Credit Card Swipers
Credit card swipers are now required for all in-person credit card transactions. The swiper transmits additional information from the card that adds additional security and reduces the chance of a patron attempting a charge-back which can result in fees to the theatre. Swipers can be purchased for a very low cost each. See this document for details on purchasing: https://artspeople.zendesk.com/entries/21539657
CVV Card Code
CVV is one of the names used for the security code on credit cards. This is typically a 3 digit code on the back of the card, or a 4 digit code on the front of American Express cards. This code provides an added level of security for credit card transactions. This code is required for online transactions conducted by patrons buying online. This code is required on screens such as box office and retail and donation for clients using our merchant acct. Cardswipe includes the cvv code information.
If you would prefer to not be required to use CVV you can opt to use your own merchant acct instead, and then configure the settings differently in your payment gateway. Canadian clients would specifically need an Elavon merchant acct. US clients would need any merchant acct that can work with an Authorize.net payment gateway. For further assistance, submit a help desk ticket.
Group Sale - can I select a block of seats at once?
Yes! You just need to turn on "Group Sales Tools" on your "Personal Settings" screen accessible from the Home Page / Main Menu. This will enable a rectangular group select button appear on the seating chart screen for your box office. you can then select the 2 ends of a row of seats, or 4 corners of a block of seats. Click this button and all seats within that block will be selected.
Patron Resale of their Tickets
We've been asked about an option for patrons to resell their tickets, if they are unable to attend (when you don't offer a refund option). Ticketing systems such as ours are not usually setup for this type of service, since they're really about your relationship with your patron and their ticketing history. We do know of a service at stubhub.com that allows patrons to sell their tickets online to other parties.
Refund to Credit Card
Refunds can be issued back to the patron's credit card via the Order Details screen, accessed via the view link on box office or database screens. Door sales credit card orders can be voided/refunded on same day as purchase only. See Refund to Credit Card.
Seat on chart shows "Unconfirmed Reservation" when hovered over
These are seats that are currently somewhere in the process of being purchased. So they are held on a pending order but have not been paid for yet. These could be seats a patron or box officer is in the process of purchasing, or they could be seats on a pending order that was never completed. If they are the latter then the order will time out soon and the seats will show as available again. Timeout for an online order is 15 minutes. Timeout for box office orders is approximately 1 hour.
Seat time out on incomplete / pending ticket orders
When seats are selected online, they go into a pending state and will display as "sold" on a seating chart until the order either is completed (sold) or they are released by the person who selected them, a box officer who brings up their patron acct in box office mode and releases, or the system times out the order. Online order timeout occurs after 15 minutes of patron inactivity.
When seats are selected in box office, they go into the same pending state, but box office order timeout is 75 minutes.
Selling or Altering Ticket Orders to a past performance when it no longer appears on my box office performance list
Occasionally you will need to input sales or alter orders a number of days after your show has closed. The box office system will display shows up to 5 days after the final performance, but after that they are not accessible in the box office screen.
What you can do to make them appear on your list again is to edit the performance on the Performances setup screen, changing the performance date to a past date within the 5 day window. Be sure to do this one performance at a time, so you are clear on which performance you are editing. So say today is 12/5/08. You might change your 11/18/08 performance to 12/4/08 so it appears on the list. Because it is still a PAST date, it will not appear on the public pages for sale again. You can then input your sales to that performance and when done, change the date back to it's original 11/18/08 performance. NOTE that if your pricing is day-of-the-week specific (such as fridays being more expensive than thursdays) you will need to be careful to change the date to a like pricing day of the week, so the prices will be correct.
Standby Ticket Sales and Seating
We get asked at times about how to resell tickets that were sold but the patron doesn't show up to the performance, or how to sell extra tickets beyond the standard inventory. In the industry this is referred to as "standby" sales or seating - where you want to oversell your house to fill in seats when ticket buyers don't show up for the performance. If you have a smaller venue, or other cases where you may occasionally or often sell out, this can be a great idea, since there's no reason the seats should go to waste.
First, be sure if you move to this type of operation that you CLEARLY and BOLDLY advertise to all ticket buyers that this is your policy and let them know when they are required to be in their seat or it will be sold to someone else. Typically these empty seats are filled quickly at or just after the scheduled curtain time. So if your performance is scheduled at 8pm, then at that time you will bring in your standby patrons and quickly seat them into the empty seats then proceed with the performance. Also, clearly communicate to ticket buyers if they will not receive a refund for not attending (this is standard).
Standby seating can be done in a few different ways:
1) You can add extra seats to your existing venue and put those seats on HOLD so they can't be purchased online. The number of extra seats will be based on how many seats you feel you can always get in to a sold out performance. If assigned seating, the seat numbers don't matter, they are just extra seats, maybe a block of them, place behind your normal seating chart seats to be sold by the box office. Then sell these seats from your box office when the performance is otherwise sold out, telling patrons to arrive a bit in advance and wait in the lobby to be seated at curtain time. This method will include these standby sales in the same reporting as all other sales on that performance.
2) You can set up an alternative version of each show such as "Cabaret - STANDBY", and input an on-sale-date PAST the performance dates, thereby keeping it from appearing for sale online. Then as a performance fills in the regular show version, you can add an equivalent performance to the alternate version to be sold only as standby. You will want to have a "standby" venue as well that only has the number of standby seats on it that you feel you can always fit in for a sold out performance. This method will need to be reported on separately from the standard performance since it is a different show in the system.
Related search terms: overcapacity, over capacity, oversell
Ticket Insurance
We were recently asked about this, as some theatres are starting to offer this as a service to their patrons. This is basically a fee that is charged to offer a refund option in case the patron is later unable to attend their show. This could easily be done using our Add-On feature, where insurance could be an option for each ticket purchased, charging an amount per ticket for the option. Ask your Account Specialist if you're interested in setting this up.