Account: This is a term used by our system and staff to refer to the organizations that are using our system. See also "Client"
Appeal: Used for donation tracking, Appeals are the sources of the donation, and can be selected by patrons donating online, thereby attaching their donation to a fund, which attaches to a campaign, and the fund might also trigger a membership. Appeals should be named to be clear to the patron so they can select them based on what it was that made them decide to donate. Appeal examples might be "End of Year donation letter", "Season Subscription Brochure", "Membership Renewal Letter", "Heard about it from a friend", "Visited your website", etc.
Assigned Seating: Seating using a seating chart - (We avoid using the term "reserved" as that applies to unpaid ticket orders)
Batch: Batches are tools for pulling groups of patrons based on transaction typically for purposes of fulfillment. A common example is to pull batches of donors/contributors in order to send them acknowledgement letters thanking them for their donation. Batches were sequentially, rather than based on criteria. So batches work together to give you the most recent patrons only. An example would be to generate a batch on Friday, which will give you all patrons of this type that are not yet batched, and then leave that batch in the system. Next Friday I generate a new batch, and it will give me all patrons since the last batch; then the next batch, and the next. If you UNbatch, then those patrons will appear in the next batch you run again.
Box office ticket: This is an optional ticket design that can be created to print from the box office sales, while the Letter sized ticket is still used by patrons printing their ticket at home. This often is designed for thermal ticket printers such as Boca to print smaller size tickets. If no design is in place for this then the box office will print the Letter sized ticket by default.
Campaign: Used for donation tracking, Campaigns are your top level buckets of donated money. Campaign examples might be "2007/08 Operating", "Capital Drive", "Endowment". A campaign might be for a single fiscal year, or span more than one year. Funds point to Campaigns.
Client: This is one way we refer to the theatres and other organizations using our system. See also "Account"
Comp Pass: A type of Pass, a Comp Pass is always issued manually in your office and is by default $0 price and redemption amount and is a single ticket, unless issued in multiple quantities.
Compiling a Subscription Order: This refers to the method of selling a subscription package wherein the patron online or the box officer adds one show at a time to the order, until all shows required for the subscription package discount applies. This is an alternative to selling subscriptions based on series on the Subscription screens.
Donation: A monetary or in-kind amount donated by a patron. Typically donated funds. Donations also will be the dollars attributed to Membership.
Donation System: The Donation system lets the organization filter how they want the money from donations tracked - to specific funds, within specific campaigns, sources by different appeals, donation types, etc.
Customer: We specifically avoid this term, as it is unclear. Instead we use Patron to define persons or organizations that you have relationship with.
Delivery Method: This is the way in which the patron will receive their tickets. Options in the system include print-at-home, will-call, walk-up, first class, priority and express mail. Print-at-home assumes the patron is printing their own tickets. Walk-up assumes the box officer printed their tickets at the time the order was completed. Will-call will be batch printed for pick up the night of the performance. Mail options are batch printed for mailing.
CVV or Card Code: This is the security number located on the back of a Visa or Mastercard (3 digits) or the front of an American Express card (4 digits).
Fund: Used for donation tracking, Funds are buckets of money that track more specific subdivisions of your donated income. Funds point to a specific Campaign, but can point to one Campaign one year, and a different Campaign next year, if needed. Fund examples might include "Individual Giving", "Business Giving", "Lighting System Fund", "Buy a Brick", etc. Appeals will point to funds. Funds also may or may not trigger a membership type on the patron acct.
General Admission: Un-assigned seating. This is sometimes short-handed with GA such as "GA Holds", "GA Regular Seats", "GA Wheelchair positions", etc.
Hold: Seats that are held back from public sale to be controlled and sold by the box office when appropriate. They are controlled on the performance and are NOT assigned to any specific patron. (compare to "Reserve")
Household: Person records can be linked as a household. Merging persons into a household will leave patron records intact, but will cross link them so all transaction history and mailing lists assignments will be displayed on both accounts. Household members get combined mailings.
Letter sized ticket: (also called print-at-home tickets) Our standard 8.5 x 11" ticket that prints for patrons at home, and also can be used by default as the box office ticket, if no optional box office ticket is created.
Member: A member is someone who has donated to the organization and therefore is recognized as a member and usually earned a variety of benefits of membership. One or more donation can apply to an active membership.
Membership Level: Levels are the different break points of membership amount at which different benefits of membership apply. So $0 - $99 might be the "Silver" level. $100 - $499 might be the "Gold" level. Etc. Each Membership Type can have it's own defined Levels. These are setup via the Donation Setup area from your Setup menu.
Membership System: Membership system is the next layer beyond the Donation System, wherein donations can trigger membership status and tracking on that patron thereby giving them assigned benefits and tracking the membership expiration, renewal, etc.
Membership Type: This is a definition of a membership scheme that may include different membership levels with benefits. Many clients may have only one membership type, or none. But it is possible to have more than one membership type. These are setup via the Donation Setup area from your Setup menu.
On-Sale: The date something significant is available for purchase to the public. This is used as a term to related the importance of that date. "We've got an On-Sale for Oklahoma next Friday."
