Voting, or balloting, is accomplished in one of 2 ways. Paper Ballots or Mobile Ballots.

With Paper Ballots, you will need to have paper ballots created outside of the Middletwin system that contain a list of each car class and a space for your voters to write in the car number that they would like to vote for for that particular class. You will need to include instructions including the time that all completed ballots must be turned in by. Once voting is completed and you have collected all the ballots you can have one or more people with an administrator login (can be the same login) that has the “Ballot Manager” permission enabled. This will allow the users to access the Printed Ballots function.

Just have them follow the onscreen instructions to transfer the votes from the paper ballots into Middletwin.

Ballots can be easily entered by typing in the number for a class and hitting enter will bring the focus to the next class entry field. When done click the “Submit Ballot” button. Note that if you enter in a registration number that does not exists, the system will accept it without reporting any information about that. It is just ignored. The system is designed that way to allow for quick entry.

When done the person entering the ballots can click the “X” at the top or the “Back” button in the floating buttons to close the panel

Mobile Ballots

In addition to, or instead of Paper Ballots, you can use Mobile Ballots.

Mobile Ballots allows your voters to use their own mobile phone (smart phone capable of reading a QA Code) to fill out their ballot. Using this method negates the need to have to manually transfer the handwritten votes from a paper ballot into the Middletwin system because the votes go directly into the system from the voters themselves.

To do Mobile Ballots, go to the Mobile Ballots icon, click on the Setup tab, and follow the onscreen instructions.

This is very easy to do, and you may have some voters who are resistant to using their phones for voting, or votes without phones that are capable of this. For these rare occurrences it is a good idea to have a few printed ballots handy, just in case. Printed Ballots and Mobile Ballots can both be used for the same event. We recommend that you only distribute the Mobile Ballots if you are going to use this method, and keep the paper as a back up and only use it if necessary. Distributing both can allow double voting.

Results

To see the voting results, someone with “Event Manager” permissions can go to the Results icon, to view the results.

The top 10 registrations in each class will be displayed with the number of votes and the first column, registration name, registration information and registration number. The top three peoples choice selections will be at the bottom.

The results page is formatted for printing, so you can print it out and mark it up as needed.

Event classes are required if you want to have registrations and voting. The reason is that they are all tied together. A registration for an event needs to be within a specific class. That is how registrations are grouped together and the registration number is keyed off of the class number.

Voting is also by class because participants vote for their favorite registration within a class.

Event classes are managed in the event details view. In the left you can click on “Classes” to jump to the class list.

To add a new class click on the “Add class” button.

The fields for the event class are

• Class number – the numeric id for the class (used for registration numbering) we provide them in groups of 100 starting at 100 and going up to 10000. If you have a car show with more than 100 classes, please contact support.
• Section – This refers to the physical area of your show that the class will be located in. We provide 52 options, if you need more please contact support.
• Description – A description for the class
• Hidden from online pre-registration – If enabled this class will not be selectable to someone pre-registering for the show. The purpose of this is if you have a class that you only want to fill during the show, like “Display Only” or a “Buddy” class.

To edit an event class click on the row (not the checkbox in the left column) to open the row in the class side panel.

Numbering

Class numbering is really important because each registration will need to be placed in a class, and the registration number is generated by selecting the next available number in the class.

For example, if you set the class id to 100, the registrations will be numbered 101, 102, 103… So for the next class you will want to use an ID that is high enough that you won’t have overlapping ID’s If you expect that you will not have more than 100 in a class, we recommend you use 100, for your first class, 200 for your second class, 300 for your third, and so on. In this scenario, If you have classes that can have more than 100 you would want to find a way to split the class up so that you will not have more than 100 in a class.

Class numbering is critical to a successful event.

Setting up an event in Middletwin is easy. It all starts by going to the Events tab from the left hand menu. You will need to ensure that you have Administrate access for the Event Manager permission. See the Account Logins knowledge base document for details on setting up logins.

In the Events list page you will see a list of all your events. If you are creating one for the first time, the list will be empty. Click on the “Add event” button above the list of events to create a new event. A side panel will open where you can type in the name for your new event and you can optionally select an existing event to copy. Copying an existing event will copy many of the settings to the new event, like car classes, makes and models, ticket types, and more. This makes setting up future events very easy because you can copy a similar event that you hosted and just make some tweaks for your new event.

