Two orders for the same package can be placed a week apart and charge different amounts. That is expected. Events works out each registration price line by line, using the date, the buyer’s member status, any special pricing rule, and the registrant’s position on a group order. The price you see while choosing a package, or while testing eligibility, is not always the final price the order charges. The sections below explain where that can happen.
Deadline Tiers
When Events is turned on for your Rhythm account, it includes four standard registration deadlines. Deadlines let an event charge one price until a certain date, then a different price after that date. For example, you might offer an early tier that ends a set number of days before the event, followed by a later, higher-priced tier.
Your Rhythm account can rename these deadlines or add more when needed. Many accounts use one tier for early discounted pricing, one higher-priced tier as the event gets closer, one tier for on-site registration, and one regular tier for the normal package price. You often do not need to set up that regular tier separately when it matches the package’s base price.
When a registration package, session fee, function fee, or add-on has deadline prices, Rhythm charges the deadline tier that is in effect when the order is placed. That price should stay the same through the rest of checkout, and Rhythm does not use the product’s base price. If the product has no deadline prices, Rhythm charges the base price instead.
Rhythm also falls back to the base price when today’s date falls outside every dated deadline tier, so treat the base price as the item’s regular, always-available price rather than a price you can remove. An option also needs a price configured on it. If an option has no price attached, it can fail to appear or prevent the registrant from selecting it during registration.
A registration deadline’s date and time only changes the price; it does not close registration by itself. If you want a rate to stop at the same time registration closes, set the registration close date and time to match that rate’s deadline date and time. Otherwise, registrants can keep buying at the regular rate after you meant registration to end.
Deadline pricing can also depend on the registration process the registrant uses, not only the event’s deadline dates. If that process has no end date of its own, an early-bird or regular deadline may not switch over as expected. When a tier does not change on time, check the process end date along with the event’s deadline dates.
Warning
Turning off deadlines in an event’s registration settings hides the rate schedule from registrants, but Rhythm still charges the deadline tier currently in effect. If registrants see a deadline-tier price on an event where deadlines look turned off, check the deadline dates instead of relying on that setting alone.
A deadline with no date is treated as already in effect, so pricing can be unpredictable when a deadline date is missing. Rhythm compares deadline dates using the server’s clock, not the event’s time zone. Because of that, a registration placed near midnight in the event’s time zone can fall into a different tier than you expected.
Early-bird evaluation depends on the order carrying a specific submission time. If that value is missing, Rhythm can fall back to a date without a time, which reads as midnight and can misjudge whether the deadline has passed. This timing issue has been seen in registrations staff process from the Console and in registrations completed on the Portal. It is easiest to notice in the day or two around the deadline’s cutoff.
If an earlier tier’s price is still charged a day or more after its deadline passed, moving that tier’s date and time earlier has cleared the stale price in some cases while the issue is being investigated. If two consecutive tiers, or a tier and the item’s base price, have the same amount, the boundary has no visible price change. In that case, it can look like Rhythm ignored the deadline even when it evaluated the tier correctly.
If a charge looks wrong and today’s package setup does not explain it, check whether the package price was different on an earlier date. A registrant can be holding a price that was changed later, so the current setup alone will not always explain the charge. For the same reason, an older order’s final charge may not be explainable from today’s package configuration. Review the order details, refund activity, and order history instead of only today’s settings.
Keep in mind that Rhythm’s change history for an event’s own registration settings, including deadline pricing, has not always been reliable. Support may not always be able to confirm whether a deadline setting changed after a registration was placed.
If an early-bird price appears as soon as a package is selected, even outside the early-bird window, check whether that package’s member price field was left blank. Entering both a regular price and a member price for the package has corrected this in past cases.
Registration pricing changes automatically only by date. It does not track how many people have already registered for the event, so you cannot make the price increase after a fixed number of attendees signs up. Use a deadline tier instead when you want the price to change at a known point.
If you troubleshoot a retroactive coupon amount that looks wrong, reproduce it against a package that has deadline pricing, such as early-bird and regular tiers. Testing only against a package with no deadline pricing can hide whether the retroactive discount is being calculated against the right tier.
Tax is set per event, not once for your whole account. You can use one tax product for events in one region and a different one for events elsewhere, because each event’s tax setup controls what its orders charge.
Member Pricing
When an order qualifies for member pricing, Rhythm charges the member price for that line instead of the standard price. If a member buys within a deadline tier that does not have its own member price, Rhythm charges that tier’s standard price instead of stopping the order.
