Festivals and congresses

How to run accreditation for a multi-day festival or event in Argentina

By SOMOS DER · October 30, 2026 · 6 min read

At an event that runs over several days, use one QR code per person and let the attendee type, not the code, decide how that pass behaves. Before registration opens you need three decisions: which pass types exist (all days or a single day), whether each pass enters once or allows re-entry, and how you will read attendance for each day separately. If that is solved in the setup, the door on day two is as simple as the door on day one. This guide is written for agencies and promoters from abroad who are running a festival, fair or congress in Argentina.

The real problem is day two

Day one of a festival or congress usually gets prepared well. The trouble shows up on day two: people who already checked in and come back, people who only come that day, someone who lost the printed badge, someone who forwarded the QR to a friend because they could not go. If the system treats the whole event as a single entry, everyone returning on day two shows up as a duplicate and the queue stops.

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency makes the same distinction in its Public Venue Credentialing Guide: "Event staff and participants may have credentials that expire on a specific day during an event or that are valid throughout the entire event." For teams and media, it recommends issuing "day or event passes in addition to season passes to determine levels of access and record attendance on an event-by-event basis". Whole-event pass versus single-day pass is the base for everything else.

It is not only a ticketing matter. The Purple Guide, the UK reference for event safety, places "Ingress & Egress Checks", "Admission & Ticketing Policies" and "Guest/VIP Access & Accreditation" inside its crowd management chapter, which it describes as "ensuring that those attending an event, including those working there, are kept safe". At a multi-day event that work repeats every morning, with an audience that partly already came in the day before.

Decision 1: which pass types you need

Write the list before registration opens. A three-day festival usually ends up with something like this:

• Full pass: enters all three days.
• Day pass: one type per day (Friday, Saturday, Sunday), named so the operator reads the day on screen.
• Press, staff, suppliers and artists: each with its own zones, which rarely match the public's.

In PASE each one is an attendee type with its own registration link, so nobody registers as a full pass holder through the day pass link. When the scanner reads a code, the operator sees the attendee's name and type. If your team works from abroad, set the types up in English: the registration page and the QR email follow the browser language, and adding ?lang=en to the link forces English. There is no Portuguese version.

Decision 2: one badge for the whole event or one per day

Both options make sense:

• One badge for the whole event. The most comfortable for the attendee and the most common at congresses: check in on day one, wear the badge until the end. Keep the daily control on the QR, because a printed badge never expires on its own.
• One per day. Useful when the audience changes a lot from one day to the next, or when the physical badge also has to show at a glance who can be inside that day. The same CISA guide recommends that staff credentials carry "a marking that indicates if the credential is valid during event days", and that each access control point have a sample credential board for staff.

PASE prints badges and labels from the scan, so the pass type can be printed large and visible. Whichever option you pick, the rule stays the same: one QR per person, and the type decides how that QR behaves.

Decision 3: a pass that is consumed or a pass with re-entry

In PASE the rule lives in the attendee type. There are two ways to build the door:

• Day pass, without re-entry. The QR enters once and is burned. A second attempt with the same code shows as a duplicate, and the entry is recorded atomically: even if two scanners read the code at the same moment, only one entry goes through. This suits single-day tickets and time slots with limited capacity.
• All-days pass, with re-entry. The QR is not consumed: the person enters Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and can step out and come back. Each pass through the door is recorded with its date and time, so you still know when they came. This suits multi-day passes, guests, press and staff.

The trade-off of re-entry is that the pass is not stopped as a duplicate. That is why it must be personal (one named QR per person) and never a shared code. If the venue lets people step out and come back, a wristband or a stamp of the day saves the door from scanning everyone every time. On budget: every check-in point counts toward the plan (Base includes 1, Pro up to 4, Enterprise unlimited; see pricing). If you add gates or inner zones, count them first.

What the door does every morning

Before opening each day, the person in charge checks three things: that every gate is ready, that operators know which types get in that day, and what happens with someone who lost their QR. For that, PASE has a recovery page that resends the QR to the email used at registration, plus manual registration at the door for cases the person in charge approves. PASE validates each scan online, so check the venue connection before opening.

Explain the rules of each pass on the registration page and in the QR email, so the discussion about which day a pass is valid for does not happen in the queue. For a foreign audience, a line in English at the gate helps more than any extra operator.

Reading attendance day by day

After a multi-day event, the number people ask for is attendance per day, not the total. The PASE live report shows entries by attendee type, zone, gate and hour, and a per day view lists each day with its time slots, registrations and entries. The closing report includes a day by day section (how many people entered, QR reads and companions) and entries by hour across all days. Because each entry carries its date and time, you can answer how many full pass holders came on Sunday or at what time most people arrived on Saturday.

The CISA guide also suggests, "if possible", creating "daily spreadsheets from the credentialing system" listing credentials by function and access. Do it at the close of each day, while the team still remembers what happened.

One QR per person. A pass type that decides how it behaves. And every pass through the door recorded with its date and time.

Frequently asked questions