Audience & bookings

Audience is where you add the people an event is aimed at and manage their RSVP status. Bookings & tickets is where you manage ticket bookings, including allocating group ticket seats to individual contacts.

Open them from the Audience and Bookings sections of the event. Bookings only appears once Tickets is turned on for the event. On a narrower window both sit under the Attendance menu — see Events — Overview for how an event's sections are laid out.

The audience is everyone linked to the event, whether you invited them or they booked themselves in. One older label remains: the Invite Status column in the audience table, and the matching Invite status heading in the export, which hold each person's RSVP status.

The Audience summary

Above the audience table, five counters summarise where the event stands: Total audience, Attending, Not attending, On waitlist and No RSVP. They fill in progressively as the page loads, so give them a moment to settle before reading them.

Adding people to the audience

In the Audience screen, use the Search for lists or people to add field to find a saved list (built in the List Builder) or an individual contact, then click Add. Repeat to add multiple lists or contacts.

Results are grouped by type and show enough detail to tell similar names apart: each person appears with their organisation where they have one, and their category chip where one is set. The list returns up to 10 matches, so keep typing to narrow it if the person you want has not appeared.

While the audience is empty the table reads No one in this audience yet. Add a list or individual contacts to see them here.

Clear audience, at the foot of the table, empties the audience in one step. It asks you to confirm first — You are about to clear the entire audience for this event. Are you sure? — and removes everyone, including people who booked themselves in, so use it only when you intend to rebuild the audience from scratch.

The audience table

The audience table shows one row per person. The columns shown by default are:

• Full name — the person's name.
• Invite Status — their RSVP status.
• Email — their email address.
• Organisation — their linked organisation.
• Mobile — their mobile number.
• Raw SMS Response — their reply to an RSVP text message.
• Stakeholder Leader — their assigned stakeholder leader.

You can show or hide columns (including contact custom fields — see Showing custom fields in the event audience), and search, sort, filter, and export the table. To hide a single column quickly, open that column's header menu and choose Hide column; the hidden-column control sits in the toolbar beside Sort and shows how many columns are currently hidden. If Sessions are enabled on the event, the table gains one column per session, each headed with that session's name, and each cell is a Yes/No Select you can set inline (see Event sessions). An empty cell means no answer has been recorded; No means the person has declined that session.

Exporting the audience

Export produces a CSV of the audience containing only the columns currently shown in the table. Hidden columns are left out, so set the table up the way you want the file before exporting — hide anything you don't want to send on, and add the custom field columns you do.

Export runs in two steps. Select Export; once the file has been prepared the button changes to Download. Select Download to save the CSV, which is named after the event (for example Members Networking Session.csv). The button returns to Export afterwards.

The file contains one row per person and follows the on-screen column order, but the headings in the file are not always identical to the column names on screen. Session columns and custom fields keep their own names; several standard columns are relabelled:

The booking export behaves differently — see Exporting bookings below.

RSVP statuses

Five RSVP statuses are built in and cannot be changed:

• Attending
• Not attending
• Attended
• Did not attend
• On waitlist — available where the event uses capacity limits, which is what controls the waitlist.

Anyone who has not responded shows as No RSVP until a status is set.

Additional RSVP response options can be configured in Settings → Features → Events — see Event settings — so the RSVP Select in your account may offer more than the five built-in statuses.

Updating RSVP status

You can change RSVP status individually or in bulk:

• Inline — change an individual's RSVP using the Select directly in the table row.
• Bulk — select contacts and use Actions → Bulk Update to change the RSVP status of many contacts at once.

This is how you record who actually turned up: set a person to Attended, or to Did not attend where they said they were coming but didn't, so your reporting can tell a no-show apart from someone who never replied.

Bookings & tickets

The Bookings section is headed Bookings & tickets — Every order placed for this event, and every ticket inside those orders. Across the top sit counters tracking the event. Sold and Allocated are always there; where the event has a capacity limit set you also get Capacity and Remaining, which have nothing to count against otherwise.

Below them sit two tabs, Bookings and Tickets, and a Create booking control. SwiftFox remembers which of the two tabs you were last on and returns you there next time.

