Start with a map, not a ticket design
Before deciding how guests prove who they are, decide where they are allowed to go. Take a floor plan of the venue and mark every area with a different rule: the public areas everyone with a ticket may use, the areas for a smaller group (VIP, speakers, sponsors, press), the areas for staff and performers only, and the places where people cross between them. Every crossing is a checkpoint, whether or not you put a person there.
Keep the number of zones as small as the event allows. Each extra zone is another credential to issue, another checkpoint to staff and another rule for guests to misunderstand. Three well-run zones are worth more than seven that nobody enforces after the first hour.
- General: every admitted guest.
- Hosted areas: VIP lounge, speakers’ room, sponsor area, press area.
- Restricted: backstage, production, cash and storage, first aid.
- Checkpoints: every door or corridor where one zone meets another.
One credential, readable at every checkpoint
Each guest should carry one credential that tells every checkpoint what they may do: a personal QR code that the scanner looks up, a printed badge, a coloured wristband, or a combination. The rule that matters is that the right to enter a zone lives in the guest’s record, not in the guest’s explanation. A steward at the backstage door should be able to see, from a scan or a glance, that this person is crew, rather than deciding on the strength of a confident manner.
Visible markers — a badge colour, a lanyard, a wristband — help where scanning every crossing would be too slow, such as a busy corridor between hall and lounge. Combine them with the record: scan at the outer door, issue the marker there, and let the inner checkpoints check the marker. Then a lost wristband is a question the record can answer.
Several entrances, one list
Large venues have more than one way in: a main entrance, a VIP or speakers’ entrance, a press entrance, a staff and delivery door. All of them should check against the same list, so that a guest admitted at one is shown as admitted at the others. Two separate lists — one for the front, a printed one for the VIP door — are how the same person is let in twice and how a VIP is turned away from the door they were told to use.
Decide which entrance each group should use and say so on their invitation or ticket. Then staff each entrance by expected flow and by judgement: the main door needs many hands in the first hour, the VIP entrance needs someone who recognises faces and can make a decision without a supervisor, and the staff door needs someone who knows the crew.
Re-entry rules
Every event needs an explicit answer to one question: can someone who has left come back in? There are three common answers. No re-entry: leaving ends the visit, which is simple to run and suits short evenings. Free re-entry: the guest’s code is scanned again on return and recorded as a re-entry, which suits festivals, conferences and venues with an outdoor area. Controlled re-entry: guests leaving receive a hand stamp or a pass-out, and only that marker lets them back in.
Whatever you choose, tell guests before they leave, not when they come back, and make sure the report separates re-entries from first arrivals. A count that adds one every time somebody steps outside is a count of door swings, not of people.
Staff roles: who may do what
Access control is as much about the staff as the guests. Not everyone on the team needs the same rights, and the safest arrangement gives each person exactly what their job requires. A door volunteer needs to scan and admit; they do not need to edit the guest list or export it. A supervisor needs to approve exceptions. A zone steward needs to see who may enter their zone. The person running the guest list needs to change it, but may never stand at a door.
Give every person their own sign-in, on their own phone where possible, and never share a single account among the door team. When a decision is questioned the next day — why was this person let into the lounge? — the answer should be a name and a time, not “someone on the door”.
- Door staff: scan, admit, record a re-entry, add a walk-in only if allowed.
- Supervisor: approve exceptions, override a refusal, handle incidents.
- Zone steward: check credentials for one zone, call the supervisor.
- Guest list manager: edit the list and the groups, not stationed at a door.
- Viewer: watch arrivals and numbers, change nothing.
Incidents at the door
Most incidents are ordinary: a ticket already scanned, a guest at the wrong entrance, a name spelled differently from the invitation, a plus-one arriving alone, a guest who is not on the list at all. Write a short answer for each before the event, so the door staff know what they may decide alone and what goes to a supervisor. A rule written in advance is applied the same way at 19:00 and at 22:00; a rule improvised in the queue is not.
Some incidents are serious: someone refused entry who becomes aggressive, a person found in a restricted area, a medical emergency, a lost child. These belong to the venue’s security and safety plan, not to the guest list, and the door team should know exactly whom to call. Whatever happens, write it down with the time, the place and the staff involved. An incident log kept on the night is far more reliable than one reconstructed from memory.
The record of who entered where
Good access control ends in a record you can read the next morning: who was admitted, at which entrance, at what time and by whom; who re-entered; who was refused and why; who was added at the door and on whose authority. For hosted zones, it is often enough to know who was allowed in and how full the area was at its busiest; for restricted zones, a list of every entry may be required by the venue or the client.
Keep only what you need, for as long as you need it, and say in your privacy notice what you record at the door. A record of movements is personal data, and it should be handled with the same care as the guest list it came from.
Putting it together
Access control works when the map, the credentials, the entrances, the rules and the staff agree with each other, and when every decision leaves a trace. In Winglark, GatePass runs several doors against one list on ordinary phones, and the team works with roles that match a real event team, so door staff can admit guests on their own phones without being able to change the list behind them.