A party booking for 20 children is the easy part. Then the organiser spends three weeks chasing replies in a group chat, and you find out about the nut allergy when the cake comes out. The waivers get signed on a clipboard at the door while a queue of parents builds behind them.
Guest lists fix the bit after the booking. The person who booked gets a page of their own for inviting guests and tracking replies. Their guests reply for themselves and answer the questions you'd otherwise be asking at the door, waivers included. You see all of it on the booking before the day.
Switch it on per session
Guest lists are off until you turn them on, and you choose per session. Open the session, go to Features, and find Guest list & RSVPs. There are two ways to run it:
- Automatic creates a guest list for every new confirmed booking. The booker gets their private link in the confirmation email and on their booking page, with nothing for your team to do.
- On request keeps it off until a booking needs one. Send the booker a guest-list link from Booking Messages and the list is created when the message goes.
Automatic suits parties and private hire, where nearly every booking has guests to round up. On request suits a restaurant that only wants it for the occasional large table.
Turning it on doesn't touch bookings you've already taken. For an existing booking, send the guest-list link from Booking Messages.
One page for the organiser
The booker opens Manage your guest list and sees the whole party at a glance: how many are coming, how many can't, which invitations are still waiting for a reply, and how many waivers are outstanding.
Most organisers paste Share this RSVP link into a group chat. Invite guests takes a name and email instead and sends the invitation from us, with reminders for anyone who hasn't replied. For a children's party there's also paper, which is the next section.
The organiser can personalise the page their guests see: a title, a short message, a cover photo, and a longer Event details box for practical things like parking and arrival times. The venue, date and time always come from the booking, and the page wears your colours and branding, so a guest landing on it knows exactly where they're going.
Replies close at the end of an optional closing date, or when the event starts. The organiser can close them early or reopen them if a straggler turns up. If the link ends up somewhere it shouldn't, Replace RSVP link and code retires the old ones, and everyone who has already replied keeps their private link.
Printed invitations you design once
Plenty of children's party invitations still go home in a book bag, so you can now design a printable invitation in the graphics editor, the same one you use for gift cards and social posts, under Event invite templates.
You control the layout, colours, fonts and images. A handful of automatic fields fill in from each booking: the event title, date and time, a QR code, your RSVP page address and a short event code. The editor won't let you make a design available until those are all present and the QR code scans.
Pick which designs each session offers. The organiser then chooses one on their page, checks the preview with their own party's details, and downloads a print-ready PDF or an image to share.
A guest either scans the QR code or visits the address on the card and types the code. Both open the same RSVP page. The code works in capitals or lower case, with or without the hyphen, which matters more than you'd think when it's being typed by someone holding a toddler.
One reply for the whole family
Guests don't need an account. A parent enters their name and email once, then adds each person in their group and says who's coming. One reply can cover a single child or a family of five where only two can make it.
After saving, they get an email with a private link to change their answer later. They only ever see their own group. The shared link and the event code can't be used to look at anyone else's reply.
Ask what you'd otherwise ask at the door
Attach your own questions using Question Forms, built from the same question types as your booking custom fields, including conditional ones. Each form is asked in one of two ways:
- For each attending person, for things like allergies or a meal choice. Every child marked as coming gets their own answers.
- Once per responding group, for things like who's collecting at the end.
A form can also be marked Venue only, so the family and your team see the answers but the organiser doesn't. That's the right setting for anything medical a parent would rather not share with the whole class.
Questions are saved with the guest list when it's created. If you edit a form next month, the invitations already out keep the questions they were sent with, so nobody's answers get reshuffled underneath them.
Waivers signed before the day
If the session has a per-person waiver, guests are asked to sign it straight after they reply. A parent can sign once for several children, and only the people marked as attending are asked.
Their RSVP is saved before the waiver step starts, so a parent who gets interrupted halfway through doesn't lose their reply. They can finish from the private link later, and the organiser's page shows how many are still outstanding, so the organiser can do the chasing rather than your front desk.
What lands back with you
Every guest list shows up on the booking in your admin. Staff can see the households, who's coming, their answers and waiver status. They can record a reply that came in over the phone, or send a reminder to a household that's gone quiet.
Add the RSVP Answers and RSVP Details columns in Advanced View and the answers come with them onto the printed booking sheet and the CSV export. The allergy list is on the sheet your party host is holding on the day.
One thing RSVPs deliberately don't do is change the booking. The headcount, price, payments and capacity stay exactly as booked. If 23 children say yes to a party booked for 20, the organiser and your staff both see a warning, and you decide what happens next. Nobody is charged for places they didn't book, and your capacity only moves if you change the booking yourself.
Getting started
Open any session, go to Features → Guest list & RSVPs, choose Automatic or On request, and save. Add question forms and invitation designs when you're ready; the RSVP link and event code work without either.
The help centre has the full detail in three guides: turning guest lists on and tracking replies, the RSVP page, event details and waivers, and invitation designs.
If you run parties, try it on your next one and tell us what you'd want it to do next.