Organizer Manual

Getting Started

Car Show Expert is built for car show organisers. Once you sign up, your account sits inside an organisation (your club or event brand). Everything — shows, staff, classes — lives under that organisation.

Setting up your organisation

You create your organisation once, after you sign up and verify your email address.

1. On the welcome screen, choose Organize a show.
2. On Set up your club, enter your club or organisation name and accept the terms.
3. Click Create my organizer account.

Already have a participant account? Open your participant dashboard, find Want to host your own shows?, click Start hosting shows, enter the name and click Create organizer account. You keep your garage and show history.

If your club already has an organisation

If the name you enter looks like an existing organisation's, Car Show Expert doesn't create yours straight away. It shows a warning that lists up to three similar organisations, each with a View their page link. Capital letters, punctuation and filler words such as "the" or "Inc" are ignored, so "ponce inlet corvette club" matches "Ponce Inlet Corvette Club". Choose one of these:

• You belong to that club. Click Ask to be added next to it. Car Show Expert emails up to five of that organisation's organisers with your verified email address and the name you typed. Nothing is granted automatically: an organiser has to invite you from Settings → Team, and you then receive an invitation by email. You don't have to wait on this screen. During setup, click Continue as a participant for now; from your participant dashboard, click Close. Accept the invitation later using the email address you signed up with.
• It's a different organisation. Click Create a new organisation anyway. The warning is a check, not a block, so this is fine for a separate club or a different chapter that happens to share most of a name.

Editing the name in the box clears the warning. You can ask once per organisation per day, and up to five requests a day in total. If an organisation has had several requests today, try again tomorrow or contact them directly.

If you're an organiser and receive one of these requests, see Inviting co-organisers.

Your dashboard

After signing in you land on the organizer dashboard. The left sidebar gives you access to all areas:

• Shows — create and manage your shows
• Classes — your organisation's reusable vehicle class library
• Registrations — view all entries across all shows
• Staff — your staff contact library
• Judges — your judges library
• Awards — awards across all shows
• Settings — organisation settings, your team and billing

Plans at a glance

• Standard — free account. Up to 3 Basic shows can be active (Open or Live) at the same time. Upgrade individual shows to Expert from $29/show — Expert shows don't count toward the limit.
• Pro ($49/mo) — every show is Expert by default. Also unlocks Homepage Branding (custom logo, colours, and styling on your public registration pages). Best for clubs running 2+ shows a year.
• Enterprise ($99+/mo) — for large organisations with custom requirements.

Creating a Show

Go to Shows in the sidebar and click New Show. Fill in the details:

Show fields

• Name — the public-facing name (e.g. "Valley Cruisers Spring Meet 2026")
• Date — the show date
• Venue — venue name (e.g. "Riverside Fairgrounds")
• Address — full street address, used for geo-notification to nearby subscribers
• Description — shown on the public registration page
• Max entries — optional cap; once it is reached, new public sign-ups are waitlisted automatically. See Spaces and the waitlist
• Show tier — Basic (free) or Expert (unlocks judging, People's Choice, QR codes, unlimited entries)
• Spectator Fee — optional. What general spectators pay to attend if you don't need multiple admission options; leave blank for free entry. See Spectator Tickets to offer several ticket types instead.

Show status lifecycle

• Draft — not visible publicly; work in progress
• Open — registration link is live; entrants can register
• Closed — registration is closed
• Live — show day; check-in and judging are active, and the Walk-In button appears on the Registrations tab. To change the status, click Edit at the top of the show page and use the Status dropdown (organisers and admins only)
• Completed — show is over; results can still be published, and Expert shows unlock the Summary tab

Restricting a show to certain makes

Running a marque or make-group show, such as Ford, Lincoln and Mercury? Open the show's Edit Show page and find the Restrict to certain makes card.

1. Pick a make from the dropdown and click Add make. Repeat for each make you want to allow. Click the × on a make's pill to remove it.
2. Click Save makes.

Leave the list empty and the show is open to every make (the card says Open to all makes).

Once a list is saved:

• The make dropdown on the public registration form offers only your allowed makes. There is no Other option. A car in the entrant's garage whose make isn't on the list is greyed out as not eligible.
• The public show page and the registration page show an Open to line listing the makes.
• Nothing is blocked on your side. Entries you add yourself, import from a spreadsheet, or edit to a different make are still accepted. Each one gets an amber Make not on list badge in the registrations table, and the Registrations tab counts them as outside allowed makes, so you can review them. Withdrawn entries aren't flagged.

Makes are matched ignoring capital letters, but not by nickname: Chevy is not Chevrolet. Changing the list later doesn't remove anyone who has already registered.

Basic vs Expert

When you create or edit a show, you choose whether it's a Basic or Expert show:

• Basic — free. Online registration, check-in, walk-ins, email confirmations, CSV export. Entry cap applies.
• Expert — unlocks QR codes per entry, digital judging, People's Choice voting, awards publishing, volunteer management, the post-show Show Summary, and unlimited registrations.

On a Pro or Enterprise plan every show is Expert automatically — no per-show upgrade needed.

The public registration link

Once your show is Open, a public registration URL is generated at:
yourclub.carshowexpert.com/register/[showId]

Share this link on social media, in your newsletter, or on your club website. Entrants don't need an account to register.

The Overview tab on show day

The show's Overview tab is where you land when you open a show. As soon as a show's status is switched to Live, a pulsing Live Now section appears at the very top, above the usual stats grid, with up to four at-a-glance cards:

• Check-in — how many entrants are checked in out of the total, with a progress bar and a link straight to the check-in screen.
• Judging — how many classes are fully scored out of how many have entries, linking to the Judging tab. Only shown if judging is enabled for the show.
• People's Choice — total votes cast so far, linking to the People's Choice tab where results live. Only shown if People's Choice voting is enabled.
• Public page views — how many times your show's public pages have been viewed, with a breakdown of show page, car pages and registration page views. Shown to people who can edit the show, whether or not judging or People's Choice are enabled. See Public page views for what is and isn't counted.

Once the show moves out of Live status — back to Draft, Open, Closed, or on to Completed — the Live Now section disappears and the Overview tab returns to showing just the normal stats grid and Show Details sidebar. On a Completed Expert show, the Overview also shows a "This show is complete — see how it went" banner linking to the Summary tab.

Clearing test judging data

Before your real show day, it's worth doing a full dry run of your setup — cast a few test People's Choice votes, score a couple of sample cars as a judge — to make sure everything's configured correctly. Once you're satisfied, wipe that test data from the show's Edit page, under Clear judging data near the bottom.

This permanently deletes every judge score, People's Choice vote, and award recorded against the show. Before you confirm anything, it shows the exact counts that would be deleted — for example "This will permanently delete 4 scores, 7 votes, and 3 awards" — or tells you there's nothing to clear if the show is already clean. It does not touch your classes, entry types, or judging configuration — only the data a test run would have produced.

Clearing also resets the "results announced" status for both judging and People's Choice, since leaving those on with no scores or votes behind them would show entrants an announced result that no longer exists.

To actually clear the data, type the show's exact name to confirm — there's no single-click option, since this cannot be undone. If the show is already marked Live, an extra warning appears reminding you to double-check the data really is from a test run before you clear it.

Classes & Entry Types

Vehicle classes

Classes let entrants self-select the right category for their car — Classic American, Modified JDM, Trucks & Utes, etc. They work at two levels:

1. Go to Classes in the sidebar to build your organisation-level class library.
2. Inside each show, go to the Classes tab to assign which classes apply to that show.

Per-show settings for each class:

• Entry fee override — charge a different fee for this class specifically
• Max entries — cap entries per class. Type a number in the Entry limit box on the class's row and click Save; leave it blank for no limit. The row shows a count such as 12 of 20 entered · 2 waitlisted, and full when the class is at its limit. See Spaces and the waitlist
• Judged — switch judging off for a class that won't be scored (Expert shows only — see Leaving a class out of judging)

Adding ready-made classes from the library

Instead of writing every class yourself, you can copy a ready-made set, such as a Corvette set, into your own classes.

1. Go to Classes in the sidebar and click Add from library in the page header.
2. Pick a set from the list. You see every class in it, with its name, description and rules.
3. Click Add N classes. The new classes appear in your Classes list.

Classes you already have are tagged In your list and are skipped. Names are matched ignoring capitals, so "corvette c1" and "Corvette C1" count as the same class. Running it twice never creates duplicates. If every class in a set is already yours, the button reads Already in your list.

The copies are yours. Edit or delete them like any class you created. Later changes to the library never alter classes you have already added.

The Add from library button only appears once at least one set exists in the library. Library sets are curated by the Car Show Expert team.

Short codes and "Which cars fit" rules

Every class can have two optional extras. Set them when you create or edit a class on the Classes page. Ready-made library classes come with codes and rules already filled in.