Member pricing can also come from buying a membership in the same order as the registration. If the order buys the attendee’s own membership along with their registration, that attendee can receive the member price on the registration line. The membership line and registration line must point to the same person. If the membership line’s shipping details do not match the registration line’s shipping details, that attendee does not receive member pricing from it. If the order does not buy a membership for that attendee, this rule does not grant member pricing.
When the embedded membership component is part of the order, it also shows the amount saved by buying membership and registration together. That combined savings is visible before checkout is finished.
An inactive membership is not the same as no membership. A contact with an Inactive membership status still has a membership record, so they do not meet criteria written for people with no membership history. If a package’s eligibility is meant for true non-members, an inactive member can still fail to qualify for it.
Member pricing is tied to the contact record used for the registration, not to the person in general. If someone registers under a different or inactive contact record instead of the one with their active membership, Rhythm can price them as a non-member even though they have an active membership elsewhere in your Rhythm account.
If a membership eligibility problem exists, the error message appears later in checkout rather than beside the membership package choice. That means a registrant can select an ineligible membership option before finding out it will not work. If registration should require someone to buy a membership before attending as a non-member, consider creating a separate registration process with its own form for non-members. Add the membership component to that form, and show it only when the registrant says they want to add membership.
Registrants cannot change the price on their own registration. If the price is wrong, check the setup or timing in Rhythm; it is not something the registrant did.
Special Pricing Rules
Beyond deadlines and member status, a registration package or function fee can also use special pricing rules. These rules check fields on the buyer’s contact or organization record, then return a different price for people who meet the criteria you set.
Special pricing rules need the qualifying data to already be on the record before they can apply. If the rule checks a field that is collected during the same registration, a first-time registrant may not see the adjusted price on their first pass through the form. The price can appear after the record is updated. If you want the adjusted price to show from the start, collect the qualifying information ahead of time, such as through a dedicated form for the eligible group.
For pricing meant for a specific organization, such as an exhibitor rate, base the rule on a field from the organization record instead of a contact-level field. A rule written against a contact’s own organization field will not match an organization-based purchase. A rule against an organization field, such as the organization’s identifier, can match.
A custom yes-or-no field, such as asking whether someone is a student, is self-attested. Rhythm does not verify the answer, so this kind of rule cannot confirm the person actually qualifies. Verified eligibility is only available through membership status or type, which does not help people who are not members.
Special pricing based on membership type checks the registrant’s current membership, not a membership being purchased in the same order. If the rule should apply after someone becomes a member through that purchase, it may not match because the registrant does not hold the membership until the order is paid.
Membership type also does not carry early-bird or other special pricing across every event on its own. Each event’s packages need their own special pricing rule, with membership type as one of the criteria, instead of inheriting a setting configured once somewhere else.
If members should qualify for a special price by their membership renewal date rather than membership status alone, add a condition on membership expiration date. For example, use an expiration on or after a specific date to limit the price to members renewed through that year.
For more than one qualifying category, you can check one multi-value contact field, such as a set of checkboxes, with an "is in list" condition. You can also add a separate condition for each of several individual fields. Either approach works for a special pricing rule with multiple qualifying groups.
Tip
A special price can be inconsistent between a test and the live registration flow. An eligibility test can show the correct special price while the actual registration shows a different rate, often because the customer type or membership context used for the test does not match the live purchase. If a test passes but the live price does not match, compare those settings before assuming the rule itself is wrong.
Similarly, a special price sometimes does not appear until the order summary instead of the earlier product-selection step, even when the standard member price already appeared correctly during selection. Check the order summary for the price that will actually be charged.
Special pricing rules cannot switch automatically between an early-bird amount and a regular amount by date the way deadline tiers do. They also cannot refer to a package’s own deadline-tier prices in their calculation. If you want a special discount to follow a changing deadline price, update the special pricing rule yourself whenever the underlying deadline prices change.
Group Discounts
An event’s registration settings can allow group registration and tiered discounts together. Both are turned on from that same settings page. Once tiered discounts are on, they apply the same way no matter which registration types or packages the group buys.
When both settings are enabled, Rhythm discounts each registrant’s package price based on how many registrants come before them on the order. A discount range applies only to registrations whose position on the order falls inside that range. For example, a tier for the third through fifth registration discounts only those registrations. It does not discount the first two registrations or any after the fifth.
