Ticket Stage Administration

Based on patron feedback the confirmation email now displays the performance date and time on a separate line.

Identifying Valid Confirmation

In order to facilitate verifying that the patron is showing a completed order at the boxoffice, both the confirmation screen and the confirmation email state the word "Confirmed" to the right of the order ID. e.g.:

Confirmation Special Text

This new field in the performance maintenance screen provides for specifying special notices or other text on each order confirmation. For example this can be used to include venue or performance specific COVID-19 requirements.

Automatic Buffer Seats

If set to non-zero, the system will automatically mark as unavailable this number of seats on either side of an order's seats. (Note: this only works for Performance venues that have staight horizontal rows).

Video Performances

If a performance is marked as a Video Performance (Yes), then 3 additional Video fields specify:

Video performance: Link to watch - specifies the link the patron uses to access the video performance. Typically not supplied until the day of the performance

Video link content - used to specify additional information about the performance. For example it could contain a link to a Program for the performance

Video performance available through date - video performances can be made available after the date of the performance (as a recorded video). This specifies the date through which patrons can purchase tickets for, and view, the peformance video.

When a performance is marked as a video, the confirmation screen and email contains a link to be used to get the Link to Watch. If the Link to watch is not yet posted, the result is a message: We're sorry but the video link has not yet been posted for this performance. Please check back again.

Coupon expiration date is ignored when processing a Boxoffice entered order

The system does not check the coupon expiration date for orders that are entered from the Boxoffice. This allow the boxoffice to apply a coupon to an order entered after the coupon's expiration date.

Ticket Stubs contain seat price

The seat stubs on confirmation emails display the seat price along with the description:

Discounts specific to a particular seat price

The system now supports specifying a specific seat price for a coupon. That coupon discount will only be applied to the seats that have that price. See Performance Pricing help for complete performance pricing instructions.

Additional Report Columns

The Summary Report has been modified to add two columns and change the Theater Credit Net column.
Added Contribution Net column - The amount of contributions minus the TicketStage handling fee
Added Total Theater Net column - This is the sum of Theater credit net (the net of TS Credit orders including contributions made with orders), cash, check and orders charged to theater merchant account.
Modified the Theater Credit Net column to subtract the TS fee for any contributions made with the orders.

Batch Performance Status Update

The system allows you to update the status of all shows of a performance at once. Click on Shows and then on the particular show. The next page contains a form that allows you to change the status of all the performances for that show.

Buy one/Get one coupon

Specify the discount as BOGO to offer a buy one/get one discount. If Uses/Order is not specified, the 2nd, 4th, 6th, etc seats are set to complimentary. If you only want to offer 1 free BOGO, set the Uses/Order to 1. Then only the second seat will be free. Setting Uses/Order to 2 would mean only the second and fourth seats would be free. See Performance Pricing help for complete performance pricing instructions.

Performance Contribution

The system allows you to specify donation text specific to a performance. In the performance Edit screen, enter the text in "Performance contribution text" field which appears right after the payment screen text field. The system will add the following to the order payment screen:

where the specified text is used. If you have a theater contribution request active that will be displayed for performances that do not have a performance contribution text.

Duplicate Performance Record

There is Duplicate Performance Record button under the Update Performance Record button on the performance edit screen. The system will copy the performance properties of the selected performance and prompt for a new date and time. When you complete that selection, the system will create the new performance with the same properties at the new date and time.

Display/Download Archived Order Information

Once a show is archived the boxoffice does not have access to the corresponding order information. The system now has a fourth submenu entry under Orders (that let's the boxoffice display or download the order information from archived shows
.

The selection page lets the boxoffice user select orders from a specific performance or all orders for a specific show. The Show menu may contain duplicate show titles if the same show was produced at different times.

Group Discount Coupons

You can use the special coupon code GROUP> (GROUP followed by the > symbol - no spaces) to specify a discount to be applied to the order if there are a specified number of seats in the order. The group minimum is specified in the Uses/Order field.

The patron does not have to enter the coupon code in the order. This specification will result in a 10% discount on the order if there are 10 or more seats in the order. The seats can be different price levels. See Performance Pricing help for complete performance pricing instructions.

