How did your show really go? Planning next year with your show summary

Set the show's status to Completed and a Summary tab appears next to Overview. The Overview also shows a "This show is complete" banner with a View summary button. Only people who can edit the show see it — organisers and show admins, not judges or staff.

It's an Expert show feature. On a Basic show the tab is visible but locked, with an upgrade prompt. The summary itself is worked out from data the show already holds: registrations, check-ins, votes and volunteer sign-ups.

Entries counts confirmed entries only — confirmed, checked in or parked. Registrations still waiting for your approval are not entries; they're shown separately as "awaiting approval", so a pile of unapproved sign-ups can't flatter your numbers. If you set an overall entry limit, you also see what percentage of it you reached.

Show-up rate is the share of those entries that checked in. Suppose 80 entries were confirmed and 68 checked in: that's 85%, and 12 entries have no recorded check-in. A rate that keeps coming out low is a reason to send a reminder in the days before, or to set a withdrawal deadline so people who can't come free their place for someone who can. If fewer than a quarter of entries checked in, the summary assumes you didn't use check-in and hides the rate rather than showing a misleading 0%.

Waitlisted / withdrawn is the demand signal. A waitlist normally means the show-wide entry limit was reached, so if you turned people away, a higher limit or a bigger field is worth considering. Withdrawals are people who gave up their place.

People's Choice votes shows the total and the number of unique devices — a rough indication of how many spectators joined in.

This chart groups advance registrations — the ones made before the show started — from four or more weeks out down to the final 24 hours, with a running "% in" total and the median lead time (half of people registered at least that many days before the show).

How you might use that: open registration comfortably before the point where most people register, and send a reminder just ahead of it. If a big share arrives at the last minute, an earlier reminder or an early-registration deadline could pull some of them forward, so you know your numbers sooner. Our guide to setting up car show registration covers the reminder emails themselves.

Two things to keep in mind. Walk-ins — registrations made at or after the start time — are counted separately and not charted. And registrations you entered yourself, or imported from a spreadsheet, are dated when you entered them, so they can make registration look later than it really was.

The class table shows entries, the class's listed limit, anyone waitlisted in it, and how many checked in. Two notes appear when they apply: At listed limit and Low turnout (much lower than a typical class at that show).

A class at its limit is a prompt to ask a question, not an instruction: did you want that many, or would you have taken more? If one class regularly dwarfs the rest, it may be worth splitting. A class with low turnout may be a candidate to combine with a related one. The classes and categories guide goes through how to choose them.

You get entries per entry type, with its price and listed limit, and an estimate of fees split into Marked paid, Waived, Not marked paid and Refunded. The estimate is worked out from each entry's current type or class price and its payment status.

That has limits. If you took cash, Venmo or Zelle and never marked the entry paid, it appears under Not marked paid. Entries added by staff or imported from a file may show as paid or waived. Card processing fees, partial refunds and spectator admission aren't reflected at all. Use it to see which entry types people chose — and whether your pricing tiers are doing any work — and keep your real accounts elsewhere. Marking cash payments as paid as you go keeps the estimate close to the truth.

Check-ins through the day shows check-ins per hour, with one block per day on a multi-day show. If everything piled into one hour, that's the hour to have extra people on the gate next year, or the case for setting arrival windows. The times are shown in your browser's time zone, which for an organiser reviewing their own event is usually the show's local time. Our check-in guide has more on running the gate.

Volunteers shows confirmed sign-ups for each role against that role's limit, so you can see which jobs were fully covered and which ran short. Only confirmed sign-ups count.

Alongside the summary, Car Show Expert now keeps an anonymous count of views of your show's public pages: the show page, the registration page, the results page (once published) and individual car pages — the page a dash-card QR code opens. It is a running count per show, per page type, per day. It doesn't store IP addresses, names or cookies, and there's no way to tell who looked. That's why it says views, not visitors: the same person looking three times is three views.

On a live show you see it as a Public page views tile in Live Now on the Overview. On a completed Expert show, the Summary has a Public interest card with views by page, a views-per-day chart with the busiest period marked, and a table of the figures behind the chart.

The most useful part is From looking to registering: show page views, then registration page views, then registrations recorded. Read it as a rough guide, and treat the explanations below as possibilities rather than diagnoses:

• Plenty of show page views but few registration page views: people found the show but didn't go on to sign up. Check that the register link is easy to find on the page and in your posts.
• Plenty of registration page views but few registrations: people reached the form and didn't finish. Look at the price, the number of fields and whether the classes are clear.
• A spike in views on a particular day: see what you posted or sent that day. It may show which channel works for you.

Open-registration shows don't display views yet; you see them once the show is live, and in the Summary after it completes.

What the summary can't tell you

The "Things to consider for next year" notes at the top are written from your numbers in plain language and are deliberately hedged. If there isn't enough data to say something useful, they stay quiet. Treat them as a prompt for the committee meeting, not a verdict.

One show is one data point: weather, a clashing event or a new venue will move every number. When you have a previous completed show in the same organisation, the Entries and Show-up rate cards show the change against it — to organisers only — which is a better guide than any single figure. For the full reference, see Show Summary in the manual.

A simple routine for the week after the show

• Mark the show Completed, then open the Summary tab and read the "Things to consider for next year" notes first.
• Note your median lead time and the share that registered in the final 24 hours — those two numbers set next year's registration open date and reminder dates.
• Look at the class table for anything marked At listed limit or Low turnout, and decide whether to raise, split or merge.
• Mark any entry fees you collected in cash or by Venmo or Zelle as paid, so the fee estimate matches reality.
• If the Entries and Show-up rate cards show a change against your previous show, note which way it moved — and remember that one show is one data point.