Staff the registration desk for your busiest hour, not your headcount. Divide peak arrivals per hour by what one station handles per hour (about 120 at 30 seconds a person), then add a greeter, a help desk, a walk-in desk and a spare printer. For 600 arrivals in an hour, that means five scanning stations before anything else.
Why the Busiest Hour Sets the Number
A conference of 1,500 delegates does not need 1,500 divided by the day. It needs enough people for the 40 minutes when the doors open and everyone remembers they wanted coffee first. Bizzabo's staffing formula guide (6 February 2026) puts it plainly: peak arrivals per hour divided by attendees processed per staff member per hour gives the minimum number of stations. Its worked example has 600 people arriving in one hour at 30 seconds each, so one person handles 120 an hour and the desk needs five.
The hard part is guessing the peak. Converve's check-in and badge printing guide (published 7 September 2026, updated 4 November) suggests starting from 70% of expected attendance arriving within 90 minutes when you have no history. A separate Nunify benchmark article (9 March 2026) assumes 70% within 30 minutes. Those two windows give very different desks, so treat both as bookends and let last year's scan times settle the argument.
How Long Does One Check-in Take?
It depends almost entirely on how the person is found. Nunify's figures below are processing times, and the hourly column is simple arithmetic (3,600 seconds divided by seconds per person), not observed results from a live event.
| Method | Seconds per Person (Nunify, 9 Mar 2026) | Theoretical per Hour, per Station | On eventcloud |
|---|---|---|---|
| QR code scan on a phone | 5 to 15 | 240 to 720 | Staff scan the QR code or type the nine-digit ticket number on any phone, with one link and a 4-digit PIN |
| QR scan plus badge printing | 15 to 30 | 120 to 240 | Scan at the door, print at the Badge Kiosk beside it |
| Self-service kiosk | 20 to 45 | 80 to 180 | Badge Kiosk: visitors type their ticket number, check the badge and print, which checks them in |
| Staff-assisted name lookup | 30 to 60 | 60 to 120 | Ask us |
The gap between the first and last row is the whole argument for pre-registration. A code scan is a few seconds; hunting for a surname in a list is a minute of someone's life and a growing queue behind them.
How Many Lanes and What Do the People Do?
Plan for more people than the formula says, because the formula assumes nobody drops a lanyard. Fielddrive's onsite flow guide (1 May 2026) recommends 1.5 times the calculated staff during the predicted peak and suggests one staff member per 50 to 75 people during peak ingress. Nunify adds a help desk at roughly one person per 200 attendees, placed away from the main flow.
Three roles do most of the work:
Greeters point people to the next free station and ask them to have their QR code open. One greeter can cover several stations.
Scanners check people in. On eventcloud the staff check-in page flags repeat scans and shows name, company and ticket type at a glance.
A help desk handles lost codes, name changes, VIPs and speakers, so the exceptions never sit in the main line.
Use one queue that feeds whichever station is free. Converve describes a supplier case where eight stations caused immediate congestion and moving to 14 stations, a single serpentine queue and a separate desk for problem cases cut waits from 25 minutes to under five. That is a vendor case study rather than a controlled test, but the shape of the fix is what every desk manager already suspects.
Conference Registration Without the Procurement Saga.
Delegate types, early-bird windows, session booking, badges designed in millimetres and check-in from any phone, with no limit on delegates.
Where Do Walk-ins Go?
Give them their own desk. Converve's advice is a dedicated onsite registration desk for people who register on the day, because they take far longer than a pre-registered scan and will otherwise block the fast lane. The same page notes that kiosks work poorly when about half of attendees register at the door.
On eventcloud a walk-in uses the same registration page as everyone else, so a tablet at the walk-in desk is enough: they fill in the form, pay through Stripe's hosted checkout, and arrive with a ticket number like anyone else. Once they have it, the Badge Kiosk prints their badge. Our piece on last-minute registrations at the badge desk covers the form questions worth trimming for that desk.
What If the Printer Jams?
Expect it to, and plan the evening before. Converve recommends testing every printer with 50 to 100 badges the night before, keeping blank stock for walk-ups and holding pre-printed backups for roughly 10 to 15% of expected attendance. That is a sensible insurance policy: a stack of 150 spare badges for a 1,500 delegate event costs a little card and saves a bad hour.
A second printer and laptop is sensible insurance for the kiosk itself. As a last resort, anyone on the team can print an individual attendee's badge from the dashboard through the print dialog, one at a time, which is slow but never leaves a delegate without a badge. Coming soon: batch badge printing from the dashboard. Need it for your event? Tell us.
What Should You Watch During the First Hour?
Watch the queue, not the totals. A desk can look healthy at 40% checked in while the line at the door is twenty deep, because arrivals are bunching faster than stations clear them. Stand where you can see the back of the queue, and move a spare scanner to it the moment the line passes the wait your event type tolerates. Nunify's suggested ceilings are five minutes for a corporate conference, three for a trade show and ten for a gala, which it describes as guidance rather than a guarantee.
The dashboard's Insights totals (check-in rate and arrivals by hour) tell you afterwards whether the plan matched reality. Screenshot them before you pack up, because they are the best data you will have for next year's rota.
A Worked Example for 1,500 Delegates
This is planning arithmetic, not a benchmark. Assume 70% of delegates arrive in the opening 90 minutes: 1,050 people, or 700 an hour. At 30 seconds each a station handles 120 an hour, so six stations cover the peak with a little to spare. Then add the roles around them:
One greeter at the front of the queue and one runner for lanyards and signage.
Two people on the help desk, in line with Nunify's one per 200 for a room this size, plus a third who can swap in.
One or two people at the walk-in desk, depending on how many tickets were sold at the door last year.
Someone assigned to the Badge Kiosk laptop and printer, with the spare stock at their elbow.
That is a team of around a dozen for a ninety-minute window, and it shrinks to three or four once the rush clears. Rota the shifts, feed the volunteers and write the numbers down.
After the event, pull the arrivals by hour from your check-in totals and replace the 70% guess with your own figure. Next year's desk plan starts there. Our check-in page shows what staff see at the door, and the badge printing page covers the kiosk.
