You can remove a registration from an event in two different ways. Canceling a registration works through the order, so the refund and registration status update together. Deleting a registration permanently removes the record, so use it for mistakes or test registrations, not for someone who simply is not attending.
Other actions can affect the order connected to a registration. Voiding belongs to the order’s invoice in Finance, not to the registration record. You do not void an invoice from the cancel or delete process in this article, and voiding by itself does not change the registration status or cancel anything attached to the registration. If the order’s invoice has already been voided, the normal cancellation flow below may not be available; see the troubleshooting table at the end of this article.
Prerequisites
- You can open the registration you want to cancel or delete from the event’s Registration area.
- Your role needs permission for the action you want. Without it, the button is disabled, or, for delete, you receive an access-denied message when you try.
Cancel a Registration and Refund the Registrant
When you cancel from the registration or order record, Rhythm automatically uses the event’s cancellation policy. That means the refund is based on the order total minus any cancellation fee, instead of refunding everything paid.
- Open the registration’s record.
- Choose Cancel Registration Order.
- Follow the cancellation flow to cancel the order and, when applicable, refund it. The cancellation screen includes an option to waive the cancellation fee; if you already know the fee should not apply, waive it here instead of trying to correct it afterward.
Result
Canceling the order is what cancels the registration. The registration status may not change to Cancelled right away because that update finishes in the background after the order is cancelled, so Registration 360 can still show Active immediately afterward. If the status looks unchanged, refresh the record or reload the browser; that usually shows the updated Cancelled status. If the status still has not updated after you refresh and some time has passed, treat it as a real issue and contact Support.
Warning
When you cancel a registration’s order this way, Rhythm also cancels its sessions, function tickets, and anything else attached to it. If you only change the registration status to Cancelled without changing the order, as described in Register Someone or Change a Registration in the Console, those items are not affected, and the order stays as it was. If the normal cancellation flow is not available for a registration, you can still set its status to Cancelled directly and handle any cancellation fee separately, such as with a manual invoice. That approach skips the automatic cancellation policy used by the normal flow.
If the registration has a zero balance and nothing to refund, open the registration and set its Status: directly to Cancelled instead of running the full cancellation flow. There is no payment for the order-level flow to process.
Warning
Registration 360 does not show or let you change the registration’s business unit during cancellation. If the business unit matters for how the cancellation should be recorded, confirm it before you start because you cannot check or correct it from this screen.
Canceling One Attendee from a Group Registration
To cancel one attendee from a group registration, start the same Cancel Registration Order flow from that attendee’s own registration record. The cancellation wizard can list every attendee on the shared order, not just the attendee you opened, so deselect anyone you want to keep active before you confirm. Each item in the wizard shows the registrant’s name, which helps you confirm you are canceling the right person.
Warning
Canceling one attendee from a group order has sometimes been reported to set the whole order to Cancelled instead of leaving the rest of the group active. When that happens, it can block you from canceling any further attendees on the same order. As an interim option, set the affected attendee’s registration status to Cancelled directly and issue any refund against the payment instead of through the cancellation flow; then contact Support so the order itself can be corrected.
To cancel and refund a whole group registration together, use Cancel Registration Order from the group’s order, the same way you would for an individual registration. You can issue the refund as a credit instead of an electronic refund, so the value can be applied to another registration or invoice instead of returned to the original payment method.
An incorrect duplicate registration that shares an order with valid line items may not be cancellable through Cancel Registration Order because only the valid items on that order can use the normal flow. In that case, open the duplicate, use manual edit to set its status to Cancelled, and then filter your registration queries by Registration Status = Active so the duplicate is left out of counts.
Tip
Rhythm does not email staff when a registrant cancels their own registration; only the registrant is notified. If your team needs to know, build a query of cancelled registrations and schedule it to email staff as often as needed.
Cancellation Fees and Refunds
When a cancellation keeps a fee instead of waiving it, Rhythm records the fee as an invoice and creates a credit that is automatically applied to pay it. The fee still posts to its configured revenue account. Because the credit is applied right away, it does not leave the registrant with an open, reusable credit balance. If the credit and the fee invoice get out of step, such as when the invoice still shows a balance due, you can manually apply the credit to that invoice to bring the order back to zero. You cannot later refund a kept cancellation fee from inside the cancelled registration or order. If you later decide to return the fee, process that refund directly in your payment processor and add a note that the amount was refunded outside Rhythm. Issuing a credit as part of a cancellation depends on the event having a cancellation fee product configured under its registration settings. If you see an error when you choose to issue a credit, assign an existing miscellaneous product there, or create one in your Finance & Billing setup first.
If you are canceling a registration only to reuse its value on a new registration or package, waive the cancellation fee before you cancel. Otherwise, you can credit the wrong amount and leave an open balance tied to the fee. Canceling an order that was fully paid with a 100% coupon can leave its invoice showing Paid instead of updating to reflect the cancellation, especially when the coupon created its own discount line on the invoice. Check the invoice status by hand in that situation. Canceling an order can also fail outright when two or more products on the order each carry their own cancellation fee, with an error about invoice line items. If you see that error, contact Support instead of retrying repeatedly.
A few specific refund situations are worth knowing. If a cancellation fee was covered by store credit and that store-credit payment is later reversed or partially refunded, the invoice can show a balance due again for part of the fee. Canceling a registration whose only available payment method is store credit can occasionally fail because of a rounding difference in the refund amount; switching the refund option to refund as store credit has worked around this. In a group registration with a cancellation fee, refunding one attendee can succeed and then fail on the next if the credit record behind the fee no longer exists; contact Support instead of retrying the same attendee. If canceling a paid order incorrectly shows no associated payments and does not offer refund or credit options, try re-saving the linked invoice without making changes; that has restored the missing refund options in reported cases. If cancellation fails with an error naming businessUnitID, contact Support. Changing the registration’s status by hand has worked around this in some cases, but it skips the order-level cancellation and its refund, so use it only as a last resort and follow up on the order separately.
