How can we help?

1. Open the Events page on Google Workspace Marketplace and press Install.
2. Choose the Google account you want to use, and allow the permissions. Why Events asks for them.
3. Open a spreadsheet in Google Sheets. A new, empty one is fine.
4. Go to Extensions → MartensLink Events → Open Events. The panel opens on the right.

The first time, Events asks what the event should do. Choose the parts.

If the panel feels narrow, choose Open Events in a window in the same menu.

Events is not in the Extensions menu

• Reload the spreadsheet. The menu is built when the file opens.
• Check that you are signed in to the account where you installed Events.
• At work or school, your administrator may have to allow the add-on.

If you see “Authorization is required”, read this.

Google shows a list of permissions when you install. Events uses each one only for what you see in the panel:

• The spreadsheet you use Events in: read your registrations and write lists, schedules and payment overviews. Events also keeps its own records in hidden tabs. Events cannot open or create any other spreadsheet.
• Google Forms: create and update your registration forms, read the answers, and open or close registration.
• Send email as you: confirmations, payment links, reminders and schedules are sent from your Gmail.
• Connect to an external service: only Stripe (if you take payments) and MartensLink’s licence service (to see whether your account has Pro).
• Run when you are not there: handle new registrations and check payments, for example once an hour and at the times registration should open or close.
• See your email address: used as the reply-to address, to send test emails to you, and to show who runs the event.
• Confirm your identity: lets Google confirm to the licence service which account you use, so that Pro follows your account.

Your data stays in your Google account. MartensLink has no server that receives your participants’ data. Read more in Your data and GDPR and in our Privacy Policy for Events.

Events has three parts, and each spreadsheet can use any combination of them:

• Form: build the registration form from the panel (recommended).
• Payment: take payment by card or Swish through your own Stripe account.
• Scheduling: place people in sessions and groups, and email everyone their own schedule.

The first time you open Events in a spreadsheet, tick what you need and press Get started.

Change it later under ⚙ → Parts. Nothing is deleted when you turn a part off. Turn it back on and everything is still there.

Already have a Google Form? Untick Form, and Events asks which form to charge for or where the registrations are. See Use a form you already have.

In the start view, choose Or try it first with sample data. Events adds twelve made-up participants and four days, and you can try groups, the schedule and sending.

• Sample participants have made-up addresses. Events never emails them and never creates payment links for them.
• Events refuses to add sample data to an event where real people have registered.

When you are done, press Take out the sample data in the line at the top of the panel, or in the guide. Do this before you send anything for real.

The panel has a rail of icons on the left with four groups:

• Form: build, publish and change your registration forms, and their settings.
• Participants: the People list, and payments per person.
• Schedule: what the schedule is built on, groups, generate, export and send.
• Payment: how and when people pay, prices, extras and the overview of the money.

Under the form bar there is a next-step line, for example “12 sign-ups. Next: make the schedule”. Press it to go to the right place. The whole checklist is in ⚙ → Guide.

Other things worth knowing:

• ⓘ next to a heading opens a short explanation.
• ⟳ Update everything fetches new answers and payments.
• ⚙ holds settings, parts, templates, ending the event and help.

1. Open the Form tab.
2. Add questions with Question. Make sure the form asks for name and email address: Events uses them to tell people apart and to send emails.
3. Add days and sessions with Dates & times. See Add days, times and sessions.
4. Press Preview to see the form as participants will.
5. Press Create Google Form. Events creates a real Google Form and a response tab in your spreadsheet.

Your draft is saved automatically while you work. You can build several forms in the same event, for example one for participants and one for leaders.

Want to reuse questions in the next event? Choose Ready-made questions under Add and press Save questions from this form.

Next: publish and share the form.

Dates & times in the Form tab creates the questions for the days of your event. Pick the days in the calendar and choose, for each day:

• times people can choose between, or the whole day;
• places per session, if the number is limited;
• whether participants choose sessions themselves, or you place them later;
• courses (several days booked together) or packages (for example 6, 8 or 11 sessions over a week, with a price each).

Events writes these as ordinary questions in your Google Form. The schedule then knows which question is which day and session.

Once people have answered, do not rename an option in Google Forms. Answers already given keep the old text. Change days and times in Events instead. See Change a form people have answered.

When the form is created, the status line in the Form tab shows Open or Closed, and a Share button.

Share gives you:

• the form’s link, shortened by Google, with Copy;
• a QR code that you can download as an image, for posters and slides.

The QR code is made inside the panel. The link is never sent to an outside service.

If the share window says only people in your organisation can answer, participants from outside cannot register. Press Open it for everybody with the link.

