CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

We are using CiviCRM for event registration for a conference we are holding.

I'm new to CiviCRM (familiar with drupal) and want to make sure I set things up to run properly.

Some Info.

1. The conference will hold 300 people
2. There is a dinner that holds 400 people.
3. A conference ticket gets you into the dinner as well, but there are an additional 100 dinner only tickets
4. There is a sponsor option, Level 1 gets you 6 conference tickets, level 2 gets you 4 tickets and level 3 gets you 2 tickets.
5. There will be some complimentary tickets issued
6. There is an earlybird registation fee


I'm thinking of using CiviContribute for the Sponsors, then having staff contact sponsors to register participants on their behalf (we aren't expecting a large number of sponsors)


Trying to sort out Price Sets
I'm having an issue because the numbers differ between Conference participants and dinner participants

I was thinking of setting a max of 400 people on the event.
Then using a price set, set max conference participants to 300, set max dinner to 100

Problems:
I was going to make another Admin only price for complimentary/sponsored guests with a fee set to $0, how do I count these against the Total?

How do I deal with the early-bird? I could set the Early Bird price set to end, then have the regular fee start when the earlybird ends, but how do I have earlybird registrtation + regular registration total 300 participants?

It seems that the easiest way to deal with this would be to make two events, one for the conference/dinner and one for the Dinner. This is a bit messy because it would be nice if registrants could make all their decisions on the same page.

Sorry for combining questions, but:

1. Am I thinking about this the right way?
2. Is there a way to deal with the participation options other than creating two events?

I ended up doing the following and it seems to work

Price set (when someone registers, required)
Event and meal = $450, description indicates this is an earlybird rate (max 300 participants)
meal= $150 (max 100 participants)

Price set (only available to admin)
Event and meal = -$450, description indicates this is an earlybird rate
meal= -$150

For complimentary tickets they receive comformation that looks like
event and meal $450
Complimentary discount -$450
Total $0

Has the advantage of letting comp participants know there is a cost associated with their participation, it's just being covred by someone else.

In september when the earlybird ends, I'll change the values in the price sets.

The discount module looks promising, but Drupal experience makes me nervous about relying on dev modules with few users. Useually it's fine, but it has caused me headaches before.

Thank you for your input!