Using a Guest Checkout event to launch Classlist and invite parents at your school - or to sell tickets to non-parents

As soon as you have set up Classlist you can add an event and start selling tickets even before you have any members!   Do this by enabling the guest checkout via event sharing, and share the link with the people you want to invite. 

In other words people don't need to be a member of Classlist to buy a ticket.

• this can be used to sell tickets to your parents who aren't Classlist members yet.  It is ideal for launching Classlist at your school.  Parents will be asked if they want to register as a member when they buy their tickets
• it can also be used to enable payments and ticket purchases by your wider community who aren't parents but support your school, eg staff, grandparents, or people in the local village attending your fireworks.

Don't worry, people can't find your event page unless you give them the url. Your event won't be searchable on the web and can only be found by someone with the link.

If you prefer, you can also invite parents by uploading their details.

Creating your event

First create a community event on Classlist here.   Detailed instructions on creating events can be found here.  The Guest Checkout can be used to sell tickets using Stripe.

Enabling a public event link

To set your event as 'public' simply use the switch in the Event Sharing section of your Event Dashboard:

You will need to confirm you want to 'make it public'.

You also need to invite a group or the whole school on Classlist before you can set your event live and 'publish it'.   

You can add any class, year, group or the 'whole school' depending on who you are inviting to your event.

Testing the Public Event Link

We have had several questions from ambassadors about testing the public event link before sending it out. Our system is designed to detect Classlist members, which can cause issues with testing as if you weren't a member!

To test on a computer: Please make sure you are logged out or on an incognito browser window

To test on a phone: Please make sure you are logged out and do not have the app installed. Having the app installed when logged out will take you to the login page rather than directly to the event link.

Sending invitations

When you are ready, publish your event, to make the public event live and ready to sell tickets.

NB Generally when creating an event choose  'Publish & send invites'. The event will be published within Classlist, and invites will be sent to Classlist members at the school, as well as those who have been invited to Classlist via their email address.  If you have turned on event sharing the public version of the page will be published too.

You can also choose Publish & invite later, which will list it in your events list on Classlist and publish the public event page, but without sending invitations to Classlist members.  [You may do this if you are adding events far in advance and don't want to send invitations yet]. 

Sharing a public event link to invite guests

For your guests who aren't members of Classlist and who will use Guest Checkout you can now choose to share your event directly via WhatsApp and Facebook. or with a link / event url which you can share via school email and other platforms.  

Please note, if Classlist members use the Guest Checkout they can get tickets and the system will also recognise that they are Classlist members and add the tickets to their account - provided that they use the same email address.

1. If someone has the Classlist iOS app but is not logged in, clicking on the public event link will take them to the Classlist login page, not your public event page. They should login to their school first and then return and click on your event link. 
2. If someone is logged into Classlist via a browser on their computer the link may go to their own school on Classlist, not your event. They may need to logout or use a different browser to access your link.
3. If the link to a public event is to be shared on Classlist by other schools, please add instructions for parents ‘Please copy and paste this link into a browser. Clicking it may not work when you are logged into Classlist for our school. You may need to logout or use a different browser’.

Parents who aren't yet members

Some schools use an event to launch Classlist and get parents registered. This means that if you are just starting out on Classlist and don't have any members yet you can just share details of the event across your other comms systems and ask parents to register after they buy a ticket. 

• Choose a class, year group or 'whole school' for your event guests even if you don't have any members yet.
• Use the sharing options to send parents the link to the guest checkout via WhatsApp, Facebook or a link you can put in the school newsletter or email for instance
• After purchasing tickets people are asked if they are parents at your school if they select yes they will be asked if they want to join Classlist. They will still need to be approved manually if they sign up. Parents already on Classlist won't be asked as the system will recognise their email address.

If parents get tickets but don't join Classlist you will have their email details in the guest list for your event, you and could then invite them to join Classlist later on the Invite Parents page.  Copy their email and paste it here to invite them to join Classlist.   That way they will get your future announcements and events even if they don't join up yet.  

Eg You can download the list of guest checkout tickets and then copy and paste the list of emails to invite them to join (NB only do this if they are a parent at the school as it will send them a pre-approved invitation!).