The new event

Your new event will be added to the list. Click on the row for your new event and you will be taken to the landing page for your event setup. By default, the event will be a “Basic” event. A Basic event is used for just selling tickets. A use case for this would be if you just wanted to sell tickets to a club banquet.

To start setting up your show or event, click on the “Show Settings” icon.

Once you are in the show settings you will see several of the settings for the show.

Name

At the top will be the name, you change the name of your show here.

Type

Next is the type, change this to “Competition Show (Has Voting)” if this event is a car show with voting.

Availability

Set the Availability to “Members Only” If you are a car club and want this to only be available to car club members in the member portal, otherwise leave it as “Open to the Public”

Dates

Set “The first day of this event” and “The last day of this event” to the dates of the actual event. Set them to the same date if the event is a one day event.

Description

Provide a description for the event, make sure to include location, start and end times, and any other details that you would want to share.

Purchase agreement policy

Provide any policies that you want to include at the point of purchase for any registrations, tickets, vendor or swap spaces in this location. This will be displayed to your customers when they are purchasing anything related to the show. You might want to include things like “No Refunds”, “All Sales Final”, “Rain or Shine” and things of that nature. Additionally you might want to include that you are not responsible for the post office loosing confirmation letters or wristband if you mail those things out.

Tickets Label

If you plan to use the ticket sales feature in Middletwin to sell something other than tickets, you can set the label to a custom value. For example if you plan to use this to sell sponsorships for classes, you can set the label to be “Sponsorships”. Leave it blank if you are satisfied with tickets.

Media

Here you can upload an image of your show flyer. This helps your customers identify that they are looking at the correct show and will be displayed in the public events landing page.

Schedule

Follow the onscreen instructions to create a schedule for your event. This is optional and only needed if you will be having multiple activities at your event, like a burn out contest for example.

Participant Registration (Optional)

To allow participants to register their cars online prior to your show (aka Pre-registration), enable the pre-registration by setting the toggle to on, and setting the start date for when you want to allow participants to register, and the end date for when you want pre-registration to end.

NOTE: You will want to configure classes and makes and models before pre-registration begins

Set the price to your pre-registration price, note that credit card fees will come out of this amount, so set it accordingly. If you are a club and want to offer club members a discount when they are logged into the member portal, set the discount price here. It is up to you to ensure you communication to your members that they must be logged in to get the discount.

If you want a notification email to be sent out everytime someone pre-registers online, set the “New Notification Email” to the email address.

Lastly, you can create an email template that will be used as a confirmation email to everyone who registers online. Set the “Response Template” to the email template you want to use. All email templates are created in the Email section of Middletwin.

Click the “Save Event” button at the bottom of the page to save all your changes.

Classes

Click on the Classes icon to start setting up classes.

The Classes icon

Car classes are very important in Middletwin and must be setup correctly to ensure a smooth running show. Classes consist of a class number, a section or location, and a description.

Class Number

The class number for your class is important because all the car numbers, which must be unique, are based off of the class number. For example, for your first class you would use 100, the first car that registers for class 100 will be car number 101, the second will be 102, and so on. This keeps all the car numbers unique.

Even if you are doing an all makes and models show you will want at least 1 class for all the cars to register in.

If you anticipate getting more than 100 cars in any class, make sure you use a class number high enough to allow for more than 100 cars.

Section/Location/Area/Lot/Building

This setting is mostly for you. It is not displayed to people who are pre-registering. Use it for your workers to help them guide cars to the correct location.

Description

Set your description for your class appropriately so that people will be able to identify if it is the correct class for them to register for. For example “All convertibles”. But also ensure that the cars that register for that class will be as evenly competitive as possible when it comes to voting or judging.

Hidden from online pre-registration

If you will have a class that you need in the Middletwin system, but you don’t want cars to pre-register for the class, then set this toggle to on. An example of this would be if you have a display only class that costs less than a regular class registration because it will not get a goodie bag or be eligible for an award, and you will allow people to register for at the show, you can add it here and set this to be hidden. This will provide the class in the system so that you can manually enter the car that come in on the day of show into this class so that you can have their names, emails, and other information in the system so you can send them thank you emails or invites to future shows.

Makes & Models

Click on the Makes & Models icon to setup makes and models for your show. You have 2 main options here, the first is to allow users to type make and model, if you enable this the makes and models mapping tools will be hidden, and customers will have text entry fields where they can type in whatever they want for their car make and model. Alternatively, if you are only allowing specific makes and models for your show, you can setup a list of the specific makes and models of cars that will be at your show.