Short code

A short code is a quick label for your own reference, such as C3. Type up to 8 letters, numbers or hyphens in the Short code field. Lowercase letters are changed to capitals.

• The code appears beside the class name on the Classes page, on a show's Classes tab and in the Add from library popup. Entrants never see it.
• A code can only be used once in your organisation, and once in a show. If you type one that another class already uses, you get an error and can pick a different one.
• If you add a library set, or add a class to a show, and its code is already taken, the copy is added with the code left blank. You are told how many codes were left blank. Edit the class to give it a new code.

Which cars fit

Use the Which cars fit box to say which cars belong in a class. Everything in it is optional. A class with nothing filled in is open to any car.

• Makes — separate several with commas, for example "Chevrolet, Pontiac". "Chevy" counts as Chevrolet.
• Models — also separated by commas. Models match loosely, as whole words, so "Corvette" also fits "Corvette Stingray".
• Year from and Year to — a model-year range. Fill in one or both.

A class with rules shows a Fits: line under its name, for example "Fits: Chevrolet Corvette · 1968–1982". If an entrant leaves out a detail such as the model, that detail is never counted against the car.

Only offer this class to cars that fit

Tick Only offer this class to cars that fit to turn the rules into a filter. It only takes effect on a class that has rules.

• On the public registration form, the class is hidden from entrants whose car is outside the rules. The form asks for the vehicle details first and then shows the Show Class list, so the list always matches the car typed. If an entrant changes the car after picking a class and it no longer fits, the form asks them to choose again.
• If someone tries to register in a class their car doesn't fit, the entry is refused with a message.
• You and your staff can still put any car in any class when you add or edit a registration.
• Unticked, the rules are a guide only. Nothing is hidden or refused.

Whether or not you tick it, a registration whose car clearly falls outside its class's rules gets an amber Doesn't fit class badge in the registrations table, and the Registrations tab shows a count such as 2 don't fit their class beside the spaces summary. It is only a flag for review: nothing is blocked. Withdrawn entries and entries with missing car details are never flagged, and the badge updates if you edit the car or the class.

Leaving a class out of judging

Some classes never get scored — a display-only class, a club showcase, a non-competitive row. Switch judging off for those classes so judges and the judging screens never see them.

1. Open the show's Classes tab.
2. Find the class in the table. In the Judged column, click Yes. It changes to No, and the Judging status column shows Not judged for that class.

Every class starts as Yes, including classes you added before this setting existed. Click No at any time to switch judging back on.

A class set to No is left out of every judging screen:

• The Class Judging Status card and the Per-Class Scoring Criteria list on the Judging tab. Open all and Close all skip it too.
• The "N of M classes are closed for judging" warning. Unjudged classes aren't counted.
• The judge class picker on the Staff tab.
• Judges' scorecards. Cars in the class don't appear for judges, and scores for the class are rejected.
• The Judging Progress card and the Judge Results table.

Nothing else changes. Registration, check-in and dash cards work exactly as before, and you can still give the class an award. People's Choice voting is unaffected too — it has its own class exclusions.

When you copy a show, each class keeps its Judged setting in the new show.

Entry types & pricing

Entry types let you offer different registration tiers — General Entry ($0), Club Member ($10), VIP ($25). Go to the Entry Types tab inside a show to add them.

• Name — e.g. "Standard Entry", "Club Member", "VIP"
• Price — set to $0 for free entry
• Max entries — optional limit per tier. Once the tier is full, new public sign-ups for it join the waitlist. The Entry Types tab shows how many have entered and how many are waitlisted
• Sort order — controls the display order on the registration form

Spectator Tickets

By default, general admission uses the single Spectator Fee you set on the Edit Show form (or nothing, if you leave it blank). If you want to offer more than one admission price — Adult, Child, Weekend Pass — set up ticket tiers instead from the show's Spectator Tickets tab, next to Entry Types. Ticket tiers are available on Basic and Expert shows alike.

Adding ticket tiers

Open the Spectator Tickets tab and click Add Ticket. Each tier has:

• Ticket Name — e.g. "Adult", "Child", "Weekend Pass"
• Description — optional, shown to visitors under the ticket name
• Price — set to $0 for a free ticket
• Sort Order — lower numbers are shown first on the payment page

Edit or delete a tier from the same tab at any time. As soon as one ticket tier exists, it replaces the single Spectator Fee for that show — visitors choose from your tiers instead of paying the flat fee.

Sharing the gate admission link

Open the Spectator Tickets tab on the show page and click Copy next to the Spectator Admission Link — it works the same whether you're using ticket tiers or the flat fee.

Share it wherever you'd share the registration link — social media, your newsletter, or a QR code at the gate.

What visitors see

If you've defined ticket tiers, visitors pick a ticket and a quantity (1–20, so one checkout can cover a family or group) and see an itemised total: ticket price × quantity, plus the platform service fee if one applies. A $0 tier skips payment entirely — the page just tells them to come along. If you haven't defined any tiers, the page is unchanged from the single flat fee, with no quantity picker.

Either way, payment is by card only. If you haven't connected Stripe, online payment isn't available and visitors are told to pay at the gate instead — this doesn't depend on whether the show has ticket tiers.

Tracking who paid: the Spectator Payments tab

The show's Spectator Payments tab (next to Sponsors) lists every paid gate admission: date, ticket name (shown as "General admission" for the flat-fee path), quantity, amount, and the Stripe payment ID. It's empty until someone pays online — cash or other in-person admission isn't tracked here.

Managing Registrations

Go to Registrations in the sidebar to see all entries across all shows. Use the show name filter to narrow down to a specific show.

Registration statuses

• Pending — submitted but not yet confirmed by an organiser
• Confirmed — accepted entry
• Waitlisted — show is full (or others are already waiting); entry is in the queue and doesn't hold a space
• Checked In — arrived and checked in on show day
• Parked — checked in and confirmed on the field (Expert shows with parking check-in turned on — see Parking check-in below)
• Withdrawn — cancelled by organiser or entrant; frees up its space

Spaces and the waitlist

If you set Max entries on the show, the top of the Registrations tab shows a line like 40 of 50 spaces assigned · 3 waitlisted. It turns amber and says Full when every space is taken, or Over limit if you've gone past it. The line ignores any filters you've applied.

• Pending, Confirmed, Checked In and Parked entries each hold a space.
• Withdrawn and Waitlisted entries don't. Withdrawing an entry frees its space straight away.
• A new public sign-up is waitlisted when the show is full, or when anyone is already on the waitlist. That keeps it first come, first served: a freed space goes to the people waiting, not to the next stranger who finds the form. Waitlisted entrants aren't charged until you confirm them.
• Walk-ins you add are always accepted, and so is anyone you promote from the waitlist (or restore after a withdrawal). You can go over the limit on purpose. Only public sign-ups are held to it.

Class and entry type limits

A limit on a class (set on the show's Classes tab) or on an entry type (the Max entries field) works the same way as the show limit. When that class or entry type is full, new public sign-ups for it go to the waitlist and aren't charged until you confirm them. Anyone already waiting for it also holds the queue, so newcomers can't jump ahead.

• The public form shows a full class as (full, waitlist) and a full entry type as Full: you'll join the waitlist, so entrants know before they submit.
• The waitlist email names the full class or entry type.
• A full class doesn't stop sign-ups into other classes.
• Walk-ins, people you promote from the waitlist and spreadsheet imports can go past any limit. Entries already in a class are never removed when you lower its limit.
• Class limits belong to the show. They're set on the show's Classes tab, not in your organisation's class library.

To let someone in from the waitlist, use Confirm on their row.

Actions on a registration

• Confirm — move from Pending to Confirmed
• Edit — open the entry to correct details. Organisers and show admins get the full panel, including withdraw, restore and delete. Check-in staff get a limited panel for fixing spelling and vehicle details. Judges don't see this button.
• Check In — mark the entrant as arrived on show day

Editing a registration

Click the Edit (pencil) icon on any row to open a panel with the entrant's full details. As an organiser or show admin, you can edit: Full Name, Email, Phone, Class, Year, Make, Model, Trim / variant, Color, State, and Plate #. Saving your changes leaves the entrant's vehicle description as it was. Update the record and click Save Changes. You can also change a car's class straight from the Class column in the table.

Check-in staff see a limited panel. They can fix the entrant's name and the vehicle details (Year, Make, Model, Trim / variant, Color, State and Plate #). Class, Email and Phone are shown read-only with a note that only an organiser can change them, and staff can't change the class from the table either. The panel has no withdraw, restore or delete. Judges and head judges don't see Edit.

Withdrawing and restoring an entry

There is no Withdraw button on the row. Open the entry with the Edit (pencil) icon and find the Entry status section.

1. Click Withdraw entry and confirm. The entry stays on the list marked Withdrawn, its space is freed, and the entrant is emailed that it was withdrawn.
2. To undo it, open the same entry and click Restore entry. The entry goes back to Confirmed and the entrant is emailed that it is confirmed.

