Twice a year you load the gear into the van and take over a hotel conference ballroom for a tournament. Mats down, brackets printed, and out front — the part nobody films — a folding table, a cash box, two clipboards, and a line out the door while a coach who should be mat-side makes change for a twenty.
You already fixed this problem at the gym. The tablet by the drink fridge sells pre-workout and bottled water without anyone standing behind it. That same tablet travels to the hotel and runs the entire door. No rented seasonal ticketing kiosk, no wristband vendor, no new hardware to learn the morning of.
Admission is just a product you ring up
Event sales is a feature you switch on when you need it — it's off the rest of the year, which is exactly right for a gym that hosts two tournaments. Turn it on and your door items are ordinary catalog products: pre-load General Admission, Competitor, Spectator, and Kids, and ringing someone up is a couple of taps.
Payment is however they want to pay: card, cash, or a QR code the attendee pays on their own phone. Tap-to-pay works on the Android app on an NFC tablet; in Chrome you pair a separate reader. Most people at the door pay themselves — the line moves because the staffer isn't the bottleneck.
The wristband prints itself
Here's the piece that replaces the clipboard. Proof of entry prints on the same thermal receipt printer that prints your receipts — a wristband for the person, or a sticker if you'd rather, each carrying a QR code tied to that exact sale. Link a ticket product to a print template and it fires automatically the moment that line item sells. Pay, band snaps off the printer, next person steps up.
Scanning people in — no guest list, no signal
Ballroom Wi-Fi is a coin flip, so door validation runs on the device, offline. On a till with wristband scanning switched on, you scan a band and it's checked right there — no guest list to download first. Switch on signed QR codes and every band carries a cryptographic signature the till verifies offline, confirming it was issued by one of your own tills, not printed at a copy shop. Both are per-device settings, off until you turn them on.
Be straight with yourself about what the scan does: a QR is reusable within its validity window — it is not single-use — so keep the human check you already do, a glance at the band on the wrist. With one entry device, double-use is a non-issue: that tablet remembers every code it scanned today, signal or not. If you run several gates all offline at once, each could admit a copied code until they reconnect — fine for a single-entry tournament, worth knowing if you don't. The offline validation deep dive walks through the trade-offs.
The QR receipt attendees actually use
A competitor's parent wants the receipt for reimbursement. They scan the QR on their own wristband and the full online receipt for the whole transaction comes up on their phone — the entry, any extras, all of it. That part needs a connection on their phone, since the record lives online, but they're scanning it that evening from the hotel lobby, not at your door.
Merch and concessions, same tablet
Selling shirts, rashguards, or drinks at the event? For anything non-admission, a shopper scans the barcode or snaps a photo and AI identifies the item, or taps it from the catalog — the concession-stand workflow covers the halftime rush.
Switch-on order (do it once, the week before)
A few settings, in order: turn on printer templates (the master switch) → assign a template to the door tablet → link each ticket product to a template (skip this and it sells fine but prints nothing) → turn on wristband scanning on that device → optionally turn on signed codes. The step-by-step wristband setup has the screenshots.
Runs on Android tablets and phones and in Chrome — there's no iOS build. Dialog-free printing to a USB or Bluetooth thermal printer is an Android-app capability; in a browser you print through the normal print dialog. Available in the US and UK.
Try it before your next tournament
The entry plan, Stand, is free — no card to start, no expiration. Create a free TallyTill account and set up your door items this week, or see the pricing page for the paid tiers.