by default, 5 to 120). If they do not pay in time the seats go back to the event.
The registration is confirmed only when Brainerce has verified the payment on the server. A person coming back from the payment page is not enough, and no confirmation email is sent before that.
The price is frozen when the person registers. Changing the price afterwards does not change what someone who is already paying will be charged.
A payment that arrives after the hold ran out is never lost. If there is still room, the person is given their seat. If the seats were taken, the registration is marked Needs a refund, the money is kept, you get an alert, and you refund it from the registrations list. Brainerce never refunds on its own.
Which providers work: the ones that open their own payment page: Stripe, PayPal, Takbull and Morning (the same list as for donations). Cardcom and Grow show the card form inside your page, which events do not support yet. A paid event cannot be published while an in-page provider is your only provider, and if a registration does reach such a provider the person is told payment is unavailable and no seats are held for them.
Test mode. While your payment provider is in test mode, registrations are marked Test. They hold real seats, so use Remove test registrations in the Registrations window before you open the event to the public.

The paid registration is not an order: it does not appear under Orders or in your sales figures, and a seat has no coupon, gift card, tax line or invoice.

What do Publish, Back to draft and Archive do?

These actions are in each row's menu on the Events page, and only the ones that fit the event's status are offered. They need Manage events.

Draft: only your team sees the event. New events start here.
Publish: visitors can see the event and register, as long as registration is open and seats remain.
Back to draft: hides the event from visitors again. Registrations it already has are kept.
Archive: hides the event and keeps its registrations. This is how you take an event down, because events cannot be deleted. There is no button to bring an archived event back, so archive only when you are done with it.

A published event shows a state badge worked out from the dates and the seats, never stored: Open, Opens later (before registration opens), Registration closed, Full or Ended. Only Open accepts a new registration. Moving the closing time later reopens a closed event with no other step.

The table on the Events page shows each event's state badge, how many seats are taken (for example "12 of 40 seats taken"), how many registrations it has and its price. See What does the Events page look like? for every column, the search and the filter. Publish, Back to draft and Archive are in each row's menu.

Can I change an event after people registered?

Some things are locked once anyone has registered, because a quiet change would leave people holding old information. The form (opened by clicking the row) says: "This event already has registrations, so its date, time zone and place are locked. Seats can be raised, and lowered down to the seats already taken."

The date, the time zone and the place cannot be changed once the event has registrations. The way out is to create a new event and tell the people yourself, because Brainerce does not notify registrants of a change.
The seat limit cannot go below the seats already taken. If 30 seats are taken you can lower the limit to 30 but not to 29.
A cancelled event cannot be edited at all.
You can still change the name, the description, the image, the registration window, the most seats per registration and the other settings while registrations exist.

Who can create and edit events?

Events are not available to merchants yet, so today only Brainerce staff can create events and there is nothing to switch on in your store. When the feature opens, only people with Manage events can: Owners and Managers by default. People with View events can open the page and read everything but cannot change anything. See Events.