Restoring doesn't check whether the show is full, so you can go over the limit on purpose. If the car has already checked in or parked, the section tells you to undo the check-in first.

Only organisers and show admins can withdraw, restore or delete an entry. Check-in staff see the limited panel without the Entry status section, and judges don't see Edit.

The Trim / variant field is optional on the public registration form and in the Add Registration and Walk-In panels. It is free text, not a list. It appears after the model on registration lists, dash cards, the public car page, the live show car list (where it is searchable), the car lookup and the participant dashboard. It also appears on the judging screens (scoring queue, judging interface and results), the awards screens (awards tab, awards ceremony page, awards dashboard and the participant trophies page), the public results page and the public voting category page. It appears everywhere a vehicle is named, including the CSV export and import, the registration emails, offline check-in (in the list and in search) and the live parking map.

The Model field depends on the make. If the make has models in our own model list, Model is a dropdown of those models with an Other (type it in) option at the end. When the entrant has typed a year, models built that year are listed first. If the make has no models in our list, the form asks the free NHTSA vehicle database for that make's models and shows them in the same kind of dropdown, again with Other (type it in). For about 99 old, defunct, kit-car and coachbuilder makes the form doesn't ask NHTSA at all, because it only returns trailer and machinery makers for them, so Model is a plain text box. Model is also a plain text box if NHTSA has no models for the make. Any model that is not in our list, whether typed in or picked from NHTSA's suggestions, is added to Admin > Unmatched Vehicles for the site team to review. If it is a real model, they add it with Add to known models, and from then on that make is served from our own list.

Deleting a registration is still available — it now lives inside the Edit panel, under Danger zone at the bottom, with the same "this cannot be undone" confirmation as before.

Changing an entrant's Email is usually harmless, but it has one knock-on effect worth knowing: if that entrant doesn't have a Car Show Expert account yet, their email is what links this registration into their account automatically once they sign up — for their garage import candidates, trophies, and show history. Change it to the wrong address and that automatic link may not happen for them later. If they already have an account, this doesn't apply — their registrations stay linked to their account regardless of email changes.

Registrants who aren't getting our emails

If an entrant says they never received a confirmation, check the top of the Registrations page in the sidebar. When any entrant's address can't receive our email, an amber card appears there headed N registrants aren't getting our emails. Beside the Registrations menu item, an amber number badge shows how many email addresses are affected. Only organisers see the badge and the card, and they appear only when there is a problem. They cover all your shows, so you don't need to open each show.

The card lists one line per email address: the entrant's name, the address, the reason, and a link to each show they're entered in. If the same address is on several registrations or shows, it appears once, with every name and show listed.

The reason is one of three:

• Address doesn't exist (bounced) — the address is misspelled, closed or never existed, and the mail was refused. This is the most common cause.
• Marked our email as spam — the person reported one of our emails as spam in their mail app. We stop sending them announcement-style emails.
• Blocked by Car Show Expert — the platform administrator blocked the address.

Why it matters: for these addresses we skip the emails, so confirmations, waitlist updates and result emails don't arrive. The entrant is still registered and still counts in your totals. Nothing stops them registering, and nothing is blocked on their registration.

What to do:

1. Contact the entrant another way, for example by phone, and check the address they meant to give.
2. If it was a typo, click Edit on their registration and correct the Email, then click Save Changes. The entry leaves the card as soon as the address is no longer on the list. Emails sent from then on go to the corrected address; earlier ones aren't re-sent.
3. If the address is correct but marked as spam or blocked, tell the entrant what they need (a confirmation, their class, where to park) by phone or text instead, or ask for a different address.

You can't remove an address from this list yourself. Only the platform administrator can allow a blocked address again, so contact support if you believe one is wrong. Withdrawn registrations aren't counted, so withdrawing an entry also clears it from the card and the badge.

Payment status

Each registration with a fee shows a payment status: Unpaid, Paid, Waived, or Refunded. Filter the registrations list to just one of these using the payment status dropdown above the table.

To record a manual payment, click the Mark as Paid icon on the registration and choose which method the entrant actually used — Cash, Venmo, Zelle, Cash App, Card, or Other. That method is shown alongside the Paid badge, so you have a record of how each entrant paid even when they didn't pay by card online.

Adding pre-registered cars

To enter cars yourself before the show, for example from a paper form or a club list, use the buttons at the top right of the show's Registrations tab. You only see them if you can manage registrations. Walk-In is not the button for this: it only appears once the show is Live.

• Add Registration — one car at a time, at any show status. Email is required. The entry goes through the normal flow: it arrives as Pending (or Waitlisted if the show is full) and you confirm it like any other.
• Import CSV — many cars at once. Click Template in the panel for a ready-to-fill file. See Importing registrations from a CSV below.

Adding a walk-in

The Walk-In button appears on the show's Registrations tab (or the Registrations page) only while the show's status is Live. Before then, use Add Registration or Import CSV instead. To make the show Live, click Edit at the top of the show page (organisers and admins only), set Status to Live and save. Click Walk-In, fill in the entrant's details (email is optional) and their car number is assigned automatically. Walk-ins are immediately set to Confirmed and marked paid.

If this entrant already has one of your pre-printed blank dash cards (see below), click Scan pre-printed card in the walk-in form and scan its QR code before submitting. That binds the physical card to this new registration, so you don't need to print a fresh card on the spot. This step is optional — skip it and print a card afterwards if you'd rather.

Who prints dash cards

You can always print and reprint any card, bulk-print all cards, and print for people you added by hand or imported (they may have no email or account). Entrants can print their own card too, but they need a free account to do it.

• Registering needs no account. An entrant gives their name, email and vehicle (and pays, if the show charges) and gets a confirmation email.
• When you confirm an entry, its email has a button. A new person sees Set your password to view your dash card. It opens a page where they choose a password. Their account is created with the email they registered with, they are signed in, and they land on their dash card inside their account with a Print dash card button. Someone who already has an account sees Sign in to view your dash card.
• The link lasts 30 days. If an entrant loses it or it expires, they open your show page, click Find my registration and press Email me my dash card link. My Entries in their account also has a Print dash card link for each entry.
• The QR code needs no login. On an Expert show the card's QR code opens the car's public page (details and voting). Scanning at the show never needs an account.
• Older entries are unchanged. Cards for entries made before this change keep their original direct link and still open without signing in. Only newer registrations need the account.

Pre-printing blank dash cards

Print a batch of dash cards in advance, before you know who they'll belong to — useful as a backup for walk-ins if there's no working printer on show day. Each blank card carries your show's branding, sponsors, and a unique QR code, but no car number or entrant details yet.

1. On the Registrations page (or the show's Registration tab), click Print Blank Cards, next to Print Dash Cards.
2. Enter how many to print (up to 200) and click Print [N] Blank Cards. A print-ready page opens in a new tab.
3. Print the batch and keep it on hand at the gate.

When a walk-in arrives, bind one of these cards to their registration by scanning it in the Walk-In form — see Adding a walk-in above. If someone scans a blank card's QR code before it's bound to a car, they land on a friendly "not checked in yet" page instead of an error. Staff who can manage registrations see a Register this car button on that page, which opens the walk-in form with the card already attached.

Parking check-in

Once a car is checked in, staff can mark it Parked as soon as it's actually sitting on the field — capturing the time, an optional photo, and the GPS coordinates of the spot. Parked cars then show as pins on a live map on the show's public page, and Parked counts alongside Checked In toward entry totals and judging eligibility.

1. Turn it on first: open the show's Edit Show page, find the Parking Check-in card, and switch on Enable parking status.
2. On show day, once an entry's status is Checked In and the show itself is Live, a teal Park button appears next to that entry on the Registrations tab.
3. Click Park to open a dialog where staff can attach a photo and capture the car's GPS location, then confirm. Click Get current location and wait for the accuracy figure to settle, or click Use this location now to take the best fix so far.
4. A small map appears with a pin on the captured spot. If the pin is off, drag it to where the car really is. Phone GPS can report a tight accuracy figure and still be wrong by a few car lengths. The dialog then says Pin manually adjusted. Tap the × beside the coordinates to throw the pin away and capture the location again.
5. The entry's status changes to Parked. If a location was captured, a Map link appears next to it, opening that exact spot in Google Maps.

Only staff with check-in permissions can mark a car parked — organisers, admins, and staff, not judges or Head Judges (who can view registrations but can't check cars in or park them). There's no way for attendees to report their own parking; it's a staff-only action.

Once parking is turned on and at least one car has been parked, the show's public page shows a live map on its Cars tab with a pin for each parked car.

