Step by step

1. Open the office and select your organisation

   Go to the admin panel. If your account belongs to more than one organisation, choose the correct one from the organisation picker at the top of the left-hand navigation column. The navigation rebuilds itself for that organisation. No vocabulary overrides the group label, so Events appears as the group heading regardless of organisation kind.

2. Click RSVPs in the Events group

   Look in the left-hand column for the Events group. Inside it you will find two entries: Events and RSVPs. Click RSVPs to open the full list of replies for your organisation.

3. Read the RSVP list

   The list shows the event, the member, the reply status and the guest count for each row. Officers see all RSVPs belonging to their organisation. Plain members see only their own replies. The list description reminds you that this is the record of who is coming, how many guests they are bringing, and when they said so.

4. Filter or search by event, status or member

   Use the standard list filters to narrow what you see. Filter by event to view all replies for one occasion, or filter by status and choose Waiting list to see only people queued up. The event, member and status fields are all indexed and available as filter targets.

5. Open an individual RSVP to read or change it

   Click any row to open the edit form. You can see and change the event, the member (which may be blank for a guest who has no member record), the status (Attending, Not attending, Tentative or Waiting list), the guest count, a guest name and email, meal choice, notes, and the name of whoever recorded the reply. Move someone on or off the waiting list by changing the status field here.

6. Save your change

   Click Save. Before the record is written, the system checks that no other RSVP already exists for this member and event combination. If a duplicate would be created, a validation error is shown and nothing is saved. If the check passes, the update is persisted.

7. Add a new RSVP by hand for a telephone or walk-in reply

   Return to the RSVP list and click the Create new button. Fill in the event, the member if they have a record (or leave that blank and type a guest name instead), the status, the guest count, and any meal choice. The same duplicate check runs before the record is saved, so you cannot accidentally create two replies for the same member at the same event.

8. Delete an RSVP if needed

   From the edit form, use the delete option to remove the reply entirely. Only users with an operations-level officer role or platform admin access can delete an RSVP — a standard officer role is not sufficient.

9. View and manage replies from the member portal

   If you also hold an event write role, visit the Events page on your organisation's own website portal. Every event loads its list of replies showing each person's name, status and guest count, plus a running total of seats taken. From here you can also edit the event's capacity, whether guests are allowed, and whether replies are open.

10. Open or close the waiting list and replies toggle

    In the portal, a button labelled Stop asking for replies (when open) or Ask for replies (when closed) lets you switch reply collection on or off for an event with one click. The same control exists in the admin as the Accepting RSVPs checkbox on the Attendance tab of the event record.

11. Let members submit their own replies from the portal

    They can choose Attending, Not attending or Tentative. If the event allows guests, a guest count field appears. Submitting the form records or updates their reply immediately.

What happens next

You now have a complete attendance picture for each event: every member's reply status, the number of guests they are bringing, a guest name where one was provided, a meal choice if asked for, and a contact email for replies that came in through the website. The portal events page surfaces the total seats taken, combining attendees and their guests, so you can see at a glance whether capacity has been reached.

Replies can be opened or closed at any time, any reply can be corrected, and telephone replies can be added manually whenever needed. Every change made in the admin or through the portal server actions is written to the audit log, giving you a full record of who changed what and when.

Good to know

The system enforces one reply per member per event automatically. If you try to create a second RSVP for the same member at the same event — whether by hand or through the portal — the save will be blocked with a validation error. To change a member's reply, open their existing RSVP and update it rather than creating a new one.