The week before
- Set the show's status to Live. Check-in and QR scanning only work once a show is Live — do this a day or two ahead, not at 6am on show day, so anyone who tests it beforehand sees the real screen.
- Confirm every gate volunteer and judge has a Car Show Expert account and knows their role. See the Check-in staff guide, Head judge guide, and Judge guide below and send each person the one that's theirs.
- Back up your entrant list somewhere that doesn't depend on the app or a signal. From the Registrations tab, tap Export CSV and drop the file into a Google Sheet (or any spreadsheet you can open from a phone browser). If every check-in device dies, or nobody downloaded the offline cache in time, this spreadsheet — car number, name, vehicle, class — is what you fall back to. Don't print this one on paper; a spreadsheet you can re-export and re-share beats a stack of pages that's already out of date by the time you print it.
- Print your dash cards — and print more than you need. Use Print Dash Cards on the Registrations tab (or your custom HTML template) to batch-print every confirmed entrant's card ahead of time. Also use Print Blank Cards, right next to it, to pre-print a stack of cards with a real QR code but no car assigned yet — a genuine backup for a walk-in or a torn-card reprint if there's no working printer on site on the day. Bind a blank card to a walk-in later just by scanning it in the Add Walk-In form.
- If your show sells spectator tickets, confirm your ticket tiers and Stripe payouts are set up. See the spectator ticket tiers guide if you haven't touched this yet.
Morning of, before gate opens
- On every gate device, open Check-In and tap Download for offline use (or "Go offline-ready" if it's already been done once). Do this the moment you have signal at the venue — fields and fairgrounds are exactly where it disappears.
- Confirm the Scan QR Code button appears on Expert shows, or that every gate volunteer knows search-by-name/car-number is the only option on a Basic show.
- If judging is running today, have the head judge open the Judging tab and open every class that's ready to be scored — a car checked in against a closed class can't be scored yet.
- Walk the parking layout with your parking team so everyone knows which class goes in which section.
- Set up the trophy area and test the PA/microphone now, not right before the ceremony.
Gate opens / check-in window
- Check cars in by QR scan (Expert) or search (every tier) as they arrive. See the Check-in staff guide for the full walkthrough, including how to handle a duplicate check-in alert.
- Mark a car Parked once it's settled into its spot, if your show has parking locations turned on. This gives you a live record of where every car actually ended up, visible on the public show page.
- Handle walk-in registrations at the gate with the Add Walk-In flow, rather than turning people away. If you pre-printed blank cards, scan one in the walk-in form to bind it to the new entrant instead of printing a fresh card on the spot.
- Keep an eye on the check-in progress bar so you know roughly how many cars are still to arrive.
During the show / judging
- Judges score checked-in and parked cars from their own phones — see the Judge guide.
- Head judge watches the Judging Progress card on Judge Results to see which classes and which judges are behind. Don't rely on walking the field to find out who's stuck — the progress card tells you directly.
- If People's Choice voting is running, confirm the poll is open and remind attendees the QR code is on every dash card. One vote per person is enforced automatically; there's nothing for you to police at the ballot box.
- Close judging once every class shows Done, or let your Auto-close judging at cutoff time do it for you.
Awards
- Assign placements and any special awards (Best in Show, sponsor awards) on the Awards tab.
- Publish results so entrants and spectators can see them on the public results page.
- Generate the trophy ceremony export for a print-ready MC script, grouped by class with special awards read out last. See the Trophy ceremony export guide — it's the difference between an MC improvising from a spreadsheet and reading a clean script.
Teardown / after the show
- Confirm every check-in and score synced — check for any device still showing an offline queue and connect it to reconnect and sync before you pack it away.
- Collect signage, PA equipment, and any leftover blank dash cards.
- If you sent a weather or schedule announcement earlier in the day, send a closing thank-you to entrants, volunteers, staff, and vendors from the same Send Announcement tool.
- Set the show's status to Completed once everything is wrapped up, and confirm the CSV backup you made the week before matches what actually happened (final car count, no-shows).
Just in case: your printer fails or isn't available
A dash card's QR code is what makes check-in fast and what a walk-in needs to vote in People's Choice — but for a walk-in, that card only exists once they're registered, which usually means printing it on the spot. Rain gets your printer, a generator trips, a laptop dies, or a walk-in rush at gate-open swamps the one printer you brought. This is common enough to plan around, not hope around.
The reliable fix: before show day, use Print Blank Cards (next to Print Dash Cards on the Registrations tab) to pre-print a batch of real cards — each with your show's branding, sponsors, and a genuine, working QR code, just with no car bound yet. Bring the stack to the gate. When a walk-in arrives, scan one into the Add Walk-In form to bind it to their new registration — no printer, generator, or laptop needs to survive the morning for that to work.
If you somehow run out of pre-printed blanks too, fall back further to plain blank card stock with a handwritten number, matched to a paper or clipboard registration log as you write each one down — and for People's Choice, a fully non-digital vote for that car (a poker-chip-in-a-jar ballot or whatever physical method your show already knows). The show should be able to survive without a printer at all; treat a working printer as a convenience on the day, not something the whole gate depends on.
Just in case: a paper fallback for judging
Judge scoring works offline once a judge's phone has loaded the judging page — scores, notes, and DNP marks all save locally and sync automatically (or with a manual "Sync now") the moment connectivity comes back, the same as check-in. The one real gap: a judge has to open the judging page over a real connection before going offline, since that's how their phone first receives the car roster and categories to score against — have every judge do this at the venue before they head out to their class. Keep a handful of printed blank scorecards in your command post anyway, as a genuine last resort for a dead phone battery or a device failure mid-class, and transcribe those scores back into the system as soon as a working device is available.
Go deeper on any phase
- Car show day-of logistics — what actually goes wrong (weather, parking, volunteers, sound, judging delays) and how to plan around each one.
- Check-in staff guide — the full phone walkthrough for gate volunteers.
- Head judge guide — opening classes, tracking progress, and closing judging.
- Judge guide — scoring cars from a judge's own phone.
- Trophy ceremony export — turn assigned awards into a print-ready MC script.