Event data in orders

When a checkout completes, the event's identity is written onto the order. That record is what connects a payment to an attendee.

What the order carries

The order stores the associated event, taken from the cart item that was added by Get access.

It is stored on the order itself, so it survives the cart and remains available afterwards for enrollment, for support and for reconciliation.

Why it matters

Three things depend on it:

1. Enrollment. The thank-you page reads the order's event and adds the buyer to that event's attendee list.
2. Support. When a buyer says they paid but are not on the list, the order tells you which event they meant.
3. Reconciliation. Comparing paid orders against attendee lists is only possible because the link exists.

What is taken from the order at enrollment

When the buyer is enrolled, two values come from the order rather than from a form:

The attendee's identity comes from the order's customer account.

That means the quality of your attendee list depends on your checkout configuration: if billing phone is not collected, attendee telephone numbers will be empty.

Order notes as attendee comments

The customer note field at checkout becomes the attendee's comment. That is useful and worth telling buyers about.

Label the field usefully in WooCommerce — Anything we should know? Dietary or accessibility requirements — and the notes you receive will be the ones you need at the door.

Without that prompt, most orders arrive with an empty comment.

Guest orders

If the order has no customer account attached, there is no user to enroll. The practical consequence is an attendee record that cannot be identified properly.

For paid events, requiring an account at checkout — or at least strongly encouraging it — is the reliable configuration. See Requirements.

Finding an order's event

When investigating a specific case, open the order in WooCommerce and look for the recorded event reference. Combined with the attendee panel on that event, it answers the two usual questions:

• did this order enroll anyone?
• is this attendee the person who paid?

What is not stored

• The event's dates, place or title — only its identity. Renaming an event does not break the link.
• Any per-attendee data beyond what WooCommerce collected.
• A record of whether enrollment succeeded.

That last omission is why the reconciliation routine exists: nothing in the order says whether the attendee was created.

Reconciliation routine

Weekly, and again before each event:

1. List the paid orders for the ticket product.
2. Open the event's attendee list.
3. Compare the two.
4. Add any missing attendee manually, or ask the buyer to complete the confirmation step.

For a small volume this takes minutes. For a large one it is worth exporting both.

Verify

1. Complete a test purchase from an event page.
2. Open the resulting order and confirm the event reference is recorded.
3. Confirm the attendee exists on that event.
4. Confirm the attendee's telephone matches the order's billing phone.
5. Confirm the attendee's comment matches the customer note.