The Bookings tab

The Bookings tab tracks bookings, with one row per booking — a booking of five seats is a single row here. The columns shown by default are:

• Booking Contact — who made the booking.
• Ticket name — the ticket booked, with the quantity in front (for example 2 - General admission). Individual and group (table) tickets are shown with different person icons. For a group ticket the number counts tables, not seats — a table of five shows as 1 - Group table.
• Total — the total amount.
• Paid — the amount paid.
• Status — the booking status (e.g. Paid, Authorised, Cancelled).
• Payment Method — how it was paid.
• Email — the booking contact's email.
• Organisation — the linked organisation.
• Tickets allocated — how many of the booking's tickets have been assigned, out of how many were purchased. For example, 1/3 means three tickets were bought and one has a name against it; a table of five with four names shows 4/5. The second number is the booking's total ticket count. It sits at the right-hand end of the default columns, so you may need to scroll the table to the right to see it.

The toolbar above the table has Pin column, Hide column and Export, with Refresh data and Toggle Full Screen at the top right of the table. The Bookings table has no search, filter or sort of its own — for a large event it is usually quicker to work in the Tickets tab, or to export and use a spreadsheet.

Each row has a ⋮ menu with Edit and Cancel Booking. Choose Edit to open the booking and manage who holds each ticket — selecting the row itself does not open it, and selecting the booking contact's name opens their contact record instead. The helper text above the table explains what the rows and the last column mean: One row per order. Tickets allocated shows how many of that order's tickets have an attendee assigned.

The Tickets tab

Where Bookings shows one row per booking, Tickets shows one row per ticket or seat, including ones not yet allocated to anyone. A booking of five seats is one row under Bookings and five rows here, whether or not each seat has a name against it. Select a row to manage that seat's allocation.

The columns shown by default are Allocation, Email, Booking Contact, Ticket name, Ticket type and Payment status. Use Filter to narrow the list, and the hidden-column control to bring in more — including Job title (hidden by default, and useful for name badges and seating plans) and contact custom fields, which is what makes this tab usable as a seat-by-seat list of the people coming. In the hidden-column list, a ticked column is one that is hidden. If the event has registration questions, each question is also a column on the Bookings and Tickets tables, shown by default; you can edit an attendee's answer directly in the table (see Event registration questions).

Export tickets produces the expanded version of the booking export: one line per attendee, carrying paid status, the booking ID that ties grouped attendees back together, and any custom field columns you have added. Use it when you need a list of people; use the Bookings export when you need a list of bookings.

Creating a booking by hand

You can raise a booking yourself, without the person going through a form — useful for a booking taken by phone or email, or for an attendee whose ticket you are providing free of charge.

1. Open either the Bookings or the Tickets tab.
2. Select Create booking.
3. Choose the Booking contact using the Search for a contact field.
4. Choose the Ticket name. Each option shows the ticket and its price, for example Table of 10 - Corporate Sponsor · $1,500.
5. Set the Quantity. Booking contact, ticket and quantity are all required.
6. To invoice an organisation rather than the person, tick Bill an organisation and choose the Billing organisation (see Billing an organisation below).
7. Under Payment, choose Create an invoice or Take payment now.
8. Tick or clear Integrate with Xero to decide whether this booking's invoice is sent to Xero (see Sending the booking to Xero below).
9. Select Create booking.

The tickets are held while you work. As soon as you choose a ticket, a Ticket reservation status line appears and counts down — Ticket reservation expires in: 04:06. The seats are reserved for you for about five minutes, the same way they would be for someone booking through a form, so finish the booking before the timer runs out or start again.

Taking payment now. Choosing Take payment now adds a required Saved payment method field, listing the cards already stored against that contact (for example VISA ending in 4242). There is no option to key in a new card here — if the contact has no saved payment method, raise an invoice instead. A Summary then shows the Subtotal, Tax and Total, with a note confirming the currency.

Raising an invoice instead. Create an invoice books the seats and leaves the money outstanding, to be paid like any other invoice.

Billing an organisation. Tick Bill an organisation and choose the Billing organisation when a company is paying for the seats. The invoice is issued to that organisation using its invoice delivery settings, while the booking contact remains the attendee. Payment can use a card saved to either the organisation or the booking contact.

Sending the booking to Xero. The Integrate with Xero checkbox under Payment decides whether this booking's invoice goes to Xero. It starts ticked or clear according to the account-wide Integrate Events with Xero by default setting (see Event ticketing with Xero invoicing), and you can change it for each booking. When it is ticked, SwiftFox checks the ticket's Xero setup before letting you create the booking: if no Xero organisation is connected, or the ticket's item, account or tax rate is not set up for Xero, an error explains what is missing and the booking cannot be created until it is fixed or the box is cleared. After fixing the ticket, select Recheck on the error.

