--- title: How to organize a leisure time registration? description: "Church camps are a great thing. However, it can be very time-consuming to organize the registration process, store all the important information and bring it together in a meaningful place. With ChurchTools, you can make this process much easier both…" url: "https://staging.churchtools.academy/en/help/churchtools-modules/my-group/how-to-organize-a-leisure-time-registration/" updated: "2026-07-02" category: Groups / My Group --- # How to organize a leisure time registration? Church camps are a great thing. However, it can be very time-consuming to organize the registration process, store all the important information and bring it together in a meaningful place. With ChurchTools, you can make this process much easier both for you as the organizer and for all the people in your congregation who would like to sign up for the leisure time. In this tutorial, we will show you the basic functions for the leisure time registration with ChurchTools and the subsequent communication with the participants. **Tip** You can use many other functions of ChurchTools to take the planning of your church retreat to a new level: - Calendar: ***Date*** for your church retreat, directly ***create the corresponding event*** and book the necessary **resources** - Events: Individual ***plan sessions*** and r***oles*** for it - Posts: ***Advertising your free time*** in the congregation - Finances: Check receipt of payment for ***Check payment of participation fees*** - Check-in: ***Check-in codes for arrival or room occupancy*** use - Wiki: Share important documents such as***a site plan with all participants*** - Report: ***Report***how many adults and children took part, which and how many resources were needed... - App: ***All information for participants in one place*** - Your participants can, for example, check who else is taking part, use the chat for communication and see the agenda to always know what is happening where and when. ## 1. Create group First, you need a new *group* to which the participants will be added after registration. You must *activate registration* for this group. Check out the article [How to create a new group](https://staging.churchtools.academy/en/help/churchtools-modules/my-group/how-to-create-a-new-group/) to learn how to create a *new group*. The following settings in your group are useful for a church retreat: ### Group status To be able to prepare the sign up group in peace and activate the registration for your leisure time at the right time, you should set the status of the group to *Draft*. When you have finished with all the settings and want to release the registration for everyone in your congregation, change the group status to *Active*. [![Screenshot Set group status draft](https://staging.churchtools.academy/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Groups_Set-Status-draft.png)](https://staging.churchtools.academy/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Groups_Set-Status-draft.png) ### Visibility For the registration to work for all people, even if they are not yet entered in your ChurchTools people database, you must set the visibility to *Public*. As soon as the registration is complete, you can set the visibility to *Internal* so that only people who are signed up can see the group. [![Screenshot of setting group visibility to public](https://staging.churchtools.academy/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Groups_Set-Visibility-public.png)](https://staging.churchtools.academy/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Groups_Set-Visibility-public.png) ### Registration As you want to use the group to sign up for your free time, you must *open* the *registration*. The registration will then be given the planning status and will only be properly activated when you set the status of the group to *Active*. [![Screenshot Groups Registration](https://staging.churchtools.academy/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Groups_Registration.png)](https://staging.churchtools.academy/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Groups_Registration.png) [![Screenshot Groups Open registration](https://staging.churchtools.academy/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Groups_Open-registration.png)](https://staging.churchtools.academy/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Groups_Open-registration.png) ### Info You can use the other *group information fields* to enter everything important that people in your congregation need if they want to sign up for the activity. An appealing *picture*, e.g. of your last activity, and a *description* containing all the information about the location, price, period, etc. are particularly helpful. [![Screenshot Groups Info Edit all](https://staging.churchtools.academy/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Groups_Info_Edit-all.png)](https://staging.churchtools.academy/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Groups_Info_Edit-all.png) You can also add a *completion date*, which will cause the status of the group to be automatically set to *Finished* as soon as the date is reached and your free time is over. ## 2. Configure registration Once you have made the general settings and entered all the important information, you should configure the registration in detail. ### Limit seats It is often the case that only a certain number of people can travel to the leisure time, e.g. because the number of beds at your venue is limited. You can therefore specify how many people can sign up for the leisure time. With the *Counted roles* option, you can specify whether all people in the group should be counted or whether people with certain roles should be excluded from the count. For example, you can add *organizers* to the group who help with the planning of the leisure time and therefore must have access to the group, but who do not go on the leisure time themselves and therefore should not occupy any places. [![Screenshot Groups Settings Members](https://staging.churchtools.academy/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Groups_Settings_Members.png)](https://staging.churchtools.academy/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Groups_Settings_Members.png) ### Joining the group You can specify whether a participant who has signed up for the free time can actively join the group directly or whether the group leader still has to approve each participant manually. Our recommendation is to use *immediate membership* to minimize the effort for the group leader. It is a good idea to use the *Participant role* as the default role for all people who sign up and to manually change the role of individual people who should have a different role after registration. Alternatively, you can of course add these people with the desired role to the group manually. [![Screenshot Groups Settings Registration Settings for Registration](https://staging.churchtools.academy/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Groups_Settings_Registration_Settings-for-Registration.png)](https://staging.churchtools.academy/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Groups_Settings_Registration_Settings-for-Registration.png) ### Registration