Importing Event Participant Guests

[katesneed]

I am importing historical event participants. Some of the participants paid for and brought guests. How do I import that information in Civi? Do I need to use API and not the Import Wizard?

[JonGold]

Hi Kate,

How are you trying to represent the guests?  Is that a custom data field?  Or are the guests also considered participants with their own records?

[katesneed]

Good question- I am waiting on the client's opinion so a final decision has not been made, however I am open to suggestions. I have asked the client to consider how frequent the guests of attendees become donors,participants etc in the future to help make this decision, but I would love to hear feedback on best practice as well. Thanks Jon!

[JonGold]

Generally speaking, if someone attends an event, I would create a contact record for them and a participant record.  It depends on how the client wants to use the data.

If they want to target those folks with mailings, etc., then they need to be contacts, so that's solved.  At that point, I don't see why one wouldn't add them as participants.  If it was important, you could use a different participant status than a paid guest, but I'm not sure what the use case would be there.  I suppose if you're not importing participant-contribution links, it might be the only way to differentiate guests from paying participants.

If it was really important, I'd also create a relationship between the paid participant and the guest.