To open registration at a certain time, or close it automatically, see Open and close registration.

Change questions, prices or sessions in the Form tab, then press Update the form. Events shows what will change before anything is written. The button says itself whether anything is waiting: Update the form (3 changes), or The form is up to date when everything is already in it. The title, description, payment, limits and emails are saved straight to the form and need no update.

Locked once somebody has answered:

• Answer options and the question type. Answers already given keep the old text and would otherwise stop counting. If you need something new, press Duplicate the question and change the copy.
• Dates and times from Dates & times. To move somebody, do it in the Schedule tab: Move people in Schedule.
• Sessions with answers are not removed. You can close the session or limit its places instead.

Text you wrote in Google Forms is kept. Events changes only its own lines. If you changed a title in Google Forms (the day, for example), Events notices. The Schedule tab then offers Follow the form or Change the title back.

Nobody has answered yet? Then nothing is locked, and you can open Dates & times again and redo the days freely.

By hand: the Open / Closed switch in the Form tab’s status line.

Automatically: at the bottom of Form settings:

• Open registration at a set time: closed until then, saying when it opens.
• Close registration automatically: on a last day, at a number of sign-ups, or when the places per session are taken.
• When full: close, or put people on a waitlist. Whoever lands on the waitlist gets an email with their place in line.

When a place frees up, for example because somebody cancels, the next person in line gets it, and Events can email them.

The number and the places are checked every time somebody signs up. For the times, Events sets its clock to the time as it gets near, so registration opens and closes close to it, sometimes a few minutes after.

Google Forms has its own setting to stop taking answers at a set time. Events cannot read or change it. If you use both, make sure they say the same thing.

Tick Email me when something happens to get an email when a session fills up or the form opens or closes by itself.

The After sign-up card in the Form tab has two rows:

• Thank-you page: what people see in Google Forms after they press Submit. Use the suggestion or write your own.
• Confirmation mail: an email to everyone who registers. Turn on Send a confirmation mail, then write the subject and text.

In the text you can insert labels such as the person’s name, the event, their answers and the sessions they chose. If you take payment, the label for Payment makes the same email carry the payment link, so people get one email instead of two.

Use Preview to see the email with example answers, and Send a test to me to see it in your inbox.

The form must collect email addresses, otherwise there is nobody to send to.

Emails go from your Gmail and count against your daily limit. See How many emails can I send?

You do not have to build the form in Events.

1. In the start view, untick Form. Or later: open the list of forms and choose Connect a form of your own.
2. Paste the form’s link that ends in /edit. The link people answer on (ending in /viewform) cannot be used.
3. Set prices, registration rules and the confirmation email on the form’s page in Events.

Events never changes your questions in a connected form.

If the form saves its answers in another spreadsheet, Events says so and offers Send the answers to this spreadsheet. Google then creates a new tab here with the answers so far.

For the schedule, use Point out the sessions to tell Events which questions are days and sessions.

To take card payments, and Swish when it is on in your Stripe account, you need a free account at stripe.com and a restricted API key. Payments go straight to your Stripe account. MartensLink never touches the money.

The easiest way is the guide: open the line at the top of Payment and press How do I make a key? by the key field. It shows exactly which permissions the key needs for the way you take payments, and checks the key when you paste it.

In short:

1. Start in test mode. You can try everything without real money. The line under Payment says “test mode” while you do.
2. Create a restricted key in Stripe with the permissions the guide lists. For “A price per answer” that is at least Payment Links: Write and Checkout Sessions: Read.
3. Paste the key into Events. It starts with rk_.
4. When everything works, press Go live on the line. The guide shows how to create a key in live mode, and ends with two ticks: that receipts to customers and Swish are on in Stripe.

Events does not accept your full secret key (sk_). That is on purpose: a restricted key can only do what Events needs.

If real people sign up while Stripe is in test mode, the Next step line says so, because they cannot pay. If the panel says the key cannot create payment links, press Fix the key, add the permission in Stripe and press Check again.

At the top of Payment a line says how the event takes payments and whether it works, for example “A price per answer · live ✓ · Swish ✓”. Press it to choose the way people pay and to connect Stripe:

• A price per answer (recommended): Events works out what each person owes from their answers, with discounts, and sends each payer their own payment link. A parent with two children gets one link.
• Same link: you already have a payment link in Stripe with a fixed price. Everybody gets that link. Prices on questions rest until you switch back.
• Own link (under Another way…): any payment link or an account number, outside Stripe. It needs no Stripe key. You mark yourself who has paid.

You set prices on the questions in the Form tab. Prices for sessions without a form, and extras such as lunch, go under Payment → What it costs.

