When a registered person cannot attend and a colleague will take their place, transfer the registration instead of cancelling it and creating a new one. The transfer keeps the same order and price, moves the person’s sessions, function tickets, and course enrollments to the new registrant, updates the badge from the new contact’s record, and records who held the registration before.
Use transfer for a straightforward reassignment, where the new attendee steps into the same registration and no additional billing is needed. If the replacement needs to pay a different amount, or needs their own payment, invoice, and registration responses, cancel the original registration and have the new person register on their own instead. For billing details, see Bill or Rebill After a Transfer below.
Prerequisites
- You can open the registration you want to transfer.
- Your role needs permission to transfer registrations. Without that permission, Transfer/Substitute is disabled and shows a tooltip explaining why.
Transfer a Registration
- Open the registration’s record.
- Choose Transfer/Substitute.
- Under Transfer Registration to:, choose the new contact.
- Leave Send confirmation email ticked if you want to notify the new registrant, or clear it if you do not.
- Choose Transfer Registration.
Result
The registration now belongs to the new contact. The old contact’s session registrations and function tickets for this event also move to the new contact. Rhythm moves all of those sessions and tickets for the event, not only the ones tied to this specific registration. If you left the confirmation box ticked, Rhythm sends the new registrant a confirmation email using the registration’s own process. If that email fails to send, the transfer is not undone.
Warning
A transfer makes several updates, and Rhythm does not handle them as one all-or-nothing action. If one part fails partway through, such as moving a ticket, the registration can be left partially transferred. The error message does not tell you which parts succeeded. If a transfer reports an error, open the registration and check its sessions, tickets, and badge before assuming nothing changed. As a known issue, a transfer can also leave the registrant with duplicate function tickets, including for a function whose purchase limit is one. After a transfer, check function tickets and remove any duplicates you find.
A transferred or substituted registration keeps the same underlying registration, so the same registration ID or access key can carry over to the new registrant. If your association sends registration data to an outside system, such as Cadmium, and you see what looks like a duplicate access key there, check whether the registration was transferred. Duplicate access keys have been traced to transfers, not to group or bulk invoicing.
Bill or Rebill After a Transfer
Transfer changes only who the registration belongs to. It does not create a refund, and it does not create a new invoice for the replacement registrant, even if that person would otherwise owe more than the original registrant paid. The order, invoice, and payment stay with the person who originally created them. A transfer does not reassign those records or update the product line item’s name to the new registrant, and there is currently no way to change that line item name after the fact. If you want to keep the original payment exactly as it is, transfer without issuing a refund.
If the new registrant needs to pay an additional amount:
- Create an invoice yourself for the difference, or
- Edit the order, invoice, and payment records so they show the new registrant instead of the original one.
If the new registrant should pay significantly more, such as for a higher-priced registration type, it is usually simpler to cancel the original registration and have the new registrant complete their own registration. That avoids transferring the registration and then adjusting the billing by hand.
Similarly, if the person responsible for payment should change along with the attendee, transfer the order separately. Changing the registration’s attendee through Transfer/Substitute does not, by itself, move the financial responsibility for it. An option to transfer the order or invoice along with the registration has been suggested as a future enhancement, but it is not available today.
Why a Transfer Is Refused
Rhythm refuses a transfer in two situations:
- The new contact already holds the registration. You cannot transfer a registration to the person who currently owns it.
- The new contact already has an active or pending-approval registration for the event. The new contact’s own draft or cancelled registrations do not block the transfer. Cancel or resolve the conflicting registration first, or choose a different new contact.
The registration’s own status does not block a transfer, so you can transfer even a cancelled registration to someone else.
See a Registration's Substitution History
- Open the registration’s record and go to its Substitutions tab. This tab appears only after at least one substitution exists.
Result
Every transfer is listed newest first, with the date and links to both the previous contact and the new contact.
You can also see a contact’s substitution history from the Substitutions tab on their contact record. It lists every substitution they took part in, whether they gave up a registration or received one.
If you report on transferred or substituted registrations in a query, the Name field shows the current registrant and the Created by field shows the original registrant. Use those two fields together to trace who held a registration before and after a transfer.
Tip
After a registration is substituted, the original registrant should no longer appear on the event’s registrant list because the active registration belongs to the substitute from that point on. The original person’s information can still remain in the registration’s custom fields, even though they are no longer the current registrant. To confirm who is actually attending, use the registration’s current contact. Do not rely on the invoice contact or the person who received the confirmation email, because a substitution can leave those references pointing to someone other than the current registrant.
If Something Goes Wrong
| What you see | What it means and what to do |
|---|---|
Cannot transfer registration to the same contact that currently owns it | You chose the current holder as the new contact. Choose someone else. |
Cannot transfer registration because the target contact is already registered | The new contact already has an active or pending-approval registration for this event. Resolve that registration first, or choose someone else. |
| Transfer/Substitute is disabled | Your role does not have permission to transfer registrations. Ask an administrator to grant it. |
| A transfer reported an error, and you are not sure what changed | Open the registration and check its badge, sessions, and function tickets before assuming the transfer did nothing. A partial transfer is possible. Contact Support if the record looks inconsistent. |
| A registration transaction for a session won't process after moving an attendee | Retry with the purchase quantity set to one. |