If you widen the range so it starts earlier, smaller groups receive that same discount because more order positions fall inside the range. A range that starts at a given position, such as 6, applies from that position upward. A group of 6 receives the discount, while a group of 5 or fewer does not.
Because the discount applies across the whole event once it is turned on, it reaches every registration type and package used in the group. That includes a package you meant to keep complimentary for members or at a fixed price for non-members. Tiered discounts cannot be limited to one package, one registration type, or non-members only. There is no setting that lets some audiences use group registration while excluding others from this discount.
Rhythm counts positions across every package line on the order, including packages outside the group. Because of that, other packages on the same order can affect a group discount even when they were not meant to be part of the group.
Pricing by position only works within one registration group. Two different groups can share the same name, but registrants are still priced by their position within their own group. Rhythm does not combine them with a similarly named group. If a group fee or group-priced package is selected for one person in a multi-person group, it applies to every participant in that group, not only the person who selected it.
A discount range only changes price; it does not limit how many people can be added to a group. If you also need to cap group size, check that separately because the pricing range and any attendee limit are configured independently.
Some administrators use this same feature for company-based or bulk-purchase scenarios when a minimum number of packages are bought in one purchase. Examples include tiered pricing by company size or a reduced rate once a company buys enough registrations at once.
This feature can also work around a coupon’s own limits at group checkout. Configure the range so only the first one or two positions in the group receive the discount or free rate, while later positions pay full price.
A few other common range setups are:
- To discount only the sixth and later registrants, set the range’s start to 6 and leave its end blank.
- To make one qualifying registration free, such as a single complimentary seat, set a range that starts and ends at 1 with a 100% discount.
- To model one flat fee per organization, where the first registrant pays full price and every other registrant from that group is free, charge the first position the full package price and set a 100% discount for positions 2 through the highest number you expect to allow.
A percentage discount, whether from a coupon or a tiered range, discounts only the item it is configured against, such as the registration package. It does not discount the order’s grand total. If a percentage discount looks like it reduced the whole order, check which items the discount is set to cover.
Tiered group discounts price each registrant when they are added to the order. They do not look back and reprice the group as a whole. If you add more attendees to a group after the original order and invoice already exist, Rhythm does not recalculate the earlier registrants against a bigger group’s discount tier. It also does not combine everything into one order-level amount based on the group’s final size.
Each addition is priced on its own, using the tier in effect for its own position. The group’s total is the sum of those separately priced lines, not one recalculated group total. If you need one price based on the group’s eventual size, use a coupon or a manual adjustment because the built-in discount does not consolidate purchases made at different times into one repriced total.
A package’s purchase limit controls how many of that package can be bought. It does not create sequence-based pricing, such as making the first guest free and later guests paid. For pricing that depends on a guest’s order position, use the tiered group discount described here instead of a package purchase limit.
Special or package pricing shown earlier in a group registration is not always the price checkout finalizes. A package can display its intended special price during registration and still have the order recalculate to the package’s regular price at checkout. This has been seen specifically on group registrations, not on individual registrations. Treat an early-pricing test or an earlier screen’s price as provisional for a group order, and confirm the actual amount at the order summary before assuming the discount applied.
Tip
Coupons are not applied to group registration orders during checkout. If a registrant says a coupon code did not discount their group order, that is expected. Build the discount into the group’s tiered pricing instead of relying on a coupon code for a group purchase.
Because of this, a coupon-based discount meant for one kind of registrant, such as a speaker rate, will not work inside a group order. Have that person register separately to use their code, or create a package priced for that audience instead.
Free Inclusions on a Package
A package can include other items for free, such as a session bundled into a registration package at no extra cost. Rhythm matches a package’s free inclusions only to order lines bought for the same attendee as the package. A package’s price also does not change based on which sessions or tracks the registrant selects. Session and track choices control what a package holder may attend, not what the package costs.
Warning
If an order has two attendees and neither the package line nor the included item line has its own shipping override, Rhythm cannot tell the two attendees’ lines apart for this purpose. As a result, one attendee’s package can make the other attendee’s item free. If a group order shows an unexpected free item, check whether every line on the order has its own attendee override instead of sharing the order’s default.
Example
An event has an Early Registration tier that ends one month before the event, followed by a Standard tier. A member registers during the early tier and buys their own membership in the same order, so Rhythm prices their registration at the early member rate.
A colleague from the same organization registers later as part of a five-person group order, after the early tier has ended. They are the fourth person on that order, and the event’s tiered discount applies to positions three through five, so their package is discounted. The first two people on that same order pay the full standard price.