The register one volunteer keeps
A marque register. A breed register. A listing of historic organs, bells, sundials or milestones. A roll of honour. Thousands of items, one person who knows where they all are, and members who send in changes by email because there is nowhere else to send them.
If that is your job, this page is for you. The limits go first, because a register is somebody’s life’s work and finding out afterwards is not acceptable.
Four things this does not do
- A public form cannot show a link field. If an update has to say which item it is about, put a plain text box on it — “Chassis number as you know it” — and set the real link yourself when you check the update. The form simply will not display a link, because a link points into records a stranger cannot see.
- Hiding a single field from some people is not enforced. Anyone who can open a record sees every field on it. Owners’ addresses go in their own collection, not in a field marked private. The long version is here.
- There is no report designer. You can print any list or any single record to PDF exactly as it appears on screen. You cannot lay out a banded report with grouped subtotals for the yearbook.
- A re-import can correct records, but it never removes them. Bring a corrected spreadsheet in again and you are asked whether a column identifies records you already have — a membership number, a flock number, a bridge number. Pick it and those rows are corrected rather than added twice. Two things it will not do: it only changes the columns your file actually carries, so anything you have typed in here since is left alone; and a record missing from the new file is NOT deleted, because a short export would otherwise wipe your register. It refuses outright, importing nothing, if that column is blank on any row or holds the same value twice. The long version is here.
What it does, in the order a registrar meets it
You describe the register in a sentence and it is built. Not a template you adapt — your own fields, from your own words. The sentence a car club’s registrar would type is roughly:
A register for our club. Each car has a chassis number, model, year, colour, current owner and where it is now. Owners and members send in updates about a car, and each update records who sent it, the date, what they said, and whether it has been checked and added to the register yet. I need a list of updates still waiting to be checked. Email me when a new update comes in. Owners’ details should only be visible to the registrar.
Swap car for bell, organ, locomotive, milestone or dog. What comes back is three linked lists — the items, the owners, the updates — with a screen for each, a screen showing only the updates still waiting, and the owners restricted to you.
Your existing spreadsheet comes in as it is. Import a CSV or an Excel file (it asks which sheet); the columns you already use become the fields. No mapping step, no preparing the file first. The free plan holds 10,000 records per app.
Members send updates on a link, with no account. Open the updates collection as a public form, set it to anyone with the link, and share the link or its QR code. Each submission lands as a record, and you get an email naming who sent it and linking straight to it.
Every item carries its own state and its own history. Checked or waiting. Who holds it, where it is, when it was last seen. And every change that was ever made to it, with who made it and when — so “why does this say Devon?” has an answer instead of a shrug.
The handover
This is the part registrars ask about first, and it is the part a spreadsheet does worst. A register kept in one file is handed over as that file, and everything not in the file — the corrections still sitting in an inbox, the reason a disputed entry was left alone, who reported what — stays with the person leaving.
Here the register is an account rather than a file. The next registrar is added as a member and the last one removed; nothing is copied, nothing is emailed, nothing goes missing in the move. The history stays with the records, because it was never in anybody’s head.
Try it with your own register. Describe it in a sentence, or drop your existing spreadsheet straight in.
Open a workspace — free, no card
If your register is larger than 10,000 items, or you need a designed report for a yearbook, say so before you start rather than after — the honest answer may be that this is the wrong tool for it.
Would rather see your own register working before you touch it? Tell us what it holds and we will build a working version and show you. No fee and no card.