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Concepts

These pages explain how ema thinks about events, money, access, and content. Each one gives you the mental model behind a feature area — not a step-by-step walkthrough, but enough context to understand why things work the way they do and where to look when something is unclear.

New to ema? Read the Foundations group top to bottom first — platform structure, then commercial model, then the work primitives. Every module you'll configure after that is "here's how this feature uses tasks, approvals, forms, and documents," not a fresh system to learn.

Foundations: platform structure​

  • Platform model — organizations, projects, data isolation, and the surfaces you and your users land on (admin, Me, public, onsite, and superadmin).
  • PCO and agency model — running many clients' events from one instance: operator vs client organisations, staff access, and billing both ways.
  • Project onboarding — how a new event goes from won work to a configured, ready-to-run project.
  • Access and permissions — tenant, organisation, and project roles, plus channels, visibility, and eligibility for registrants.
  • Modules — how product features are turned on per project.

Foundations: commercial model​

  • Project budgets — how a deal budget is structured (sections, line items, versions, scenarios) and the difference between what's budgeted, committed, incurred, and invoiced.
  • Time and labour recovery — cost rate vs charge rate, rate cards, timesheets, and what utilisation actually measures.
  • See PCO and agency model for how your ema subscription and a project's client-facing billing mode are two separate questions.

Foundations: work primitives​

The substrate every module is built from. Read these once and every feature-specific approvals, forms, or task doc becomes "how this module uses the shared system," not new material.

  • Tasks — the work-tracking core: what closes a task, checklists, subtasks, and how tasks connect to budget lines.
  • Approvals — the shared policy-and-workflow engine, what genuinely runs through it, and what only looks like it does.
  • Forms — the one form builder behind registration questions, talk submissions, exhibitor applications, support intake, and task completion.
  • Documents and templates — four distinct systems sharing the words "document" and "template": the file library, the canvas designer, contract templates, and content authoring.

Money​

  • Money and accounting — orders, invoices, payments, the general ledger, and how money flows through a project.

Registration​

  • Registration model — registration types, pricing tiers, add-ons, eligibility, carts, and the full registrant lifecycle.

Event program​

Accreditation​

  • CPD / CE model — how attendance becomes awarded points, certificates, and external member-system records.

Exhibitors​

  • Exhibitor entitlements — tiers, what each tier includes, how add-ons and upgrades work, and how a booth package resolves.

Reporting​

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