Seasons setup
Our system is designed to segregate all your shows, their performances and the related price terms built under a specific "season". This is also designed to have a new season each year, typically relating to your annual operation or fiscal year. For many performing arts groups, their season begins in fall and then finishes sometime in spring or summer. The next season begins the following fall.
The main ticketing public page automatically displays shows currently available for sale in the current season, for example.
Go to "Seasons" from the Setup Menu to set up a season with its start date and a descriptive name such as "Our 2007/08 Season", or "Our 75th Anniversary Season".
The season start date should be a date AFTER the last performance of the prior season and is typically the date you want single tickets to go on sale on the main ticketing page to the public. If you set the season start date to before the last performance in your prior season, then the new season's shows will replace the current season's shows on the main ticketing page and those shows will no longer be available to sell online unless you are using direct show links.
Note that you can sell subscriptions via the subscription public page and passes via the pass public page prior to single tickets being for sale on the main ticketing page. You also can sell single tickets prior to the season start date via the pre-season public page, which displays shows in the upcoming season prior to the season start date.
Season buying controls
Allow only package sales until this date - when used the patron cannot purchase single tickets, they must be part of a Subscription package to complete their order.
Allow single ticket sales to package buyers - this is used in conjunction with the above control to allow single tickets ONLY to patrons who have a package in their order already.
Members only until - when used, only patrons with active memberships wherein the membership level is marked "qualify for pre-season" will be allowed to make a ticket purchase until this date.
What to do if you are a year-round venue with no clear season cycle?
This question comes up from time to time due to the fact that a smaller percentage of our clients are presenting houses and have shows year round or are theatres without a clear yearly break in their seasons. They may not have a typical dark time when they are ramping up for a NEW season. In this case we approach the seasons a bit differently, building them after the fact. Details below:
What you will want to do is ALWAYS build your shows and performances in what is your latest season in the system; ie your "current" season. This way the shows appear on sale on the main ticketing page, are immediately available for purchase, AND allow you to always sell upcoming performances together in the same order (shows in different seasons cannot be purchased in the same order).
Then as you move forward, you establish your fiscal years in the system by having your CS Rep move shows that pass BACK to a prior season. (We have a tool to do this for you, you cannot move shows to a different season yourself.)
For example, if your fiscal year is 7/1 - 6/30. Your current season start date might be 7/1/08 (for the 2008/09 season). You will continue building all your upcoming shows in to this season until 6/30/09 comes up (the end of that fiscal year). At that point we'll change the current season start date to 7/1/09 (all shows in that season are under that altered season start date), we then build a NEW season start date of 7/1/08 (for the prior fiscal year) and we then move all past shows BACK into that past season we just set up, leaving the shows that are coming up in the current, now relabeled season.
Let us know if you fall into this type of use, when you're ready to move past shows into a former season, and if you have questions.