Organization: A business, club, school, church or other organization (non-individual) with whom you have a relationship. Persons in your database can be linked to organizations, such as teacher at a school, employee at a company, etc.
Pass: Passes are a purchase of a set of potential tickets which typically gives the buyer a discount off the single ticket price. Passes differ from Subscriptions in that the pass is purchased, but no specific tickets or seats are assigned until the pass is redeemed. So a pass might be good for 6 tickets. The patron will then use their pass code to book their tickets to specific performances later. Passes can be a "Flex Pass" which typically means they can use the tickets across multiple shows OR they can use them all for one performance. Passes can also be a "Flex Subscription" wherein the pass can only be redeemed as 1 ticket for each show, requiring the patron to see multiple shows. We also have "Promotional Passes" that can be used for pass give-aways or other ways (Promotional passes also have the benefit of the ability to auto-generate in an email blast) and "Comp Passes" that are typically used for simple passes to give out to staff members to redeem for their free tickets.
Pass Ticket References:
- Pass paid ticket: This is a ticket that was obtained by redeeming a purchased pass with cost, and required no additional payment.
- Pass discounted ticket: This is a ticket that was obtained by redeeming a pass with or without cost, but required additional payment.
- Pass comped ticket: This is a ticket that was obtained by redeeming a comp or promo pass with no cost, and required no additional payment.
Patron: Ticket buyers, donors, etc of your organization. It can be a Person or an Organization that you have a relationship with. We refer to them as "patrons" since we refer to your organization as our "client" or "account". Note that we avoid the term "customer" as it is unclear.
Performance: This is the individual date/time a show is scheduled to be performed, when an audience attends to watch.
Performance Groups: These are codes assigned to specific performances or groups of performances for purposes of pricing. For example, if all opening night fridays are going to be priced differently than all other Fridays, we might give the opening performances an "O" performance group code and then attach pricing based on this code.
Performance Series: This term relates to the series of performances purchased as part of a subscription package of shows. So the patron selects their package, and then in the subscription buy path the next choice will be a series of performances, such as "first fridays". This would then automatically select the first friday performance of each show in the package. Performance series are most commonly based on common days/times of the same week of each show run.
Person: An individual patron of your organization. Persons can be linked as members of the same household, for combined mailing purposes. A person record should have only one name, NOT a husband and wife on the same record, for example.
Promo (Promotional) Pass: A type of Pass, a Promo Pass can have a price associated to the redemption (or be $0), so can function like a person-specific coupon in that way. It can also be valid for more than one ticket by default and can be auto-generated in an email to a list of people.
Public Pages: These are the web pages that are matched to your website, linked from your website, that your patrons go through when doing any type of transaction. They are designed using the Configure Appearance screen and a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS).
Queued Refund: A same day refund, especially if refunding a partial credit card transaction amount on the same day it was transacted, will often need to go into a queue to process the next day, after the initial transaction settles. So you'll see some refunds appearing as "queued" when they are in this state. If they succeed in the next batch this flag will then be removed. If they fail for some reason you will be notified.
Refund: Most commonly used in relation to ticket transactions wherein you want to release the tickets previously purchased and then give the patron a refund for the original purchase amount. Refund can be recorded in the ticket order itself, accessible by clicking the VIEW link for the specific order on the patron's acct in the box office screen.
Release: Related to tickets that have been purchased and you want to now release them from the order, putting those tickets back into inventory, and possibly giving the patron a refund for the original purchase amount. (sometimes referred to as canceling or deleting tickets)
Reserve: A reserve/reservation is a ticket order on a specific patron acct that is awaiting payment. (compare to "HOLD")
Show: A show is the title of a performance piece that will be performed on one or more dates/times before an audience. So your organization might be presenting the show "Oklahoma", with performances on April 1, 2, 3 at 7:30pm, and April 4 at 2pm. The show is the title, performances are the individual dates/times audiences will attend to watch it.
Subscriber: Subscriber is a patron who has purchased a subscription - meaning they bought more than one show together, thereby getting a subscription discount off the regular ticket price.
Subscription: This term applies to traditional subscription of a group of shows that when all purchased by a patron, give them a discount. With subscriptions the tickets are purchased and seats are assigned typically at one time (tho they can be purchased over multiple orders in some cases also). Subscriptions can be purchased by "series", meaning the patron purchases a series of the same day of each run (1st Friday, 2nd Thursday, etc) and are given the same seats for each show. Otherwise the subscription order can be compiled one show at a time and the discount will apply when the package is achieved.
Subscription seat map: This refers to special seating charts that record subscribers seats in each venue included in their subscription package and performance series, at the time they purchased the package. During the season their seats may be exchanged on individual performances in their package, but the subscription seats they originally purchased are still the seats they "own" that can be sold to them again the next season.
Transaction: Any exchange with a patron recorded in the system. This includes ticket purchase, donation, retail purchase, etc. Typically transactions involve collecting payment, but they may also be comp or usage of a pass, etc.
Venue: Your theatre, hall or location of your ticketed events. This can be assigned seating using a seating chart, or it can be general admission, or both.
Void: Generally this only refers to credit card transactions that were canceled on the same day. They will not appear on the patron's credit card at all, since they did not settle overnight. Terms that might be more relevant are "refund" or "release" of tickets.