Can I use tandem series to amalgamate several shorter series?

I have recently been asked a common question. How do you use tandem series to amalgamate several short series into a long one? For instance, a club might divide its racing into spring, summer and autumn series for each class, but also wish to compute overall results for the whole season. How can it do that?

The first thing to say is that a tandem series must derive its results from just one base series, so you cannot use tandem series to amalgamate several base series into one. The HalSail help page makes that clear in its last paragraph. But there is a way around the problem.

The trick is to think about it the other way around. Make the base series cover the whole season and use tandem series to pick out spring, summer and autumn components. Make up a base series covering all the races in the season, with appropriate scoring and discards. Then create the first tandem series from that, choosing the same racing class as the base series and picking just those races that constitute the spring series. Assign appropriate scoring and discards. Then repeat for the summer and autumn series.

Race officers enter results into the base series, but you can send links to the tandem series for everybody to see.