One event or several categories?

An event is one thing people sign up for

An event is anything people sign up for and turn up to: a class, a training session, a tournament, a workshop. It has a name, a price, a capacity and a sign-up form, and it can run:

• once, on a single date,
• on a schedule, like every Monday and Wednesday at 18:00,
• or on dates you choose one by one, for rounds whose dates you only know as they come.

A weekly class is one event, not one per week. Each date has its own list of people, and you can still change a single date (a different coach, a smaller group) without touching the rest.

Categories: one name, several groups

Sometimes one name covers several things people choose between: a tennis school with an age group per hour, a tournament with several draws, a summer camp by age. Make each group its own event and put them together as categories of one event.

Customers then find every group on one page and pick the one that suits them. Each category keeps its own:

• time and courts,
• price and capacity,
• sign-up form, list of participants and waiting list.

Try it: tick the classes you'd put on one page.

When not to use categories

Categories are for groups that run separately. Two cases where they're the wrong tool:

• Ticket types for one session. A room for 100 at one time, 20 of the seats VIP, is one event. Made into a category of 100 and a VIP category of 20, each would get its own capacity, and you'd be selling 120 places in a room for 100.
• Things nobody chooses between. If your Tuesday yoga and your Saturday football have nothing to do with each other, keep them as separate events. They already sit side by side on your events page.

A good test: would a customer say "I'm signing up for this, which group?" If yes, use categories.

Three ways to make categories

You never have to start with an empty container. Categories come from events you already have:

1. From an event's settings. Under Categories, press Add another category. Your event becomes the main event, and its current setup becomes the first category.
2. From the events list. Press Group events, tick the ones that belong together, and they become categories without any other change.
3. While creating a new event. If something already runs on its first day, you'll be asked whether to add the new one as a category of it:

On the main event's page you can then change things for every category at once, or cancel one date for all of them.