Balloting

There are 2 types of balloting, Printed or Mobile.

Printed Ballots

After setting up the classes you can go to Printed Ballots and see all of the classes listed. If you want to print ballots on your own, outside of the Middletwin system, and hand them out at your show, you can manually enter in the completed ballots by going here and entering in all the votes from the ballot (pro tip, you can use the keypad/number section on a full size keyboard to make this going really fast), use the “Enter” key or “Tab” to go to the next field, click “Submit Ballot to submit all the votes. Note that all cars must be in the system before submitting ballots.

Mobile Ballots

Optionally you can use Mobile Ballots. Click on the Mobile Ballots icon to get started. Within the Mobile Ballots there are 2 tabs, “Ballots” and “Setup”. Click on the “Setup” tab and follow the onscreen instructions to setup the mobile ballots. When you are done setting up mobile ballots, save the setup and go back to Ballots.

Click on the “Add ballots” button to create your first batch of ballots. Select the quantity of ballots you want to create and choose a batch name. Ballots are printed in batches so that you can print them by batch name.

After creating a batch of ballots, click on the “Print” button in the top right of the table of ballots and select the batch of ballots that you want to print. You can create and print mobile ballots at anytime, you do not need to wait for all cars to be in the system, however all cars must be in the system before the voting start time.

After printing your batch, cut them up into individual ballots and put them in your goodie bags or hand them out to all eligible voters. Be prepared to help anyone who might be struggling with using their smart phone’s camera to read the QR Code.

See the knowledge base for guides on other features in the events setup

When you create an event in Middletwin you have the ability to sell tickets. You can easily set up the tickets, your members can purchase the tickets, and the tickets will have a QR code (2 dimensional bar code) that you can optionally scan with any network connected mobile phone to redeem at your event.

To get started, login with Event Management permissions and go to the Events.

Locate the event you want to create tickets for and click on the row for the event (not the checkbox in the leftmost column) to open the event details.

Ticket Types

This is where you will manage the ticket types for your event. To get started click on the “Add ticket” button.

Provide a meaningful description for the ticket, like “General Admission”, “One day pass”, “Weekend Pass”, etc… Provide a larger description for the ticket along with any restrictions. Specify the dates the tickets can be purchased (start and end dates), the total ticket quantity limit you want to make available, a limit of how many a single purchaser can make, and the price you want to charge for the ticket. You can make as many tickets for an event as you like.

You can create a custom confirmation email template that will be sent out to anyone who purchases one or more of this ticket type. See the email template strings cheatsheet for possible string replacements.

Specify if these tickets will be available to the general public or only to people who are purchasing a registration or a vendor/swap space.

Optionally you can add options to the tickets. An option can either be a text field that the user types text into or a menu of options. Example of a text field would be if you were selling a ticket to a dinner and wanted to collect the guest names. Options could be used if you were using tickets to sell t-shirts and wanted to ask for a size (ex Small, Medium, Large, etc…). Choices need to be a comma separated list.

When finished click save.

To edit a ticket after you have created you can click on the row for the ticket.

Members will see the ticket for the event in the event panel in the member portal. When they purchase the ticket they will receive an email with a link to the ticket. When they open the ticket in a web browser they will see the following:

You can use an iPhone or Android type phones camera or QR Code reader app to scan the bar code. Doing so will cause the ticket to be “redeemed”. If you scan the code again it will indicate that the ticket code has already been redeemed. This prevents someone from trying to make copies of a ticket and use them for your event.

Sold Tickets

Click on the Sold Tickets tab to see a table that will list sales for each ticket type individually. Above each table will be the number of sold tickets, giving you quick access to ticket sales numbers. If you need to manually create tickets for any ticket type, just click “Add ticket” button above the table for the ticket type you want to create the ticket for. Note that a confirmation email will be sent to the email you specify for the ticket.

Random Pick

If you are doing a drawing and want to randomly pick one ticket from all the sold tickets, just click the “Random Pick” button above the table.

If you want to get a list of all the tickets and use that to check off ticket purchasers as they arrive, just click the Print tickets button at the top of all the tickets. You can also use the Export button to export a particular set of tickets to csv and then open it in any spreadsheet program.