CSV export

Click Export CSV to download all registrations for the current view. If you've filtered by show or status, only the filtered rows are exported. The CSV includes: car number, class, entry type, name, email, phone, vehicle year/make/model, the optional trim / variant (in a Vehicle Variant column right after Vehicle Model), status, payment status, and registration date.

Importing registrations from a spreadsheet

Use Import CSV to register multiple cars at once from a spreadsheet file. This is useful when you have pre-collected entries from a paper form, a previous system, or a club member list.

1. On the show's Registrations tab, click Import CSV next to Add Registration.
2. In the panel that opens, click Template to download a ready-to-fill CSV with all 13 columns and an example row.
3. Fill in the template (or prepare your own CSV with the required columns), then click the upload area to select the file.
4. The preview screen shows every parsed row. Rows with green row numbers are valid and will import. Rows with red row numbers have errors and the reason is shown — those rows are skipped.
5. Click Import n rows to confirm. The result screen shows how many were created, any warnings, and any failures.

The maximum file size is 500 rows per upload. If you have more, split the file and run a second import — car numbers continue sequentially from where the first import left off.

Dash Cards

A dash card is the printed card that goes on each car's dashboard. It carries the car number, the entrant and vehicle, the class, your show logo, your sponsors and, on Expert shows, a QR code. This section covers choosing a layout, preparing logos, setting up sponsors, and printing cleanly. For who can print a card, how entrants get their own, and pre-printed blank cards, see Managing Registrations.

Choosing a layout

Open the show, click Edit, and find the Dash Card Layout card. Click a layout to select it. It saves straight away; there is no Save button. Click Preview under a layout to see it first (see Preview before you print, below). Every layout is available on every show.

In every layout, an entry with a vehicle photo gets the photo in the leftover space, cropped to fill it. Entrant name, vehicle and show name are cut off with "…" if they don't fit on one line, and the description is cut after two lines. Keep the show name short enough to fit beside the logo.

As a rule of thumb: use Classic if you're unsure. Use Number First when judges and spectators read the number from a distance. Use Landscape for cards that stand on a table or easel. Use Minimal for a quieter card.

Prepare your show logo

On Edit Show, the Show Logo card at the top takes the logo. Click it to upload or replace the file. The same logo appears on your public show page. Your organisation logo under Homepage Branding is separate and does not print on dash cards.

• Accepted files: PNG, JPEG, WebP or SVG, up to 2 MB. Anything else is refused with a message.
• Pixel size is not checked. The upload box suggests at least 300 px wide, but a smaller file is accepted and will print soft.

The logo is scaled to fit inside a small box in the header, never cropped or stretched. The box is different in each layout:

The sizes are the maximum the card allows. A wide logo is limited by the width of the box, so it prints shorter than the box. For example, a logo four times wider than it is tall prints about 19 × 4.8 mm in Classic.

Our recommendations for the logo file (these are advice, not rules the system enforces):

• Shape: square, or up to about 3:2 wide. A stacked or badge-style logo fills the box. A long one-line wordmark will print small whatever its pixel size.
• Crop tight. Empty margin around the logo is wasted space in a box this small.
• Size: 600 px wide or more. That covers every layout at 300 dpi with room to spare. Never go below the pixel sizes in the table.
• Format: a transparent PNG or an SVG. Cards print on white, so a logo with a white background also works, but a pale or white-lettered logo disappears. Upload the dark or full-colour version.

Sponsors on the card

1. Click Sponsors in the sidebar, then Add Sponsor. Enter the name and website and click Save Sponsor.
2. Click the logo area on the sponsor's card to upload the logo. Accepted files are the same as the show logo: PNG, JPEG, WebP or SVG up to 2 MB. The box suggests at least 200 px wide, which is a hint, not a check.
3. Open the show and go to its Sponsors tab. (If the tab is missing, turn on Show sponsors on this show in the Sponsors card on Edit Show.) Under Add from library, click a sponsor's name to add it as a supporting sponsor, or click Title beside the name to add it as a title sponsor.
4. To change a sponsor's tier later, use Promote to Title or Move to Supporting on its card.

Title sponsors print one per row under a "Presented by" label, with the biggest logos. Supporting sponsors print as a smaller row of logos underneath. Within each tier, sponsors appear alphabetically by name. You can't reorder them. A sponsor with no logo prints as its name in plain text.

Logos shrink as you add more. These are the largest sizes when printed:

There is no limit on how many sponsors you can add, and the card does not warn you. Title logos stop shrinking at about 7.5 to 8.5 mm tall (depending on layout), and past about six title sponsors the footer grows instead and takes space from the car details, which we haven't tested. Our recommendation is one or two title sponsors and no more than four or five supporting sponsors, and to check the result in Preview.

For crisp sponsor logos at 300 dpi, our recommendation is title sponsor logos at least 1000 px wide and supporting logos at least 500 px wide, tightly cropped, on a transparent background. These come from the largest sizes in the table above.

Preview before you print

On Edit Show, click Preview under any layout. A window shows the card scaled to fit your screen. It uses:

• Your real show name, logo, date and venue.
• Your real sponsors. If the show has no title sponsors, or no supporting sponsors, grey "Title Sponsor Logo" or "Sponsor" placeholders appear for the missing tier so you can see where they go. Placeholders never print on real cards.
• A made-up entry: number 42, James Mitchell, 1969 Chevrolet Camaro Z/28, class American Muscle.

Click Use this layout to select it. The preview does not show a vehicle photo, a long name or a four-digit number, and its QR code is a sample that opens the Car Show Expert site, not a car. The QR code is shown only on Expert shows, as on real cards. The preview has no print button. Do your test print from a real card, below.

Print settings

To print many cards, go to the show's Registrations tab and click Print Dash Cards. Tick the entries you want (withdrawn entries start unticked; All, None, Confirmed only and Checked-in only select quickly), then click Print [N] Cards. For one card, click the printer icon (Print Dash Card) on that registration's row. A print page opens in a new tab. Click its Print Card or Print [N] Cards button. It reads "Preparing…" while the QR codes and logos load, then your browser's print window opens. Every card is one page.

In the browser's print window:

• Paper size: A5 for Classic, Number First and Minimal. A4 for Landscape. The page asks the browser for the right size, but check the window picked it up.
• Scale: 100% (or "Default"). Don't use "Fit to page" or "Shrink to fit", which makes logos and the QR code smaller than designed.
• Margins: None or Default. The card asks for no margin.
• Headers and footers: off, or the browser adds the web address and date to the page.
• Background graphics: on. The card asks the browser to print its greys exactly, but turn this on too.
• Orientation: follows the layout (portrait for A5, landscape for Landscape).

Paper: use thick paper or card stock if you can, because a dash card gets handled and sits in sun and damp. The QR code image is fetched from an outside service when the page loads, so print while you have an internet connection and check that every QR code appears.

If you only have A4 or Letter paper, keep scale at 100%, choose that paper in the print window, and trim the card out afterwards. The card has no cut marks. We haven't verified where each browser places an A5 card on a larger sheet, so test print first.

Test-print one card

Do this before printing a batch, and again after you change the layout, logo or sponsors.

1. On the Registrations tab, pick an existing entry, ideally one with a long name or a photo, and click the printer icon on its row.
2. Print one card with the settings above.
3. Check the logo and sponsor logos are sharp and not cut off, nothing runs to the paper edge, and the car number reads from a few metres away.
4. On an Expert show, scan the QR code with a phone. It should open that car's page.

If an entry has no car number, the single-card print page warns you and the card prints "#—". The batch print page does not warn, so assign numbers before printing a batch.

Blank pre-printed cards

Blank cards (see Pre-printing blank dash cards) use the layout, logo and sponsors as they are at the moment you print. Settle those first, because printed blanks don't update. A blank card prints a dash where the number goes and "Assign at check-in" where the entrant details go, with no class or photo. Write the number on by hand once the car is registered. That is our suggestion, not an app feature. Blank cards always print their QR code, including on Basic shows. Each time you click Print [N] Blank Cards you get a new set of N cards (up to 200), and the earlier unused ones are not reused.

When to use a custom template instead

The built-in layouts cover most shows. Consider a custom template only when you need a layout they can't make, such as exact logo placement, a sponsor's brand rules, or a card in a different size. On Edit Show, the Custom Dash Card Template card takes an .html file of up to 200 KB. Scripts and inline event handlers are removed on upload. Use inline CSS or a <style> block, because external stylesheets don't load at print time.

• Once uploaded, the template replaces the layout picker for every print. Remove it to go back to the built-in layouts.
• If the template file can't be loaded when you print, the built-in layout prints instead, with no warning. Test print after every upload.
• When you print many cards at once, the paper size comes from the layout currently selected in the picker, even with a template in use. Keep the picker on the layout whose paper size matches your design. A single card printed from its printer icon sets no paper size, so it uses your browser's default paper.
• Sponsor logos from the merge tags {{title_sponsors_html}} and {{supporting_sponsors_html}} print at up to 80 px tall and 180 px wide (title) and 40 px tall and 100 px wide (supporting). That is about 21 × 48 mm and 11 × 26 mm.

