Approving and Unapproving Competitors
Approval is the gate between "someone filled out a form" and "this person is in the tournament." Only approved competitors flow into divisions and brackets, and each approval consumes one credit from your balance.
The three statuses
- Pending — submitted but not yet reviewed. Pending competitors do not appear in divisions and cost nothing.
- Approved — confirmed by you. One credit is deducted, and the competitor is immediately placed into divisions by the auto-assignment engine.
- Declined — rejected. Declined competitors are removed from consideration but can be re-approved later if circumstances change.
The competitors list has filter buttons — All, Pending, Approved, Declined — so you can work through the pending queue quickly.
Paid registrations auto-approve
Online registrations that complete payment through Stripe are approved automatically — there's nothing to review unless you want to. Pay-later registrations are also accepted but flagged as payment due for check-in. Unpaid registrations stay pending until you act on them.
Approving manually
Open the Competitors section of the Tournament Manager, filter to Pending, and click Approve on a row. The system checks that you have at least one credit, deducts it, and runs division auto-assignment for that competitor in the background. If the competitor doesn't match any division, they land in the Unassigned bucket for you to place manually — see How auto-assignment works.
Insufficient credits: If your balance is zero, approval fails with a message showing how many credits you need versus how many you have. Registrations keep queuing as pending — nothing is lost — but you can't approve until you top up.
Bulk approval
Select multiple pending competitors with the row checkboxes and approve them in one action. A confirmation dialog shows the number of competitors and the total credit cost before anything is deducted.
Unapproving and refunds
Unapproving moves a competitor from approved back to pending and automatically refunds one credit to your balance. The refund appears in your transaction history with a reference to the registration.
There is one guard: you cannot unapprove a competitor whose division bracket already has recorded results. This protects live brackets from silent corruption mid-tournament. If you genuinely need to pull someone out at that stage, reset or delete the affected bracket first, then unapprove.
Deleting competitors
Pending and declined competitors can be deleted directly. Approved competitors must be unapproved first (which refunds the credit) — a deliberate two-step process that prevents accidental loss of an active entry.