Registration & payments
Studio registration without the portal login jungle.
Studios juggle a different account for every competition; you juggle exports from a portal built in 2011. Registration should be the calm part — it's where money shows up.
Best forDirectors who own the revenue side- Free for up to 5 events
- Money settles to your Stripe account
- Studios sign in with a code — no passwords
Studio portal
Starlight Dance Academy
- $225
Midnight in Memphis
Teen Small Group · Jazz
- $85
Stormfront
Senior Solo · Contemporary
- $130
Paper Cranes
Junior Duo/Trio · Lyrical
Paid in full
$440 · card$440settled to your Stripe account — and landed in this event's revenue line.
- Payments settle to your own Stripe account
- Card details never touch our servers
- Built by people who re-typed portal exports in March
How it works
From published event to money in the books.
Publish your event
Categories, pricing, age rules, capacity, and the window.
Studios register themselves
Emailed six-digit code, then straight to drafting entries.
They pay you directly
Stripe checkout on your account — or your office records the check.
Revenue lands in the P&L
Every payment, net of refunds, on that event's revenue line.
The studio portal
Returning studios are thirty seconds from registered.
A studio signs up once — emailed code, never a password — and that account follows them across your whole tour. City two starts at the entry form.
- The event page carries your brand, not ours
- Studio owners invite their own team; choreographers get a first-class path
- The wizard prices everything live, in cents, no rounding surprises
Change request · Starlight Dance Academy
Submitted registrations don't reopen — they ask
The studio writes
“Please move Stormfront to Senior Solo Jazz — wrong category at submit.”
Your team sees
The request, with the registration attached. Approve and edit, or decline with a reason — the paper trail survives either way.
Payments
Your Stripe account. Your money, directly.
Card payments are direct charges on your own Stripe account — you're the merchant of record, refunds are yours, and Herding Cats never sits in the middle of your revenue.
- Hosted Stripe Checkout only — no card form of ours
- Cards, checks, comps, and refunds in one payment ledger
- Not on Stripe yet? Everything else still works
Direct charges, on purpose
The charge is created on your account, under your name on the statement, with Stripe's standard fees visible in your own dashboard. Nobody holds your money for you.
Changes & capacity
Locked registrations ask instead of reopening.
After submit, studios file a change request instead of quietly editing — and capacity is enforced in the database, where two studios can't both take the last slot.
- Requests keep their paper trail, approved or declined
- The race for the last spot has exactly one winner
- Reservations hold slots for a fee; expired holds release themselves
1
winner in any capacity race
Submits and holds serialize on a per-event database lock. Overselling by race condition is structurally impossible — not just unlikely.
Built in the open
Money-grade plumbing, shown, not promised.
0
card numbers we ever see
Hosted Stripe Checkout only. We store Stripe ids, never card data.
6
digits to sign in
No passwords means no reset emails — most of the old support inbox.
100%
of payments in one ledger
Cards, checks, comps, refunds — one ledger, one P&L line.
Implementation facts, not marketing claims — no customer statistics appear on this page.
Fair questions
What comp owners ask before switching.
- Can we switch mid-season?
- Run it in parallel: publish registration for one upcoming event while the rest of the season finishes wherever it lives today. Don't do it all at once.
- What are the fees on payments?
- Stripe's standard fees, on your own account, in your own dashboard. Herding Cats' pricing is never a cut of your registration revenue.
- What about studios that pay by check?
- Fully supported. Your office records the check and it lands in the same ledger and the same P&L line as card money.
- Does registration talk to the rest of the platform?
- That's why it exists. Revenue lands in per-event P&L, the weekend runs on the same records your event managers use, and music arrives before doors — not on USB sticks.
In development: show-day schedules, live scoring & judging, and award purchasing — registration is the foundation they stand on.
Also in this module
The details registrars ask about.
- Per-dancer or flat pricing per category
- Age math comps actually use
- Fees freeze at submit
- Windows enforced at the database
- Music upload, before the weekend
- Checks and comps welcome
- Statuses studios and staff share
- Studio teams, not shared logins
- Exports for the booth
Open one event
Publish registration for one event and watch it fill.
Set up categories in an afternoon, send one link, and watch the first submissions arrive with the money attached.
- Free for up to 5 events
- No card required
- Cancel any time