Next: when the payment link is sent.

Under Payment you choose when people are asked to pay:

• At sign-up: the payment link is emailed right after someone registers.
• When I send it: nobody is asked until you decide. Useful when you first need to know who gets a place. Then go to Participants, tick people and press Send payment link. You see who gets a link and for how much before anything is sent.

If a person’s answers change after they got a link, the next email carries a new link for what is left.

Reminders: choose never, after 3 days, after a week or after two weeks. A reminder goes once to each payer who got a link but has not paid. You can also remind by hand in Participants.

Someone who has just paid is never asked again: Events checks Stripe before each payment email.

Events checks Stripe for new payments about once an hour, and when you press ⟳ Update everything or Extensions → MartensLink Events → Check payments now.

The Payment page shows the figures: payers, to pay, paid and left. Each person’s card in Participants shows their account.

Paid in cash or by bank transfer? Open the person and press Mark paid.

Refund a participant: do it in your Stripe dashboard. The money is in your Stripe account, so MartensLink cannot refund it. If someone has paid more than they owe, Events shows it as a credit. Press Mark refunded when you have paid it back.

The 💳 Payments tab shows one row per payer. It is rewritten each time, so do not type in it. Edits there are lost.

Swish: turn on Swish as a payment method in your Stripe dashboard. When it is on, it appears for payments in Swedish kronor, and through Stripe you do not need your own Swish agreement. Stripe does not approve Swish for every kind of business: dance schools, schools, education and leisure activities, for example, may be asked for more information or turned down. The line under Payment shows whether Swish is on. Cards always work.

VAT: choose a category for what you sell, for example admission or a course, under Payment. Stripe Tax works out the rate, so Stripe Tax must be on in your Stripe account, and Stripe charges 0.5% of the amount for it. For admission, add the venue address, because admission is taxed where the event is held. Check the VAT asks Stripe which rate each category gets. Nothing is charged. If you do not charge VAT, you need none of this.

Discounts (with A price per answer):

• Siblings: a lower price for more people at the same address.
• Early price: for registrations before a date.
• Codes: a code typed into a question in the form.

Discounts are added together and never take a price below zero. They do not apply to “Same link”, because that price is set in Stripe.

We are not tax advisers. Ask your accountant whether and how to charge VAT.

Participants → People shows everyone in the event: registrations from your forms, people from imported lists and people you added by hand.

• Add a person: for someone who registered by phone, or a leader.
• Many at once? Paste a list: paste names and email addresses from a spreadsheet or document. You see a preview before anything is saved.
• Take out of the event…: removes a person from the event without deleting their answer. The place is freed, and the next on the waitlist can get it.
• Same person? Events suggests pairs that look like the same person, for example one letter apart. You decide.

Corrections in the response tab count. If you correct a cell in the response tab, the schedule and places use your correction. The People list shows what changed. Press OK when you have seen it.

One email address, several children? Events tells them apart by first name, so a parent can register two children with one address.

Turn on Let participants cancel in the form’s settings. Events then:

• puts a personal cancellation link in the confirmation email and the schedule email;
• closes cancellation a chosen number of days before the event starts;
• takes the person out of that form when they cancel, frees the place and moves the waitlist;
• emails the participant a receipt and tells you.

Under Back, choose what the participant gets back of what they paid: All, All but an amount, Nothing, or Credit, which is taken off the payer’s next registration in this event. Events works out the amount.

Events never refunds money automatically. If you want to refund, do it in Stripe.

The cancellation link works once and only for that registration.

Events sends email from your own Google account, so Google’s daily limit applies:

• about 100 recipients a day from a free Gmail account;
• about 1,500 a day from Google Workspace.

The limit is shared with everything else you send through scripts that day.

What Events does so it lasts:

• Siblings get one schedule email together. When several participants share an address, the address gets one email, with each person’s schedule under their name.
• The Next step line tells you in time. When the number of sign-ups gets near what your account sends in a day, it says how many days the schedule to everybody takes, and the last day to send it.
• A schedule send to more people than you have left today sends what fits now. The rest goes by itself over the following days. The Send screen shows how it is going.
• A confirmation that cannot be sent today waits and goes when the limit allows. It is never lost.
• A copy to yourself (BCC) counts as one more recipient per email.

The Confirmation email row shows roughly how many emails your account can send per day.

A big event on a free account? Send the schedule a few days before you need it, or use Google Workspace.

The Schedule tab starts with a card that says what the schedule is built on: your forms, imported lists, and sessions you created without a form.

