Manage waitlists for a program

When a class, trip, or meal fills up, the next people to sign up don't get turned away — they land on a waitlist. Most of the time it runs itself: someone cancels, the next person moves up. This walks through how the queue works and the few moments you'll step in by hand.

How someone joins the waitlist

You don't put someone on a waitlist on purpose — it happens when a program is already at capacity. Sign a member up for a full session, trip, or sitting and, instead of a confirmed spot, they join the queue as Waitlisted. For classes and trips, they get a position number so everyone can see who's next. Meals keeps the same first-come order behind the scenes without showing a number.

Promotion usually happens on its own

This is the part you rarely have to touch. When a confirmed member cancels and a spot opens, the person at the top of the waitlist is promoted automatically — their status flips to Registered (or Signed up for meals) and everyone behind them shifts up a place. You don't reshuffle the list yourself.

Promoting or moving someone by hand

Sometimes you want to move someone up without waiting for a cancellation — a coordinator opened one more seat, or you're making room for a family. In a class or trip, open the People tab, find the person on the waitlist, and choose Promote to roster (classes) or Promote to registered (trips). This puts them in even if the program is at capacity, so use it deliberately.

You can also go the other way. To free a seat, pick a confirmed member and choose Move to waitlist — they drop to the bottom of the queue. To take someone off the list entirely, use Remove from waitlist; the people behind them close the gap.

Who hears about it

This is worth knowing so you're not surprised. For classes and trips, waitlist moves are silent — the member isn't emailed when they join the queue or when they're promoted, so if a spot opens and it matters, give them a call. Meals is the exception: it can email a member when they're waitlisted and again when they're promoted, and those two messages are switches in your meals settings.

Turning the waitlist off or capping it

Capacity is set on the class session, the trip, or the meal sitting — that's the number that decides when the waitlist kicks in. You can also cap how many people the waitlist itself will hold, or switch it off entirely so a full program simply stops taking sign-ups instead of queuing them.