The booking then behaves like any other: it appears in the Bookings table, its seats appear under Tickets, and the booking contact is added to the Audience list.

Exporting bookings

Export above the Bookings table doesn't download a file straight away. SwiftFox prepares the file in the background and sends you a notification when it's ready:

1. Select Export. Nothing changes on screen while the file is prepared.
2. Open your notifications (the bell icon at the top right of SwiftFox). A notification reads Your requested event bookings export has completed.
3. Select Click here to download to save the CSV.

The download link expires 24 hours after the export — the notification shows the exact expiry time — so run the export again if you need a fresh copy later. The file is named with the date and time of the export, for example event_bookings_export_24_Sep_2026_14_54.csv.

The file has one row per booking, matching the rows in the Bookings table — not one row per ticket or per attendee. Its headings and values don't always match the table on screen, and some values come through as system values (for example PAID and CREDIT_CARD rather than Paid and Credit Card). The columns are:

Ticket counts

Tickets Purchased is the booking's total. If the Bookings table shows 1/3, the export shows 1 under Tickets Allocated and 3 under Tickets Purchased. Add up Tickets Purchased for the event's total tickets sold, and subtract Tickets Allocated from it to see how many places are still waiting for a name. Tickets still held against the invoice, not yet assigned to anyone, count as purchased but not allocated.

Cancelled tickets are excluded from both counts, so a fully cancelled booking shows 0 and 0.

Group allocations

For group (table) tickets, you assign individual contacts to the booking's seats:

1. Open the Bookings tab.
2. Open the booking's ⋮ menu and choose Edit. The Managing individual tickets panel opens, headed with the ticket name, the booking contact and their organisation.
3. Use the Type to search field on an empty row to add a person to one of the table's seats. A person can hold only one ticket within a booking.
4. To reassign a seat later, change the contact in that row.

Where one booking holds more than one table, Edit first opens a Managing ticket groups list with one row per table, each showing its own tickets allocated. Select a table to manage its seats.

Removing & cancelling bookings

All of the cancellation controls live on the Bookings tab. Before you start, check the small icon beside the ticket name to see which kind of booking you're working with, because the two behave differently (ticket kinds are set up in Event tickets):

• General admission booking (single-person icon) — one or more individual tickets bought in one go. Each ticket can be acted on separately.
• Group / table booking (multi-person icon) — a block of seats sold as one unit. You decide who sits in each seat, but the seats can't be peeled off individually.

Whichever kind it is, you can cancel the whole booking from its ⋮ menu in the Bookings list: choose Cancel Booking.

General admission bookings

Open the booking (⋮ → Edit) to see each ticket with its Ticket Status — Active or Cancelled. Use the ⋮ menu on a ticket row:

• Remove Person — clears the name from a ticket but keeps the ticket, so you can give the place to someone else.
• Cancel Ticket — cancels that single ticket outright, removing the person from the event and freeing that ticket's capacity.

When the booking holds more than one ticket, the opened booking also has a Cancel Booking button at the top right, which cancels every remaining ticket in one step rather than one at a time. A single-ticket booking has no such button — use Cancel Ticket, or Cancel Booking from the row menu.

Group / table bookings

Open the booking to see every seat. Your only per-seat option is Remove Person, which frees the place and keeps the seat with the table, ready for the next name. There is no way to cancel an individual seat — a table is sold as a fixed block (a table for ten exists as ten seats or not at all; you can't shrink it to nine). To cancel the table, use Cancel Booking from the booking's ⋮ menu in the Bookings list. Where one booking holds several tables, each table in the Managing ticket groups list can be cancelled on its own with Cancel Group Ticket.

Cancelling and refunding are separate steps

Cancelling a ticket or a booking does exactly one thing automatically: it frees up the capacity so your event's numbers stay accurate. It does not move any money — cancelling never triggers an automatic refund or credit, and it doesn't alter the original receipt. Each cancellation asks you to confirm, and the confirmation reminds you that any refunds must be handled manually. Once every ticket on a booking is cancelled, opening it shows that the booking has been cancelled and its ticket assignments are read-only. Treat it as two steps: cancel in the Bookings tab to free the seat, then process the refund yourself.

Calling people who haven't replied

To follow up by phone, use Actions → Create Call List in the audience table to generate a call list of the people remaining.