Rhythm does not have a setting that automatically blocks refunds after a cancellation deadline passes. If your policy stops refunds after a certain date, staff need to track that deadline and apply it manually when they process each cancellation.
Correcting a Registration Paid the Wrong Way
To correct a registration paid with the wrong credit card, cancel the original registration, refund the original card, and have the attendee register again with the correct card. Do this instead of trying to correct the payment on the existing order. If a cancellation should keep the money already collected instead of refunding it, either update the registration’s status directly to Cancelled without running the refund flow, or create a refund record and choose not to perform the electronic refund.
A few workarounds have helped with registrations that resist the normal cancellation flow, though none is guaranteed to apply to every case. When existing invoices block a registration from being cancelled and regenerated, moving those invoices into an archived batch before cancelling has cleared the way for a new registration and invoice. A registration that shows a balance but has no reachable invoice or order can sometimes be cleared by canceling it and processing a new order in its place. If canceling an order from a group registration does not update an attendee’s status, canceling from that attendee’s own Registration 360 record instead has worked when the order-level action did not. A cancellation that fails once with an error has occasionally gone through after refreshing the browser and clearing its cache. For a partial cancellation and refund across several attendees in a group order, some staff have manually set the affected attendees’ registration status to Cancelled and issued the refund directly on the payment instead of using the cancellation flow attendee by attendee. Treat this as a fallback, not the first thing to try.
Delete a Registration
You can delete a registration record after the registration has no order, or after its order is already cancelled.
- Open the registration’s record.
- Choose Delete. Delete appears only when the registration has no order or its order is cancelled.
- Confirm: You are deleting this registration instead of cancelling it. This operation cannot be undone.
Result
Rhythm removes the registration and any guest registrations registered under it. You return to the event’s Registration list. A deleted registration no longer appears in registration searches or the event’s query results. If you need to confirm the deletion went through, check the audit log.
Tip
Cancel and delete work together. After you cancel a registration’s order, the status shows Cancelled and the Delete button appears, so you can remove the record afterward if you no longer want to keep it. Use this when you want to refund someone and clear the record instead of leaving a cancelled registration on file.
A simple way to test registration before you go live is to submit a registration with a test record, either in the Portal or in the Console, and then delete the resulting order and registration.
If a registration has no order, there is nothing for Cancel Registration Order to cancel. Delete the registration and register the person again so a proper order gets attached, instead of trying to cancel it first.
Tip
If Support asks you to preserve a registration’s order for investigation, do not delete it. Instead, manually edit the order’s status to Cancelled and create a new registration order for the person, so the original record stays available for review.
If registrations were deleted after payment was already collected, you can add the people back to the event using a $0 invoice or fee so they are not charged a second time.
To clean up duplicate guest registrations, identify the duplicates with a query first, then remove them together using Bulk Changes. Deleting a duplicate guest directly from the registration it is attached to can affect both registrations instead of only the one you meant to remove.
What Deleting Does Not Remove
Deleting a registration removes only that registration and its guests. It does not remove:
- The order or invoice the registration came from, if one still exists. If you need a test transaction to stop affecting revenue reporting, cancel its order instead of deleting the registration. Deletion alone leaves the order and invoice in place, so the transaction can still count in financial reports after the registration record is gone.
- Sessions, function tickets, or other event-specific records the registrant holds. Those records belong to other parts of the event, so deleting the registration does not change them.
- Automatic waitlist notification processing. Deleting a session registration does not necessarily trigger the notifications that go out when a waitlist place opens, while cancelling the registration’s order can.
Why You Cannot Delete a Registration
You cannot delete a parent record that a registration still depends on, and you cannot delete a registration while it still has a live order. If Delete is missing or the delete fails:
- The registration still has a live, not cancelled, order. Cancel the order first.
- Another record still references the registration in a way that cannot be broken. Contact Support if the delete fails and the reason is not clear.
Attached sessions and function tickets are common records that can block a delete this way. If a registration still has session records or function tickets attached, cancel them and remove the attachments, then try deleting the registration again.
A registration can also fail to save, rather than delete, if it still holds a reference to an order that no longer exists. Clearing that leftover order reference from the registration lets it save again.
Payment or refund transactions in a registration’s history do not, by themselves, stop the registration from being deleted. Delete is blocked only when a dependent record like the ones above still points to it.
Deleting the Event
Deleting an event removes its registrations too. If you cannot delete an event, another record that still references the event, such as a registrant directory, is likely preventing the delete. See your event setup documentation for deleting events.
If Something Goes Wrong
| What you see | What it means and what to do |
|---|---|
| Delete does not appear on a registration | The registration still has a live order. Cancel the order first, or use Cancel Registration Order instead of deleting. |
| A confirmation asks whether you are sure before deleting | This is expected because deleting cannot be undone. Confirm only when you mean to remove the record permanently. |
| Deleting fails with an error | Another record may still reference the registration. Contact Support with the registration details if the reason is not clear. |
| You cannot cancel or delete at all | Your role does not have the matching permission. Ask an administrator to grant it. |
| Cancel Registration Order fails because the invoice was already voided | The order’s invoice was voided before you tried to cancel. Voiding is a separate Finance action from canceling or deleting a registration; contact Support to sort out the registration after its invoice has been voided. |
| Several registrations from the same bundled purchase or import are wrong, and some already have payments or invoices | Handle each registration based on its financial state: delete registrations that have no payment yet, void their invoices if they are unpaid, or cancel the order and apply store credit if they are paid, then re-register the person under the correct process. |