Restricted Fields for Admins

Last Update : August 2026

Sometimes you need a question on the registration form that only admins should be able to see or answer. A flag noting that a guest is comped. An internal seating-arrangement note. A drop-down picking which staff member is the attendee's primary contact. A field tracking which sponsor invited them.

These are restricted fields: custom fields you've marked as admin-only. They look just like any other custom field when an admin is entering or editing an attendee through the back office, but they're completely hidden from the public registration form. Attendees never see them, never have to answer them, and don't know they exist.

This article covers when restricted fields are useful, how to set them up, and how they show up in the registration and reporting flows.

When to use a restricted field

Use a restricted field whenever you need to track something about an attendee that doesn't belong on the public registration form. Common patterns:

• Internal status flags. "Comped," "VIP guest," "Press pass," "Speaker," "Staff." Useful for filtering on reports later or coloring rows on the attendee list.
• Staff assignments. A selection field listing your team members, used to track which staffer is responsible for each attendee or which board member invited them.
• Sponsor or referral tracking. A selection field of sponsors with the attendee tagged to the one that invited them — helps you report on sponsor ROI without exposing the sponsor list publicly.
• Seating or logistics notes. A text field for "table number," "dietary swap done," or any other behind-the-scenes detail that only matters to event staff.
• Sensitive flags. Notes about accessibility needs, conflict-of-interest notes, or anything else you don't want surfaced on a public form but still want consistently captured.
• Comp / discount approvals. A checkbox like "comp approved by board" that admins can use to flag attendees who shouldn't be charged, separately from the discount-code system.
• Adding an arbitrary fee or amount to a specific attendee's invoice. Create a restricted Open Donation field (where the admin types in any dollar amount). When you edit an attendee from the back office, you can enter any amount you want, and it's added straight to that attendee's invoice. Useful for one-off charges where setting up a whole package would be overkill: late registration fees, sponsor surcharges, recovering a comped balance, manually billing for an add-on that wasn't on the form, or any other custom amount you need to apply to a single registration without affecting anyone else.

Making a field restricted

The Restricted setting lives inside the standard field editor. Any custom field type can be restricted — text, selection, checkbox, numeric, multiline text, donation, or caption.



1. From the configuration editor, open the Custom Fields tab.
2. Click Add New Field (or click the edit icon on an existing field).
3. Pick the field type and fill in the rest of the Field Basics as you normally would: name, instructions, dates, cost, openings, image.
4. Find the Restricted checkbox in the Field Basics section and check it. The help text reads "If marked as restricted, only admins can select this option."
5. Save and close the editor.
   

Once checked, the field is immediately hidden from the public registration form. If anyone is mid-registration when you flip the flag, they'll only see the field on a page refresh — existing answers aren't affected. If anyone has already answered the field before you made it restricted, their answer stays intact; the field just stops appearing for new registrations.

What attendees see (or don't)

From a public registrant's perspective, a restricted field doesn't exist. It's removed from the form entirely — no label, no placeholder, no validation. They can't see it, they can't bypass it, and they can't tell it's there.

Restricted fields are also skipped when an attendee returns to edit their own registration through the "Allow Event Contacts to return and edit their registration" feature. That's intentional: a field marked as admin-only shouldn't suddenly become editable just because the attendee came back to update their meal choice.

What admins see

When you're working through the Manage Attendees page and add a new attendee or edit an existing one, the restricted field appears alongside every other field in the admin entry form. You can pick from its options, type into it, check it, and save normally. The field shows up in the attendee's record, in CSV exports, in custom reports, and anywhere else attendee data is surfaced.

This is the whole point: the field is part of your attendee data model from the admin's perspective, just not exposed to attendees themselves.

Restricted fields and reports

Restricted fields show up everywhere admin-side that other custom fields do:

• On the Attendees page when you click into an attendee's details.
• In the Attendee Summary PDF.
• In CSV exports of attendee data.
• In the Query Report Creator and other report filters.
• In Field/Attendee reports and the Field Data Grid.

This makes restricted fields useful for filtering and segmenting reports without exposing the segmentation criteria to attendees. You can pull "all attendees flagged as Comped" or "all attendees assigned to Sponsor X" the same way you'd pull any other custom-field-driven report.

Restricted fields vs. tying a field to a package

There are two related ways to limit who sees a custom field:



• Restricted hides the field from everyone on the public registration form. Only admins ever see it. Use this when you need a field that's purely for internal use and shouldn't be touched by attendees at all.
• Tie Field to Specific Packages shows the field only to attendees who picked specific packages. Use this when the field should be filled in by attendees, but only certain attendees should see it — for example, a "session preference" question that only applies to attendees on the conference package.