1. Suggest groups: Events plans how many groups each time needs from the registrations, with places per group and rooms if you have added them. You see the plan before it is saved.
2. Generate schedule: places everyone in a group, following filters, places and what people chose.
3. Check the result. Move people by hand if needed. Changes you make by hand are kept the next time you generate.

When new people register later, press Place the new ones. Everyone already placed stays where they are.

Keep together and mix evenly: link people who want to be together (Participants → tick → Keep together), and choose Mix evenly by a question, for example level or age, on a session with several groups.

Next: export and send the schedule.

Export: Export schedule makes a formatted tab in your spreadsheet, for printing or sharing. Choose a style, colour, size and what each block shows. The preview shows the real schedule.

Send: the Send tab emails each person their own schedule. You can:

• write the email, with labels for name and schedule;
• Send a test to me first;
• send to everyone, or only to people who have not had it, or who have changed.

If the schedule changed since it last went out, Send exports it first, so the sheet and the mails say the same. You do not need to export before sending.

If the send is larger than today’s email limit, the rest goes by itself over the following days. See How many emails can I send?

If you take payment When I send it, the schedule email can carry the payment link.

The Events panel does not open in the Google Sheets app on phones. That is Google’s limit. For the day of the event, use the attendance list instead:

1. Choose ⚙ → Attendance list….
2. Pick the sessions.
3. Press Make the list. You get a tab, ✔ Attendance, with a box to tick for everyone placed there, a note column, and who has not paid.

Open the spreadsheet in the Google Sheets app on your phone and tick off people as they arrive. It copes with a poor connection.

Making the list again keeps the ticks and notes.

Free: all three parts (form, payment and schedule) for up to 15 participants and 3 leaders per event. Enough to try the whole flow with a small event or with friends.

• Sample data and your own tests do not count. A sign-up from your own address, or from anyone who can edit the spreadsheet, is marked “Your test” in People. It gets every email but takes no place. Press Count as a real sign-up if it is one.
• At the limit the form does not close unless you choose it. Whoever signs up after the first 15 stays in People, marked “Waiting for Pro”, and gets their confirmation and payment link when you get Pro. If you would rather registration closed, choose Close at 15 on the line in People.

Pro: no limit on participants or events. Monthly or yearly. Events takes no percentage of what you charge. Your participants’ payments go straight to your Stripe account, and Stripe’s own fee is the only fee.

Current prices are on the Events page.

Launch price: the first 100 customers who choose yearly keep their price for as long as the subscription renews without a break.

See also Buy, cancel or get a refund.

Paddle.com is our reseller (Merchant of Record). Paddle handles checkout, receipts, VAT and refunds, so your receipt comes from Paddle.

Buy: choose ⚙ → Get Pro in Events, or pick a plan on the Events page and sign in with Google. Pro is linked to the Google account you use Events with, and you see which account before you pay. No code to keep: Pro follows the account to all your spreadsheets and computers.

Someone else paying, like a treasurer? Choose ⚙ → Get Pro → Someone else paying and send them the link. Pro lands on your account, whoever pays.

Changing Google account? Write to support@martenslink.com and we will move Pro for you.

Cancel: in Events under ⚙ → Pro → Manage subscription, through the link in your receipt email, or at paddle.net. Cancelling takes effect at the next renewal: you keep Pro for the whole period you have already paid for, and are not charged again. The payment for a period that has started is not refunded, except under the money-back guarantee (below). Nothing in your spreadsheets is deleted.

Refund: you get a 14-day money-back guarantee on your first Pro purchase and on yearly renewals, no questions asked. Monthly renewals are not refunded. Request the refund at paddle.net, and Paddle handles it for us. See the Refund Policy.

• Receipt: Paddle emails a receipt for every payment. It contains a link to download an invoice as a PDF.
• Lost the receipt? Go to paddle.net and look up your order with the email address you bought with.
• Buying for a company or association: choose to add business details at checkout and enter your VAT number. The invoice then carries your details and, within the EU, is reverse-charged where the rules allow.
• Wrong details on the invoice? Write to us with the order number (it starts with #).

The charge on your card statement shows Paddle or PADDLE.NET, because Paddle sells on our behalf.

This is a known problem in Google’s add-ons, not in your spreadsheet. It almost always happens when you are signed in to several Google accounts in the same browser. The add-on then runs as your default account, not the one that owns the spreadsheet.

Try, in this order:

1. Open the spreadsheet in a private / incognito window, signed in only to the account that has Events.
2. Or sign out of all accounts, then sign in first to the account that has Events.
3. Or use another browser profile with only that account.

Other causes:

• You have not opened Events since an update that needs a new permission. Open it from the Extensions menu and allow.
• At work or school, your administrator may have blocked the add-on.