of new persons To ensure that people who have not yet been created in your ChurchTools database are added to the group quickly and easily, it is best to activate the *Create new person* option. You can find out more about this function [here](https://staging.churchtools.academy/en/help/churchtools-modules/einstellungen-gruppen/how-do-i-make-settings-for-registering-for-my-group/#3-toc-title) ### Registration of additional persons You can use this function to set whether a participant can also sign up other people, e.g. family members, for the leisure time or whether each person must sign up independently. We have explained this function in more detail in the article [How to make settings for signing up to my group?](https://staging.churchtools.academy/en/help/churchtools-modules/einstellungen-gruppen/how-do-i-make-settings-for-registering-for-my-group/#4-toc-title) ### Waiting list Here you can set whether there should be a *waiting list*. This will be used if your previously defined group places are full. If participants who have already confirmed cancel, people will move up from the waiting list until the maximum number is reached again. We have also explained this function in detail in the article [How to make settings for signing up to my group?](https://staging.churchtools.academy/en/help/churchtools-modules/einstellungen-gruppen/how-do-i-make-settings-for-registering-for-my-group/#6-toc-title) ### Registration form Use the *registration form* to specify what information participants need to provide for their registration. You can use all the *personal and group membership fields* that have already been created. This means both standard fields such as *name* and *e-mail* as well as your own fields that are important for your leisure time, such as *allergies, intolerances, desired roommates* and anything else that is relevant for your leisure time. You can also find more details on the *registration form* in the article [How to make settings for signing up to my group?](https://staging.churchtools.academy/en/help/churchtools-modules/einstellungen-gruppen/how-do-i-make-settings-for-registering-for-my-group/#6-toc-title) You can add your own fields either as *person information (master data of the Persons module)* or as [group membership fields](https://staging.churchtools.academy/en/help/churchtools-modules/my-group/how-to-create-group-member-fields/). ## 3. Configure public page You need to publish the registration form so that people can sign up for the leisure activities. To do this, you can distribute the link to the form or, even better, embed the registration form on your congregation's website. This way, participants can sign up directly on your website and the data is automatically saved in your group in ChurchTools. You can find out how to customize the public page of your group in the article [How to customize the public group page of my subgroup?](https://staging.churchtools.academy/en/help/churchtools-modules/settings-groups/how-to-customize-the-public-group-page-of-my-subgroup/) [![Screenshot Groups Settings Public group page](https://staging.churchtools.academy/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Groups_Settings_Public-group-page.png)](https://staging.churchtools.academy/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Groups_Settings_Public-group-page.png) **Note** Another way to make your group publicly visible would be to use the *group homepage* of a supergroup, which can also be embedded on your congregation website or whose link can be shared. On this *group homepage*, all groups that are assigned to the same supergroup are displayed together and can even be filtered. This creates an overview. The leader of the supergroup can customize the display of the group homepage via the group settings. We explain how to do this [here](https://staging.churchtools.academy/help/churchtools-module/einstellungen-gruppen/37-wie-passe-ich-die-gruppenhomepage-meiner-gruppe-an/). ## 4. Communication with participants Last but not least, we will briefly show you which (automated) communication channels you can use to contact your participants after they have signed up for the free time. ### E-mail For example, you can work with routines to automatically send a predefined e-mail from your ChurchTools to every newly registered participant, confirming their registration, providing ***further important information*** and informs them, for example, by when they have to pay the ***participation fee*** to which account. We explain the *routines* in detail in the article [Understanding routines](https://staging.churchtools.academy/en/help/churchtools-modules/routines-groups/understanding-routines/). ### Chat By enabling chat for your group, you can make it easier for group leaders and organizers, for example, to organize and communicate with each other without having to send an e-mail for every little message or create a new group chat in an external messenger service. To prevent all participants from being able to see the group chat later, you should limit chat participation to the roles of *leader*, *organizer* and *employee*. [![Screenshot Groups Settings Group chat options](https://staging.churchtools.academy/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Groups_Settings_Group-chat-options.png)](https://staging.churchtools.academy/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Groups_Settings_Group-chat-options.png) If your participants want to use the chat later, they can write directly to specific participants or create their own small chat rooms with several other participants instead of the large group chat with all the people involved. If you want to share information with all participants via chat, you can allow participants to join the chat at a later time, but only give them *read access*. This way they can read your messages and be informed without being able to send their own messages in the chat to avoid filling the group chat with too many irrelevant messages. You can find out exactly how to do this in our guide to [managing group chats](https://staging.churchtools.academy/en/help/churchtools-modules/communication-groups/how-to-manage-the-chat-for-my-group/). **Note** In principle, chat for groups must be activated for your ChurchTools by an admin in the System settings. If this is not the case for you, get in touch with your admin and have the chat for groups activated. ### Posts Posts may be more suitable for large groups than chat for direct communication. They allow your group to exchange information on specific topics at any time and from anywhere. In addition to reading or viewing posts, group members can interact with each other on different posts. You can find more information about posts in the article [Overview of posts](https://staging.churchtools.academy/en/help/churchtools-modules/posts/24-main/). ## 5. Activate group Once you have made all the settings and can start the registration for the free time via your website, it is time to *activate* the group.