Where templates live

Every report you've used so far started life as a template. Templates don't belong to one event; they belong to your whole account, and that's what makes them worth building properly. Name one well, and every colleague running an event can use it.

To find them, open any event's Reports screen and look near the bottom of the left rail, in the Templates section. Every report your account has appears there, each with a switch that pins it to the event you're on. What you likely haven't seen is where those reports are actually kept, which sits behind the small Manage link beside the heading.

Clicking it opens Report templates, a different place entirely from the report you were just looking at. Nothing here belongs to your event; everything belongs to your account, which is exactly what the badge at the top is telling you. Read the line underneath it: three of ten templates. There's a ceiling, and it counts up as you add more.

Under each template's name is a quick summary of what it does: how many columns it has, whether it filters anything, and how many events currently use it. That "used in" count matters, since it tells you where a change to this template might land.

The gold star: your account default

One control here matters more than the rest. The starred template is your account default: the report every event opens with unless someone has deliberately chosen otherwise. Moving that star to a different template changes what your colleagues see on events they've never touched, and it takes a single click with no confirmation.

Treat the star as a decision, not a preference.

Before you move the star: the new default applies instantly and account-wide, with no undo. Move it only when you mean to change what every future event defaults to.

Create a report template

Click New template to build one from scratch.

A blank template already has first name, last name, and email selected, since every report has to identify a person. Two things are worth noticing: the name field is outlined, and Save sits greyed out. Express is telling you that a template without a name isn't a template yet, so name it first.

Name it for what the report is for rather than who asked for it, since everyone in your account will read this name in a list six months from now. Beside it sits an optional description, worth the ten seconds anyway: it's the line your colleagues see when they're choosing between reports.

Now add columns, using the same editor you've already used on an event, so it moves quickly. Everything available is grouped underneath: fields from the registration, fields from the profile, and any custom questions on your form. A caterer, for example, needs to know who's coming and what they'll eat, so you'd add Dietary Requirements and its free-text follow-up question.

You could add filters and a sort order here too, exactly as you would on an event, and they'd travel with the template to every event that uses it. When the template's ready, click Save.

Pin a template to your event

Saving drops the header to four of ten, drops your new template into the list in alphabetical order, and adds a delete icon now that there's something to delete. Click Back to report to see what your event makes of it.

Here's the part that catches everyone out: your new template sits in the Templates list, but look above it at Select report, and it isn't there. Building a template doesn't put it on your event. Templates arrive switched off, and until you pin one, it stays out of your way. That's the right default when the list can run to ten, but it does mean the report you just built appears to have vanished. Click the switch beside its name.

There it is, up in Select report with the others, one click away whenever you need it. Pinning is per event, so this only decides what this event sees; it changes nothing for anybody else. Pin the two or three templates an event actually uses, and leave the rest switched off rather than deleting the ones you're not using this time.

Delete a report template

Deleting is the part worth doing carefully. Before you delete anything, read the line under the template's name. It might now say used in 1 where a moment ago it said zero, because pinning it to your event is what changed that. Treat that line as a reason to stop and check, not as proof one way or the other, since it's the only hint on this screen that a template might be in use somewhere else, and nothing else here asks you to look.

The confirmation names the template, so you can't delete the wrong one by accident, and it tells you this can't be undone. What it doesn't tell you is who else is using it: nothing in this dialog mentions the other events that may have this template pinned, so that's a check to make before you get here, not after.

Once deleted, the header drops back to three of ten. Deleting a template removes it from every event that had it pinned, not just from this list, which is exactly why it's worth a second thought rather than a quick click.