Tickets Label

If you are using tickets as a whole for something other than actual tickets, and you think the label “Tickets” would be misunderstood to your event participants, you can set the label to be another term. To do this, go to the Show Settings and locate the “Tickets Label” in the Event Information section. If there is no label, then “Tickets” will be used, if you provide a label, your label will be used.

Depending on how you mange your event, registrations can come from multiple sources. The most popular are directly from a sale online portal, and from the US mail with a mailed in registration form and a check.

You will likely have one if not more people who will help with managing your event registrations, depending on how many registrations you need to manage. Each person will need to have an administrative portal login with the “Registration Manager” permission enabled on their login to allow them to manage registrations.

After they have logged in they need to go to the Events tab, select the event, and click on the Participant Registrations icon.

Registrations

By default you will be on the Registration tab, this is where you can see, edit, add, and delete car registrations.

At the top of this page you will see the daily registrations graph. This will show you how many new registrations you are getting daily.

Below the graph is the counts, the first number is the total of registrations you have in the system, so the total number of cars. The second is the number that have been processed. Processed is a manual operation and is optional. See later on in this document.

Below the counts is the paginated list of all the registrations. Above the table you will see the search feature, you can search by first name, last name, email, or car number. To the right is the sort order, you can sort by car number (default), first name, or last name. At the bottom of the table (not pictured) is the pagination control, there are 25 registrations on each page.

Below the line you will see the “Add registration” button, use this to manually add a registration. On the right side you will see “Mailing Labels”, “Export”, “Refresh”, and “Show/Hide”. In addition to these, if you select the checkbox to the left a registration, a “Delete” button will appear, you can use this to delete a registration from the table.

To edit a registration, click on the row of the registration.

This will open a side panel with all the registrations details.

Note that this is the same panel that opens when you create a new registration with one exception, the create panel will have a search feature at the top that allows you to search previous events for the same person, saving you time when manually entering in peoples information.

If you are mailing out information or wristbands before the show, you can use the “Processed” checkbox to indicate that you have sent the info, and you can indicate in the notes the date you sent the info.

NOTE: See the separate knowledge base document on changing a registration class

Creating a registration

To create a registration click on the “Create” button above the table of registrations on the right side. This will open a blank registration details pane that you can fill out.

It is common that someone who is registering for an event has registered for one of your past events. In order to save time you can search through previous event registrations.

In the search field you can enter a first name, last name, or car number and the system will search for registrations that match (current and past events). at least 3 characters are required. Click the “Search” button when you believe you have entered enough information.

Select a row the results to have information from that registration form used to fill in the current form.

Click the “Save” button below the registration details to save the registration

Registration Options

By default the Middletwin system will ask registrants for Year, Make, Model, Trim, Engine and Color. If for some reason there is additional information that you want your registrants to provide, you can do that with Registration Options.

Click on the “Registration Options” tab and above the table click on the “Add option” button.

There are 2 types of options, “Text” and “Choice”. Use Text if you want the registrant to type in a value, use choice if you want to provide a list of choices for the registrant. Specify a label and optionally a sublabel if what you are asking for needs clarification. If you are using the Choice option you will also need to provide the choices in a comma separate list.

Save when done.

These will be presented to pre-registrants and will be in the participant settings. You will be able to see what they entered in the table too if you enable the Options column.

Registration Numbers

Registration numbers need to be unique. As a convenience to you the system will automatically assign the next available registration number to a registration based on the selected event class. For example, when creating a registration, if you select an event class that is numbered 300, and there are already 3 registrants in that class (301, 302, 303) the system will automatically assign 304 to this new registration. You do not need to provide the registration number 304 when creating it.

If you want to assign your own registration number you can by selecting the “Manually Assign Car Number” checkbox and filling in a number. Note that this is not recommended, and the registration number needs to be in the same group as the class number. Clicking save will cause the registration number to change and any votes for that registration will also change to the new number.

Event Class

The event class for the registration tells the system what group the registration should go in and is used for detailing the registration number. If a registration needs to be moved to another event class, which happens frequently, you can easily make this change by just editing the registration and changing the event class and clicking “Save”. This will cause the system to assign a new registration number to the registration by selecting the next available registration number in that event class (see above) and any votes for the registration will also be moved to the new registration number.

Dash Card

Use the Dashcard designer to create beautiful dashcards with placeholders for registrant information. This will open the dash card for the registration.