For the full list of merge tags and a worked example, see the guide Custom dash card templates.

Show Day: Check-In

On the show detail page, go to the Check-In tab. Open this on any phone or tablet — no app install needed, works in any browser. The check-in screen is offline-first: it caches the full entry list on the device so gate staff can work without a signal.

Going offline-ready

When the check-in screen loads, click Go offline-ready (or Refresh if you've used it before). The app downloads every confirmed and pending entry to the device. After that, check-ins work even with no internet connection. Once connectivity returns, all actions sync automatically.

Stats bar

The check-in screen displays a live progress bar showing:

• Total entries in the list
• How many have been checked in
• How many are confirmed (not yet arrived)
• Check-in percentage

An online/offline indicator and a sync status badge ("All synced" or "3 pending") appear in the top bar. When a sync is in progress, a spinner is shown next to the pending count.

Searching for an entry

Type in the search box to find an entrant. You can search by:

• Car number (type a number to match exactly)
• Entrant name
• Vehicle make or model

Matching entries appear as cards. Each card shows the car number, entrant name, vehicle, class, and current status. Tap the green Check In button on the card to check in a confirmed entry.

QR code scan

On Expert shows, every dash card carries a unique QR code. Entrants print their card from their free account (see Participant Portal), or you hand them one you printed. Gate staff can scan the QR code directly — the matching entry appears without any manual search.

QR scanning works on any modern phone or tablet. For the fastest, snappiest scanning, use Chrome on Android (or any Chromium-based browser). On iPhone/iPad, or in Firefox on any device, scanning still works but may take a moment longer to lock onto the code — hold the card steady, make sure there's good lighting, and give it a second. If scanning is ever slow or unavailable, staff can always fall back to looking the entrant up by name or car number.

Walk-ins on show day

Walk-ins are added from the show's Registrations tab, not the check-in screen. Click Walk-In (it appears once the show is Live, see Adding a walk-in). The new entry is assigned the next available car number and set to Confirmed, ready to check in.

Duplicate dashcard detection

If you attempt to check in an entry that is already checked in, the screen shows a full-screen red alert — "Already Checked In". The alert displays:

• The entrant name and vehicle
• The time of the original check-in
• Two action buttons: Dismiss and Flag as Suspicious

Tap Flag as Suspicious if the situation looks like a duplicate dashcard or photocopied QR code. The entry is immediately marked as flagged on the device and synced to the organiser dashboard. From that point, the entry shows a red Flagged badge in the registrations table, including the exact time the flag was raised.

Judges & Scoring

Setting up judges

Judges are staff — see Staff & Volunteers for the full access-level model. The short version:

1. Go to Staff in the sidebar and add your judges to the organisation library.
2. Inside the show, go to the Staff tab, pick the judge, check the Judge and/or Head Judge access level box, then click Assign. On their row, use the Judge Classes column to scope them — All lets them judge the whole show, None removes every class, and Custom lets you pick specific ones. Classes you've left out of judging aren't listed — see Leaving a class out of judging.

Opening judging for a class

A class doesn't appear to judges just because judging is set up for the show — it also has to be individually opened. Every class starts Closed. On the show's Judging tab, find the Class Judging Status card and click the Closed pill next to a class to flip it to a green Open pill — no save button, no confirmation. Use Open all in the card header to open every class at once, or Close all to shut judging down everywhere in one click (it asks for confirmation first, since it can stop every judge from scoring mid-show).

If the show has judging enabled and any class is still closed, an amber warning banner appears above this card — "N of M classes are closed for judging — judges won't see any cars in those classes until it's opened below" — with its own Open all classes button. It stays up until every class is open (or the show is marked complete), so an organiser can't accidentally go live with judges seeing an empty field.

The Classes tab shows the same Open/Closed status in its Judging status column for reference, but it's read-only there — always make the change on the Judging tab. A class you've set to not judged appears in that column as Not judged and is missing from the card above; Open all and Close all skip it, and it isn't counted in the "N of M" banner. If a class will never be scored, see Leaving a class out of judging.

Organisers, admins, and Head Judges can all open and close classes — a Head Judge can run the judging floor on show day without tracking down an organiser. Judges and Registration Access staff don't see these controls.

Closing judging show-wide

Above the class list, use Close Judging to lock every judge's scorecard across the whole show at once — no more scores can be submitted until you click Reopen Judging. This is separate from closing individual classes: closing the whole show stops all scoring immediately, even in classes still marked Open.

To have judging close itself automatically, set Auto-close judging at to a date and time, then click Set. Judging locks the moment that time passes, whether or not anyone is watching — useful if you want scoring cut off the moment the show floor closes without relying on someone remembering to click the button. Click Clear to remove the cutoff, or Update to change it. Reopening judging after an auto-close also clears the scheduled cutoff, so set a new one if you still want it to close again later.

Organisers, admins, and Head Judges can all close and reopen judging and set the cutoff. Publishing judging results (see Awards & Results) stays organiser/admin-only even for a Head Judge.

Scoring categories

Go to the show's Judging tab to create scoring categories — Paint, Interior, Engine, Presentation, etc. Each category gets a max score. Judges score against every category for every car in their class. Unlike opening/closing classes, this is organiser/admin-only — a Head Judge can run the floor but can't change what's being scored mid-show, which would make scores entered before and after the change impossible to compare.

The judge experience

Judges receive a link to their scorecard. They open it on their own phone, walk the show, and score each car in their assigned class. No app install required. Scores submit immediately — you see live totals update on the organiser dashboard.

Judges can pull up a car by scanning its QR code or by typing in its car number. QR scanning works on any modern phone, and is fastest in Chrome on Android (or any Chromium-based browser). On iPhone/iPad, or in Firefox, scanning still works but can take a bit longer to recognise a code — hold the dash card steady with good lighting and give it a moment. Typing in the car number is always available as a quick fallback.

Letting judges browse remaining cars

By default, a judge's scorecard only shows cars they've already scored, plus lookup by car number or QR scan. Turn on Show remaining cars to judge in the show's Voting & Judging settings (nested under Judge Scoring, alongside the eligible-statuses checkboxes) to add a Remaining to judge list above the Already scored list on the judge's screen. It lists every car in the judge's queue that hasn't been scored yet, by car number, entrant, and vehicle — tapping one opens scoring for that car exactly like tapping an already-scored one does.

This is off by default. A judge with no class restriction sees the entire show, and on shows with hundreds of entries a full remaining-cars list can be more clutter than help. Turn it on for shows where judges are scoped to a single class or a smaller field, where browsing the queue is genuinely useful.

Judging Progress: seeing who still needs to score

On the show's Judge Results tab, the Judging Progress card sits above the per-judge score breakdowns and shows, for every judged class with entries, a status pill — Done, In progress, or No entries yet — plus a progress bar for entries scored (an entry counts as scored once at least one assigned judge has scored every category on it). Cars with no class assigned appear in their own Unclassified bucket alongside the per-class rows. Below the bar, a chip for each judge assigned to that class shows their name, a checkmark or clock icon, and their own scored count (e.g. 2/2). A judge with no class restriction is counted against every class. Classes set to not judged are left out of the card. This is the fastest way to see exactly which judge hasn't finished without walking the field yourself. It's visible to organisers and Head Judges, not to regular judges.

Viewing results

The Judging tab shows a live leaderboard per class, updating as judges submit scores. Use this to prepare your awards before officially publishing.

People's Choice Voting

Every confirmed entry on an Expert show gets a unique QR code. Print it and display it on or near the car. Attendees scan it with their phone camera and cast their vote — no app or account needed.

How to turn it on

1. On the show's edit page, open Voting & Judging and turn on People's Choice.
2. Click through to Configure People's Choice voting modes, which opens the show's People's Choice tab, and choose a voting mode (see below).
3. Print QR codes from the registration list and place them on cars.
4. Open voting when the show starts.
5. Watch results update live on the dashboard.
6. Close voting before you announce the winner.

Choosing a voting mode

The show's People's Choice tab has three modes. Pick one before voting opens. You can change it until the first vote is cast; after that the mode locks (see below).

• Single winner — one show-wide vote, one winner. This is the classic People's Choice award and the default. Best for smaller shows where you want a single trophy and don't need to worry about one popular segment (say, muscle cars) drowning out the rest of the field.
• Grouped categories — you create 4-6 named categories (e.g. "Classic Era", "Modern Muscle", "Trucks & Off-Road") and assign each judging class to one. Attendees vote through a dedicated Vote page that lists your categories; they pick a category, then vote for their favourite car within it. One vote per person per category, so a car only competes against others in its own segment. Best for medium and large shows with a broad mix of vehicles, where you want a fair result across segments without asking attendees to build a full ballot.
• Per class — no setup required. Every judging class automatically becomes its own voting category. Attendees vote the same way as always — scanning a car's QR code or opening its page — except their vote now only counts within that car's class, and they can cast one vote per class instead of one per show. Best if you want full granularity down to the class level with zero configuration.

