Registration Portals
Collect sign-ups from a link or QR code and turn each one into a customer, without retyping a thing.
Overview
A registration portal is a public sign-up form for your organization. You decide what it asks. People open it on their phone by scanning a QR code or tapping a link. They don't need an account. Each submission comes back to BizBooks Pro as a registration you can turn into a customer with one click.
Typical uses: a youth program or club signing up members for the season, a studio taking in new students, an association running a membership drive, or any business that collects customer details on paper today.
Open it from the sidebar: Contacts & Billing > Registration Portals. The page has two tabs: Portals (your forms) and Registrations (what people have submitted).
Creating a Portal
- Click New Portal.
- Give it a name people will recognize, e.g. Pack 684 2026–27 Registration. The name appears as the form's heading.
- Optionally add Instructions (shown under the heading) and a Thank-you message (shown after someone submits). The thank-you message is a good place for next steps, like how to pay dues.
- Pick the fields to collect (see below) and click Save portal.
When you save, BizBooks Pro publishes the form online and shows its share link.
Choosing Fields
New portals start from a preset. Use the Start from dropdown to switch:
| Preset | Good for | Fields it turns on |
|---|---|---|
| Individual customer | Clients, students, members | First and last name, email, phone, address |
| Youth program / club | One registration per child | Participant's name, parent or guardian name, parent email and phone, address, notes |
| Business customer | B2B sign-ups | Company name, contact name, email, phone, address |
Then adjust it to suit:
- Tick a field under Available Fields to add it to the form. Untick it to remove it.
- Reword any label. "First name" can read "Scout's first name". Your wording is what people see.
- Mark fields Required. The form won't submit until they're filled in, and this is checked on the server as well.
- Use the arrows to change the order.
Adding Your Own Questions
If you need something the standard list doesn't cover, such as a Den, class level, T-shirt size or a waiver checkbox, click Add a custom field in the form builder. Choose a name and type (text, dropdown, checkbox, date, number, long text or email). For a dropdown, enter one option per line.
The field is saved as a customer custom field, the same as ⚙️ Company Settings > Custom Fields, so each answer appears on the customer's record and can be used across the app. Any customer custom fields you already have appear in the field list automatically.
Sharing the Link & QR Code
Each portal card on the Portals tab has:
- Copy link: paste it into an email, newsletter or website.
- Open form: see exactly what registrants see.
- QR image: a PNG to drop into your own flyer.
- Printable PDF: a ready-to-print page with the QR code, your organization name and the closing date.
- New link: replaces the link if it was shared somewhere it shouldn't have been. The old link and any printed QR codes stop working immediately.
Closing Dates
Set Closes after to stop taking registrations at the end of a chosen day. After that the form shows a "registration is closed" message. You can also close a portal by hand with Close and reopen it with Reopen. To reopen a portal whose date has passed, edit it and set a new date.
BizBooks Pro keeps checking for one more day after a portal closes, so a registration sent at the last minute still arrives. After that it stops contacting the form service for that portal.
Live Event Mode
While a portal is open, BizBooks Pro checks for new registrations once an hour. During a meeting, open house or registration night, click Live event (3h) on the portal card. It then checks every minute for the next three hours and turns itself off. You can also click Check now at the top of the page at any time.
Reviewing Registrations
New registrations appear on the Registrations tab under Waiting for review. The sidebar badge shows how many are waiting. Each card shows every answer, labelled the way your form asked it. For each one you can:
- Create customer: makes a new customer from the answers.
- Add to this customer: shown when a likely match exists (see below).
- Reject: sets it aside. Rejected registrations can be moved back to review from the Rejected filter.
Use the filter to see registrations you've already handled, with a link to the customer each one created or updated.
Duplicates & Merging
If a registration's name matches an existing customer (ignoring capitalization), the card shows a Possible duplicate warning with that customer's email and phone. Choose Add to this customer to fold the new details into the existing record, or Create as new customer anyway if they're really two different people.
Adding to an existing customer only fills in blanks. It never overwrites details that are already there. The exception is custom-field answers, where the newest answer wins, so a Scout who moved from Wolf to Bear den is updated.
Matching is by name, not email, because one parent often registers several children with the same email address.
Automatic Mode
Tick Create customers automatically in the form builder to skip the review step. New names become customers as soon as they arrive. Registrations that look like an existing customer still wait on the Registrations tab, so automatic mode never creates duplicates.
Where Answers Go
| Form field | Saved on the customer as |
|---|---|
| First name + last name | Customer name (e.g. "Liam Smith"), plus first and last name |
| Company name | Company name, and the customer name if there's no person's name |
| Email, phone, address, city, state, ZIP, country | The matching customer fields |
| Contact person | A primary contact on the customer, with the email and phone |
| Notes | Customer notes, followed by "Registered via <portal> on <date>" |
| Custom fields | The customer's custom field values |
If two different people share a name, the second customer is saved as "Liam Smith (2)" so neither record is lost.
Privacy & Data
- The online form is submit-only. Nobody holding the link can see any other registration.
- Registrations wait online only until your desktop collects them, and are then deleted from the cloud. Your customer list lives on your own machine.
- Each portal has a daily limit (200 by default) plus spam protection, so a leaked link can't flood your queue.
- Answers are checked on the server against your field list. Unknown or extra fields are thrown away.
FAQ
Can one parent register several children?
Yes. Each child is a separate registration and becomes a separate customer. After submitting, the form offers Register someone else.
What if I edit a portal after people have registered?
Changes apply to the live form straight away. Registrations already received keep the labels that were on the form when they were submitted.
What happens if my computer is off?
Registrations wait safely online and are collected the next time BizBooks Pro runs.
Can the form take payment?
Not yet. Put payment instructions in the thank-you message for now. Linking a registration to an invoice is planned.
Can I delete a portal?
Yes. BizBooks Pro collects anything still waiting first, then turns the link off. Registrations already received are kept.