After your fair has been set up, you may wish to test the entry process to be sure everything is set up correctly. Here are some tips for testing:
NOTE: Once an exhibitor has been created, an invoice is opened. Neither the exhibitor nor the invoice can be deleted. Clicking "Delete Exhibitor" simply sets the exhibitor record back to a "potential exhibitor." The exhibitor record remains on the list of All Exhibitors under the Exhibitor tab for the manager. The invoice will remain listed as an "Open Invoice" on the invoice search.
Exhibitors without entries will not appear on any reports, either standard or custom.
- Be sure Registration Dates are open. You may want to consider opening a single Department, Division or Class if you are concerned about other exhibitors entering at this time.
- Go to your FairEntry welcome page. Create a new family account in FairEntry.
- Don't use your manager login email address.
- Don't use an email address that will be associated with an exhibitor/family, even if you know that family will be making entry. Using their email now will complicate the entry process for them unnecessarily.
- You can use a "fake" email (ending in something like @nomail.com) as long as you remember the password. If you forget the password, there will be no way to reset it. Please note: Even if you are using a "fake" email account, that account can only be used once across all fairs, so you may need to get creative and add your fair name to the email to keep it unique. (sallyjonesmillscofair@nomail.com)
- Another option is to set up a new email account (like gmail or hotmail) and use that only for the testing purposes. That way there is a way to receive messages like password reset and auto-generated emails.
- Create the exhibitor and add entries.
- Don't submit entries if you don't have to test that process. Delete the entries after testing.
- If you need to submit the entries to test settings, be sure to reject them so you can delete the entries and update the invoice amount accordingly. You will see an open invoice on your Invoice Search with a $0.00 balance. The invoice cannot be deleted.
- Be sure to change your Registration Dates back once you are done testing, to prevent families from submitting entries early.
- If you find that you need to make changes to your fair after testing entries, be aware of these things:
- You cannot delete a portion of your hierarchy if it has been used in an entry - even if just an open entry, not submitted. The data trail is there, so it cannot be deleted. Editing is fine. Adding to the hierarchy is fine.
- Animal Types - Once an animal of that type has been created, you cannot adjust the order of items, or remove an item from an animal type or change an animal type file requirement - ie. change a file request from required to optional. You can add a field to an animal type. You can create a new Animal type & link it in addition to, or instead of, the original.
- Custom Fields & Files - if deleted, you cannot get any data previously entered - so you can delete, just know that anything entered in those fields is gone.
Important: If your fair charges fees, be aware that once an invoice has been approved, the total fees on that invoice are locked, even if the entries are deleted. It is highly recommended that you reject any invoices that contain any entries you plan to delete. This will ensure accurate financial reports at the end of the fair.