If you choose Grouped categories, any class you haven't assigned to a category falls back to a show-wide vote until you assign it — the tab flags unassigned classes so you don't miss one.

The public Vote page (Grouped categories)

Grouped shows get a public Vote page separate from the car detail pages. Attendees open it, see a list of your categories with a car count for each, tap one, and browse the cars in it to cast their vote. Share this page's link (or a QR code pointing to it) instead of individual car QR codes if you want people to browse by category rather than scan one car at a time. Voting closes automatically once you publish results, and the page shows "Voting is closed" after that.

Anti-stuffing

One vote per person per category. The voting page remembers each voter's browser with a cookie, and repeat votes from the same network and browser within a few minutes are held back. No login required from voters. This stops casual stuffing; it can't stop someone determined to vote from several devices. On a Single winner show that's one vote per show; on Grouped categories or Per class shows, it's one vote per category or class, so the same attendee can vote once in each segment.

Viewing results

Vote counts appear below the settings on the show's People's Choice tab — one leaderboard per category, sorted highest to lowest, with the leading car highlighted. Anyone who can view judge results (organisers, admins, and Head Judges) can see this, whether or not they can change the voting settings above it. When you're ready, click Announce Results at the top of the results section to publish the winner.

Requiring voters to be near the show

For an extra layer of protection against remote ballot-stuffing, you can require voters to be physically close to the venue before their vote counts. Find this on the show's Voting Settings panel, under People's Choice, once People's Choice itself is turned on.

1. Turn on Require voters to be near the show.
2. Set the Radius in miles — the default is 1 mile, and you can set anywhere from 0.1 to 50.
3. Choose how strict to be:
   • Require location — a voter who doesn't share their location can't vote at all. Choose this if you're worried about people voting from home or sharing the voting link outside the show.
   • Prefer location — voting still works for anyone who declines the location prompt, but those votes are flagged internally as unverified. Choose this if you'd rather not risk losing a legitimate vote just because someone said no to a permissions popup.

When a voter taps Vote for this car on a show with this turned on, their browser asks permission to share their location. Shows that don't use this feature see no change to the voting flow at all.

This is a single, show-wide setting — it applies to every vote on the show and can't be set per class or per registration.

Troubleshooting People's Choice voting

What voters see, why, and what to do. For the full list, see the guide People's Choice voting not working: causes and how to fix it.

• "People's Choice voting is closed for this show" — results have been announced, which closes voting. Click Unannounce on the People's Choice tab to reopen it.
• No vote button on the car's page — People's Choice is off (check Voting & Judging on the Edit Show page), results have been announced (the page says "Voting is closed"; click Unannounce on the People's Choice tab to reopen), or the car's class is set to Excluded.
• "People's Choice voting requires an Expert show" — the show is on the Basic tier. Upgrade the show.
• "This car's class isn't eligible for People's Choice voting" — the class is excluded (Grouped categories). Change it to a category or All Show before the first vote.
• "You've already voted in…" — normal. One vote per category; the voter can still vote in other categories.
• "Too many votes from this device. Please wait a few minutes and try again." — the same network address and browser voted in that category in the last 15 minutes, which happens when many phones share one Wi-Fi network or carrier address. The voter waits a few minutes or switches between Wi-Fi and mobile data. There is no organiser setting to switch this off.
• "You're too far from the show to vote in People's Choice." or "This show requires your location to vote…" — the location check refused the vote: the phone is outside your radius, or did not share its location while Require location is on. Voters should allow location access and try again. Widen the Radius, choose Prefer location, or switch the check off.
• "Something went wrong. Please try again." — usually a weak connection. Move to better signal and retry.
• Voting mode, categories or class assignments are locked — they lock when the first vote is cast. If the only votes are tests, the show owner can remove them with Clear judging data on the Edit Show page, which also deletes all scores and awards, so do this before real judging starts.
• QR code opens "page not found" — the show is still in Draft or the entry was withdrawn. QR codes only print on Expert show dash cards, and they load from an outside service, so print while online and check each one appears.

To test before the day: finish your setup, cast one vote from your own phone, confirm it appears on the People's Choice tab, then clear it. If you need help, email hello@carshowexpert.com with your show link, a screenshot of the message and the time.

Awards & Results

After judging and/or People's Choice, create and publish your awards from the show's Awards tab.

Creating award types

First, go to Awards in the sidebar to set up your award types — 1st Place Classic, Best Engine, Best Interior, People's Choice, Organiser's Pick. Do this once and reuse across shows.

Assigning placements

1. Open the show's Awards tab and click Add award.
2. Pick the winning Entry from the dropdown (by car number, entrant name, and vehicle).
3. Choose the Placement — 1st through 5th, or Honorable Mention.
4. Choose a Class if the award belongs to one — for example "1st Place – Classic American" should have the Classic American class selected. Leave it blank for overall or special awards like Best in Show.
5. Enter the Award name and click Add award.

The class you pick here is what groups the award correctly in the awards table's class column, on the public results page, and in the trophy ceremony export — so it's worth getting right for every class award.

Publishing results

Results are private until you click Publish results. Once published:

• Winners are notified by email
• Placements appear in the participant's Garage profile under My Trophies

Trophy ceremony export

Once your awards are assigned, click Export for MC on the Awards tab to open a print-friendly winner list you can hand to whoever is reading out results at the ceremony.

The list groups awards by class in alphabetical order, then finishes with a Special Awards section for anything with no class attached — Best in Show, Organiser's Pick, and similar headline awards — since those are traditionally read out last. Each line shows the placement, award name, winner, car number, and vehicle.

Click Print / Save as PDF on the export page to print it directly or save it as a PDF using your browser's print dialog — no extra software needed.

Public Results Page

Once you publish results, a public page is generated at:

[yourclub].carshowexpert.com/results/[showId]

This page is accessible to anyone with the link — no account required. It shows every award in placement order, with the entrant name, car number, vehicle details, and class. A link to the individual car page is included for each winner.

Publishing results

1. Open the show and go to the Awards tab.
2. Assign all placements.
3. Click Publish results.

Until you publish, the public URL shows a holding page: "Results not yet published." This means you can share the link in advance — participants can bookmark it and check back.

Where participants see results

Participants who registered with an account see a View results link on their My Entries page. The link appears only once results are published. Their awarded trophies also appear directly on the My Entries card — no need to visit the public page.

Show Summary

Once a show is over, the Summary tab shows how it went, using the registrations, check-ins, votes and sign-ups already recorded for the show. It is built for planning next year: when to open registration, whether your class limits were right, how many entrants actually turned up.

Opening the Summary

1. Set the show's status to Completed.
2. Open the show. The Summary tab appears next to Overview. The Overview also shows a "This show is complete — see how it went" banner with a View summary button.

Only people who can edit the show see the Summary — organisers and show Admins. Judges and staff don't. The tab isn't there while a show is still Draft, Open, Closed or Live, and opening a Summary link for such a show takes you to the Overview instead.

The headline cards

• Entries — confirmed entries only: Confirmed, Checked In or Parked. Registrations still awaiting your approval are not entries; they're shown underneath as "awaiting approval". If the show has an overall entry limit, the card also shows the percentage of it reached.
• Show-up rate — the share of confirmed entries that checked in. If fewer than a quarter of entries checked in, the card shows "Check-in doesn't appear to have been used" instead of a rate, so a show that never used check-in doesn't read as 0%.
• Waitlisted / withdrawn — how many people were waitlisted and how many withdrew. Waitlisted normally means the show-wide entry limit had been reached. Withdrawn means the entrant gave up their place.
• People's Choice votes — total votes cast, with the number of unique devices that voted.

Comparing with your previous show

The Entries and Show-up rate cards show the change against your organisation's previous completed show, for example "+12 vs last show". The comparison is only shown to organisers and super admins, and only when an earlier completed show exists.

Things to consider for next year

Below the cards, a short list of plain-language notes is written from your numbers. Each one says what the figures show and suggests what you could do about it. They're hedged on purpose, and a note stays out when there isn't enough data to say anything useful. Examples include:

• People were waitlisted, which typically means the entry limit was reached.
• Registrations were still awaiting approval, so they aren't counted as entries.
• A large share of advance registrations arrived in the final 24 hours, or the median lead time for registering.
• A low or very high show-up rate, or check-in not being used.
• Classes that reached their listed limit, or had much lower turnout than a typical class.
• Entry fees not marked paid.

When people registered

This chart groups advance registrations — those made before the show's start time — from "4+ weeks out" down to the "Final 24 hours". Each row shows how many registered in that period and a running "% in" total. Above the chart, the median lead time tells you that half of people registered at least that many days before the show.