Still stuck? Contact us and include the exact error text.

Events handles new answers when someone registers, when you open the panel, and once an hour. If nothing seems to happen:

1. Open the panel or press ⟳ Update everything. Events then catches up with every answer it has not handled.
2. Check where the answers go. If the form saves its answers in another spreadsheet, Events says so. Choose Send the answers to this spreadsheet.
3. Has the event been ended? An ended event closes registration and stops everything that runs by itself. Open it again from the guide or ⚙.
4. Are you the right account? Things that run by themselves run as the person who set them up.

Nothing is lost while Events waits. Every answer is handled once, even if the automatic check was missed.

Check, in this order:

1. The spam folder at the participant. Ask them to mark the email as not spam.
2. The address. A typing mistake in the form is the most common cause. Correct it in the response tab. Events uses the correction.
3. The email is turned on: Form → After sign-up → Confirmation mail.
4. The daily limit. If it is used up, emails wait until tomorrow. See How many emails can I send?
5. Your Sent folder in Gmail. If the email is there, it was sent, and the problem is at the receiving end.

Sample participants are never emailed, and neither are people you have taken out of the event.

Events creates hidden tabs in your spreadsheet whose names start with an underscore, for example _Registrations, _PayLinks, _PayLog, _Told, _WorkingSchedule and _Log.

They are Events’ memory: which answers have been handled, which emails have been sent, which payments have arrived and what each person has been told.

Do not delete or edit them. Without them, Events can send emails again to people who already had them. Sheets warns you if you try.

The _Log tab contains error messages. It can help us if you contact support, but send only the relevant row, and remove any names.

Limits that come from Google:

• The panel does not open on phones. Use the attendance list in the Google Sheets app instead.
• Colours, fonts and header images of the form cannot be set by an add-on. Change them in Google Forms (the palette icon).
• File upload questions must be set up in Google Forms.
• “Limit to 1 response” and “Allow editing” make Google ask every participant to sign in with a Google account. That is why they are off by default.
• Daily email limit: see How many emails can I send?

Choices we have made:

• One event per spreadsheet. Start the next event in a new spreadsheet. See End the event and start the next.
• No money passes through us. Payments go to your own Stripe account.
• New spreadsheets end up in My Drive. Move them to a folder yourself.

Missing something? Tell us what you want to achieve. Often there is already a way, and if not, it helps us decide what to build next.

Where the data is: in your Google account (the spreadsheet, the forms and Gmail), and in your own Stripe account if you take payment. MartensLink has no server that receives your participants’ data.

Who is responsible: you, as organiser, decide what you collect and why, so you are the controller under the GDPR. Google and Stripe process the data for you under your agreements with them. MartensLink provides the software and is not a processor of your participants’ data.

What Events helps with:

• a Terms block and a privacy text that you can put last in your form, with suggested texts;
• taking people out of the event, and deleting people you added by hand;
• emails go only to people in the event, never to sample data.

Sent to Stripe when you take payment: the payer’s email, a payment reference, and the receipt lines (each participant’s name and what they pay for, or only a total if you choose that). Other answers stay in Google.

Read the full Privacy Policy for Events.

The suggested texts are an aid, not legal advice. Check that they fit your event.

One event per spreadsheet. You start the next event in a new spreadsheet.

Start the next event:

1. Choose ⚙ → Next event in a new spreadsheet….
2. Tick Save this event as a template if the next event will be like this one. Tick End this event at the same time if this one is done.
3. Press Open a new spreadsheet. An empty spreadsheet opens in a new tab.
4. Open Extensions → MartensLink Events there. The start view asks whether you want to start from the event you saved. Choose which forms and settings come along, and pick new dates.

Participants, answers, payments and the schedule never come along. Templates are saved in your Google account.

End the event: ⚙ → End the event… closes registration and stops everything that runs by itself in this spreadsheet: payment checks, reminders and sends. Everything is kept, and you can open the event again.

• Stop a subscription: see Buy, cancel or get a refund. Uninstalling does not cancel the subscription.
• Remove the Stripe key: in Events under Payment → Stripe. You can also delete or roll the key in Stripe.
• Delete an event: delete the spreadsheet and its forms in Google Drive.
• Delete templates and saved questions: in Events under Ready-made questions → Save questions from this form, with the bin on the row.
• Uninstall: in Google Sheets, Extensions → Add-ons → Manage add-ons, then Events → Uninstall. Remove its access at myaccount.google.com/permissions.

What MartensLink holds about you is limited to your purchase and licence status, and any support conversations. To have it deleted, email privacy@martenslink.com.