Confirmed, waiting list and cancelled

Every registration sits in exactly one of three states. This page explains what each means, how a registration gets there, and what each implies operationally.

The three states

Confirmed

The default outcome. A visitor registering for an event with places available is confirmed immediately and told so.

Confirmed registrations are what the Assistants column on the events list counts, and they are the people your door list is made of.

Waiting list

Automatic when the event is full: the visitor is told the event has reached its available space and that they have been moved to the waiting list.

Three things about the waiting list that matter:

• Nobody is promoted automatically. You move people up yourself.
• Nobody is notified. Not when they join, and not when you promote them.
• There is no visible position. Attendees are not told where they are in the queue.

So a waiting list is a list of people you have to contact. Plan for that before enabling capacity on an event you expect to fill.

Cancelled

Never automatic. A registration reaches this state because someone moved it there:

• the attendee asked to cancel;
• they did not confirm a released place in time;
• the registration was a duplicate or a mistake;
• an organizer removed them for another reason.

Cancelled registrations stay visible, which is deliberate: you keep a record of who withdrew, and you can move them back if they return.

Which transitions are offered

The Actions control shows only the moves that make sense from the current state:

Cancelled rows additionally offer permanent deletion. No other section does.

Cancelled is not deleted

The distinction matters:

Use Cancelled for anything that might come back. Use deletion only when the record should not exist — a test registration, or a data-deletion request.

Statuses and capacity

Moving a registration between states is a manual decision, so keep an eye on the confirmed count against the real capacity as you work. The three lists are the source of truth; check the Assistants column after a session of moves.

A practical convention

Agree once, per organization:

• Cancelled means the person told you they are not coming;
• Waiting list means they want to come and there is no place;
• registrations are only deleted for data-protection reasons or to clear test entries;
• someone specific reviews the lists the day before each event.

Without that convention, three people managing the same event will use the three states differently.

Verify

1. Open an event with registrations in more than one state.
2. Confirm each section lists the people you expect.
3. Open the Actions control on a row in each section and confirm the offered moves.
4. Confirm the delete control appears only on cancelled rows.
5. Export the list and confirm the status column reflects the sections.