• Withdrawn registrations are left out. Waitlisted people are included, because they were demand.
• Registrations made at or after the start time (typically walk-ins) are counted separately and not charted.
• Registrations that you or your staff entered, or that you imported from a spreadsheet, are dated when they were entered. They can make registration look later than it really was.

Classes

The Classes table lists each class with its entries, listed limit (and the percentage of it reached), number waitlisted and number checked in. Entries without a class appear as "No class". A Note column flags two things:

• At listed limit — the class reached or passed its listed limit.
• Low turnout — the class had far fewer entries than a typical class at this show. It only appears when there's enough data, and never on a class that's close to its own limit.

Entry types & fees

This card shows entries per entry type with its price and listed limit, then an estimate of entry fees in four lines: Marked paid, Waived, Not marked paid and Refunded. The estimate uses each entry's current entry type or class price together with its payment status.

Treat it as a guide, not your accounts:

• Cash, Venmo or Zelle payments that were never marked as paid appear under Not marked paid. Marking them paid keeps the estimate accurate.
• Entries added by staff or imported may be marked paid or waived.
• Card processing fees, partial refunds and spectator admission are not reflected.

Check-ins through the day

A chart of check-ins per hour, with one block for each day on a multi-day show. Use it to staff the gate and to set arrival windows. Times are shown in your browser's time zone, because shows don't store one. The caption under the chart names the zone in use.

Volunteers

Shows confirmed sign-ups for each volunteer role against that role's limit. Only confirmed sign-ups are counted. The card is left out if the show has no volunteer roles.

Public page views

Car Show Expert keeps an anonymous count of how often your show's public pages are viewed, so you can see how much interest the show attracted before it turned into registrations.

What is counted

Views of these public pages:

• the show page
• the registration page
• the public results page — only once results are published, not the "Results not yet published" holding page
• individual car pages — the page a dash-card QR code opens

Only a running total is kept for each show, page type and day (UTC). No IP addresses, cookies or names are stored, and there is no way to tell who looked. That's why the figures are views, not visitors — one person opening a page three times in different tabs can count as three views.

What is not counted

• Views by you and your team while signed in — organisers, and staff or judges assigned to the show. Testing your registration page in a private window while signed out does count.
• Most bots and crawlers.
• Shows in Draft status.
• Refreshing the same page in the same browser tab. It counts again only after the tab is closed and reopened.

Where to see it

• While the show is Live — a Public page views tile in the Live Now section of the Overview shows the total, with a breakdown of show page, car pages and registration page views. It's available to people who can edit the show, on Basic and Expert shows.
• After the show is Completed — a Public interest card on the Summary tab (Expert shows). It shows:
  • total views, and views for each page;
  • a From looking to registering list: show page views, then registration page views, then registrations recorded (everyone who registered and didn't withdraw, including those awaiting approval or waitlisted). Next to it, a rough percentage of registrations to registration-page views is shown only when it's meaningful. It's hidden when there are no registration-page views, when registrations began before counting started, or when it would come to more than 100%;
  • a views-per-day chart with the busiest period marked. Long ranges are grouped into weekly, then 30-day blocks. Show the figures behind the chart opens a table of the exact numbers. Days are UTC.

Shows that are Open for registration don't display views yet — they appear once the show is Live, and in the Summary after it's Completed.

For how the counts are stored and what is collected, see the Privacy policy.

Participant Portal

Participants who create an account at carshowexpert.com/sign-up get a personal portal at /participant/. The portal is separate from the organiser dashboard. Participants use it to track their shows, manage their vehicles, and view awards.

My Entries

The My Entries page lists every show the participant has registered for. Each card shows:

• Show name, date, and venue
• The vehicle and class entered
• Registration status (Pending, Confirmed, Checked In, etc.)
• Show status (Open, Live, Completed)
• Any awards won, shown as amber trophy badges
• A link to the public show page and, once published, a link to the results page

Dash cards

Participants don't need an account to register, but they need a free one to view and print their own dash card. See Who prints dash cards for the full flow. In their account, My Entries has a Print dash card link for each entry, and the card page has a Print dash card button.

My Garage

The My Garage page is a personal vehicle library. Participants add their vehicles once and the details are used to pre-fill future show registration forms — they don't have to re-enter their year, make, model, trim / variant or description every time. The car's photos and Build story travel with the entry too. Colour, state and plate are not pre-filled.

Each vehicle card can include:

• Year, make, model, and colour
• An optional Trim / variant, typed freely, such as SS 396, Z/28 or Boss 302 (up to 60 characters). It is saved with the car and pre-filled into the registration form. It shows after the model wherever the car is named, including the participant's public garage profile.
• State and license plate
• A build description and private notes
• A vehicle photo

A car can also have up to 5 extra photos (on the vehicle's edit page) and a Build story. When a signed-in participant registers for a show, a Your Garage picker appears on the registration form. Choosing a car pre-fills year, make, model, trim / variant and description, and copies the car's photos and Build story onto the entry.

Participants who switch on Make garage public (it needs a garage name) appear in the search on /garages, which also features a model each week. They can optionally switch on Let visitors message me. Visitors then use a Contact owner form and the participant receives the message by email. Their email address and phone number are never shown. It is off by default.

To add a vehicle, click Add Vehicle. On the add-vehicle page, the system automatically detects vehicles from past registrations and offers them as one-click import candidates — saving participants from re-typing details they've already provided.

Participants can also mark a vehicle as for sale. On the vehicle's edit page, checking This vehicle is for sale reveals an Asking price field. If the vehicle is public, a green "For Sale" badge with the price appears on the participant's garage list and on their public garage page, next to the vehicle title.

A vehicle that is shown on the participant's public profile carries a green Public pill next to its title in the garage list, so participants can see at a glance which cars anyone can view. The globe button on the card switches a car between public and private.

Profile

Participants can update their name, email, and phone number from the Profile section of the portal.

Staff & Volunteers

Staff library

Go to Staff in the sidebar. Add staff contacts to your organisation library — stewards, marshals, committee members. Store their name, contact details, and role.

When setting up a show, go to the show's Staff tab and assign staff members with the access levels they need for that show. Build up your crew record over time — staff you've used before are quick to re-assign.

Staff access levels

There's no separate role library to set up first. Access levels are assigned directly to a person on the show's own Staff tab. There are three:

• Registration Access — can check in cars, process walk-ins, and view the full entry list. Cannot access judging. Use this for gate crew, marshals, and registration desk staff.
• Judge — can open the Judging tab and score cars. Cannot see other judges' individual scores or breakdowns. Use this for standard class judges.
• Head Judge — can score cars and see every judge's scores and per-category breakdowns. Use this for your chief judge or judging coordinator.

A person can hold more than one access level on the same show — check as many boxes as apply when you assign them. Someone covering both the gate and the judging tent gets both Registration Access and Judge checked, and still shows up as a single row in the Staff tab table.

Volunteer roles

Volunteer roles are different from staff — these are positions you want members of the public to sign up for: Gate Marshal, Parking Attendant, Registration Desk, Gofer.

1. On the show's Volunteers tab, create volunteer roles with a name, description, and slot limit.
2. Share the public volunteer signup link: yourclub.carshowexpert.com/volunteer/[showId]
3. View sign-ups on the Volunteers tab.

Staff are for people who need to log in to the system — check-in, judging, sponsors, and other roles that require an account. For anyone helping at the show who doesn't need to log in, add them as a volunteer instead.

Assigning staff to a show

Staff members work at two levels: your organisation library and individual shows.

1. Go to Staff in the sidebar and add the person to your organisation library (name, email, and contact details).
2. Inside a show, go to the Staff tab. Pick the person from Staff member, check as many Access Levels boxes as apply, optionally add a shared note, then click Assign.

The Staff tab table shows one row per person, with their access levels as coloured badges. Click the small × on a badge to remove just that one access level, or use the trash icon on the row to remove the person from the show entirely (this asks for confirmation, since it removes every access level they hold there in one go).

Assigning the same person again updates their access rather than duplicating the row — checking a new box adds that access level, and unchecking a box they already had removes it, all in the one submission.

When that person signs in to Car Show Expert, they see the show in their dashboard. The tabs available to them depend on the access levels they hold.

What each access level can see and do

Each access level controls which tabs are visible and what actions are available when that staff member signs in. The table below is the complete reference.

What each access level unlocks:

• Organizer / Admin — full access to everything. Admin is identical to the show owner and is suitable for co-organisers who need to manage every aspect of the show.
• Head Judge access level — sees the Judging tab to score cars, and sees the Judge Results tab which shows every judge's individual scores and per-category breakdowns. Can also run the judging floor on show day — open and close individual classes, open/close all classes at once, close and reopen judging show-wide, and set the auto-close cutoff — without needing an organiser. Cannot change scoring criteria (Judging Configuration or Per-Class Scoring Criteria), publish judging or People's Choice results, or edit People's Choice settings — those stay organiser/admin-only. Can view (not manage) registrations. Use this for your chief judge or judging coordinator.
• Registration Access level — designed for gate and check-in crew. Can fully manage registrations (check in entrants, add walk-ins, edit details) but has no access to judging tabs. Use this for gate marshals, check-in desk staff, and anyone involved in day-of logistics.
• Judge access level — sees the Judging tab to enter their own scores. Deliberately cannot see Judge Results or other judges' scores. This prevents unconscious influence on scoring mid-show.

Announcements

Use Send Announcement when plans change and you need to reach everyone at once — a weather delay, a schedule change, a gate move — without hunting down separate contact lists for entrants, volunteers, staff, and vendors.

Sending an announcement

1. Open the show and go to the Announcements tab, in the sidebar just below Volunteers.
2. Under Send to, tick the groups you want to reach: Entrants: confirmed or arrived, Entrants: arrived (checked in / parked), Entrants: pending / waitlisted, Volunteers, Staff & judges, and/or Vendors. Each group shows a live count of how many people are in it (one per email address) — a group with nobody in it is greyed out and can't be selected.
3. Write a Subject and a Message.
4. Click Send announcement.

If someone belongs to more than one group you selected — a volunteer who's also registered as an entrant, for example — they only receive one copy of the email. Once sending finishes, the tab shows "Sent to N people."

Entrant groups

Entrants: confirmed or arrived is everyone with an entry that is confirmed, checked in or parked. Entrants: arrived (checked in / parked) is the part of that group whose cars are already at the show — use it for day-of messages such as "gate B is now open" or "judging starts at 11". Entrants: pending / waitlisted is everyone whose entries are still waiting for approval or on the waitlist. Withdrawn entries, and walk-ins entered with no email address, are never emailed.

The two arrived groups overlap on purpose: everyone in arrived is also in confirmed or arrived. If you tick both, each person still gets one email.

A person with any confirmed entry counts as confirmed only, never as waiting, so someone with one confirmed car and one pending car doesn't get a "you're still waiting" note. Each person is counted and emailed once per group, however many cars they entered. To reach every entrant, tick Entrants: confirmed or arrived and Entrants: pending / waitlisted.

Replies

Announcement emails have a Reply-To address, so when an entrant replies, it reaches you rather than a no-reply mailbox. For your own club, replies go to whoever sent the announcement. If a super admin or an admin from another club sends it, replies go to the club's organiser instead. If the club has no organiser on record, the email has no Reply-To.

Who can send announcements

Only the show organiser (or a super admin) can send announcements. This isn't available to staff or admins you've assigned to the show, even with full access — the email goes out as the organiser to potentially your entire show roster, so it's kept to the account owner.

Email Notifications

Car enthusiasts can subscribe to be notified about shows near them. This is separate from the registration confirmation emails — it's a show discovery service.

How subscribers find out about your shows

• New show alert — when you set a show to Open, subscribers within 100 miles receive an alert email automatically
• Weekly digest — every Monday, subscribers get a list of shows within 100 miles in the next two weeks

How people subscribe

• The public subscribe page at /subscribe — share this link anywhere
• A nudge shown after registering for a show — pre-fills their email address

As an organiser

You don't need to do anything — the system handles alerts automatically when a show goes Open. Make sure your show address is filled in accurately so the geo-filter works correctly.

Subscriber alerts are separate from the emails sent to your entrants. If an entrant's confirmations aren't reaching them, see Registrants who aren't getting our emails.

Settings & Billing

Organisation settings

Go to Settings in the sidebar to update:

• Organisation name
• Subdomain (e.g. valleycruisers.carshowexpert.com)
• Contact email

Inviting co-organisers (Settings → Team)

The Team card on the Settings page lists the organisers in your organisation and any Pending invitations. Any organiser can invite another.

1. Go to Settings and find the Team card.
2. Enter the person's email address and click Invite.
3. They receive an email titled "You've been invited to co-organise" with an Accept invitation button. If they're new, they enter their name, choose a password and accept the terms. If they already have an account, they sign in with their password. If they sign in with Google, they first sign in with Google using the same email address, then open the invitation link again and click Accept and join (the button shows your organisation's name). No password is needed. Either way they join your organisation as a co-organiser.

The invitation works only for the email address you entered, the link can be used once, and it expires after 14 days.

If the invitation email doesn't arrive

Under Pending invitations, click Copy link beside the person's address and send the link yourself by text or chat. They open it and follow the same steps as in the email: new people enter their name and choose a password, people with an account sign in, and Google users sign in with Google first. They must use the email address you invited.

• Resend emails the person again with a new link and restarts the 14-day expiry. The old link, including any you copied, stops working, so click Copy link again afterwards. Use Resend if a link has expired.
• The × revokes the invitation and stops its link working. If you mistyped the address, revoke the invitation and send a new one.

Treat the link like a password: anyone who has it can use it to join your organisation, so send it only to the person you invited, in a private message, never in a group chat.

When someone asks to be added

If a person setting up a similarly named organisation clicks Ask to be added next to yours (see If your club already has an organisation), you get an email titled "Someone has asked to join" your organisation. It shows their Email and the Name they entered. Car Show Expert has confirmed the person can receive email at that address; the name is whatever they typed, so don't rely on it.

• You know them. Click Open team settings. It opens the Team card in Settings. Invite that exact email address as above.
• You don't recognise them. Ignore the email. Nothing has been shared with them and nothing happens.

Someone who already belongs to another organisation can't accept your invitation.

Accepting card payments (Stripe)

Go to Settings → Payment Collection. Alongside the manual methods (cash, Venmo, Zelle, Cash App), there's a Card payments box where you can connect a Stripe account so entrants and spectators can pay by card online.

Connecting your Stripe account:

1. In the Card payments box, click Connect with Stripe.
2. You're redirected to Stripe to sign in to an existing account or create a new one. If you don't have a Stripe account yet, see Setting up Stripe for your car show for a full walkthrough.
3. Once you approve the connection, Stripe redirects you back to Settings. A green "Stripe account connected" confirmation banner appears at the top of the page.

If something goes wrong during the connection (you cancel, or Stripe reports an error), you'll see a red banner instead explaining what happened, and you can simply click Connect with Stripe again.

Turning card payments on: once your Stripe account shows as connected, tick Accept card payments online and click Save Payment Settings. Entrants and spectators will now see "Card" as a payment option, alongside whatever manual methods you've also enabled.

Money from card payments goes straight into your own connected Stripe account — Car Show Expert never holds or touches your funds. You keep 100% of your entry fee or admission price.

What entrants and spectators see: when someone registers for a show (see Managing Registrations) or buys spectator admission and chooses Card as their payment method, they see an itemised breakdown before checkout:

• The base price you set (entry fee or spectator admission)
• The platform service fee
• The total they'll be charged

Tapping the payment button takes them to Stripe's own secure checkout page to enter their card details. After payment, they're returned to your show page and their registration or spectator ticket is automatically marked as paid.

Card payments aren't tied to show tier — they work the same way on Basic and Expert shows alike, as long as you've connected Stripe and enabled the option in Settings.

Your plan

The Settings page shows your current plan. On a Standard plan, you'll see an upgrade prompt if you're running multiple shows — Pro at $49/month includes unlimited Expert shows, which is better value than per-show upgrades once you're running 2+ shows a year.

Upgrading a show to Expert

1. Open the show in the Shows list.
2. On the Show Overview tab, click the Upgrade to Expert button in the tier banner.
3. Confirm the upgrade. The show is immediately upgraded and all Expert features are unlocked.

Upgrading your plan

On the Settings page, click Upgrade to Pro. You'll be taken to the billing page. Pro and Enterprise plans include Expert shows at no extra per-show cost.

Refer a club

Go to Settings and find the Refer a club card. Click Get my referral link to create your club's own link, then click Copy and share it. The card also lists the clubs you've referred and whether each has published a show. Once a club you referred has published its first show, email hello@carshowexpert.com to claim your $29 credit.

Homepage Branding

Go to Homepage in the sidebar. This page controls how your public registration pages look to entrants — your club's logo, colours, tagline, and links.

What you can customise

• Logo — upload your club's logo. It appears in the header of your public registration pages.
• Banner image — a wide hero image shown at the top of the registration page.
• Primary colour and accent colour — set the brand colours used for buttons and highlights on your public pages.
• Tagline — a short line of text shown under your club name on the registration page.
• Social media links — add links to Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms. They appear as icons on your public pages.
• Navigation header links — add custom links to your public page header (e.g. your club website, a rules page).

Importing styles from your website

If your club already has a website, click Import from website and enter your site's URL. The system attempts to pull your primary brand colour automatically, so your registration pages feel consistent with your existing site.