Maximum Order Cost

You can specify a maximum ticket cost per order on the Performance Maintenance page (Max ticket cost per order field). The system will adjust the ticket price so that the total ticket cost does not exceed the specified amount. For example, if the ticket price is $13 and you set a $40 maximum per order, for any order with more than 3 tickets, the system will reduce the ticket cost so the ticket total does not exceed $40. For the sample order below, the 4th ticket price is set to $1, and the remaining tickets are set to $0. If the ticket total exceeds the maximum cost, the system applies it and ignores any coupon discounts less than 100%. The TicketStage fee will be applied to any seat with a non-zero cost.

Group Price Levels

The system now supports group pricing. You can define multiple group prices by specifying the price and the minimum number of seats required to qualify for each. See Performance Pricing help for complete performance pricing instructions.

Warning when available seats hits specified threshold

There is a new field on the Performance Maintenance page that lets you set a low threshold for available seats. It is initialized to 10. When the system displays the seat selection screen (on both patron and boxoffice sides), it checks the number of seats available for ticketing. If the number of available seats is less than this threshold, it emails a warning to the boxoffice contact email. It will only send this warning once in a day.

If the performance seating chart has multiple seat types, the system checks the sum of the available seats against the low threshold.

Check in Order

The boxoffice can now check in an order. In addition to the TS Android Boxoffice app being able the check in (uncheck in) an order, the boxoffice can do this from the Order List page or from the Display Order page. Checking in marks the order with the date and time it was checked in, and the boxoffice login ID of the boxoffice person who did the checkin. The order list will display a check mark for orders that are checked in.

The Display Order page has a new button in the blue bar at the top that lets you check the order in (or uncheck it in).

Credit Paid Menu - Amount

The Credit Paid Report menu lists the amount of the check/deposit for each date.

Android Check-in App

This app will allow you to scan in tickets for TicketStage Performances. It also allows you to download ticket information for a selected performance. In order to use the checkin scan capability, we have to set a flag so that the confirmation emails and confirmation pages have the QR code to scan.

Coupon information copied from Venue record to new performance record

The process of creating a new performance now copies the coupon information from the Venue record to the new performance record so that you only have to enter the coupon information once and it will be applied to all the performances you create using that Venue. Once the performance record is created, changes to the Venue record do not affect it.

Performance and show date entered by picking date from calendar

The performance date field now has a date picker widget that lets you click on the performance date. The same is true for the Show sort date.

Subscription order status

The boxoffice can now maintain the Subscription order status: Active, Boxoffice only or Inactive. When the Subscription order is in Active status, the link for subscription orders appears at the top of the Available performances page.

Order time membership authentication

Once TicketStage enables membership paytype for the theater, the payment selection step of the patron order process will present a drop down box with credit card and membership as the paytype for each seat in the order. Typically the theater will instruct members to enter some identifying information such as their name and telephone number in the membership information field. If the theater uploads the membership information to TicketStage, including an email and password then the system can do the authentication of memberships seats when processing the order. See details at Order time membership authentication

Added payment type selection to order display form

Summary order reports has section totaling different price text values

Starting 4/19/2010 around 4 PM, the system collects and stores the price text. The summary report has a section that totals the seats for each price type for each performance. Orders entered before 4/19/2010 do not have the price text saved so the report will not include those orders.

Summary order reports has section totaling the use of coupon codes when present

If any of the selected order in the report have a coupon code, the report adds a section that summarizes the coupon use. It totals the number of orders, ticket total, and discount for each coupon code.

Order display and download now include a separate column for contributions

The list of orders displayed from the Edit, display or download orders now has a new column that displays the contribution amount. The downloaded order information now has the contribution column as well.

Credit Paid Reports now include archived orders up to two years old and ticket net, contribution and contribution net columns

Prior to this the Credit Paid Report list of check dates only included orders for unarchived shows. So depending on how soon a show was archived, the credit report might not be accessible. The check dates and the underlying reports are now displayed for all orders within the last two years.

Three new columns have been added: contribution and contribution net to the theater, and one that totals the ticket net (Theater net minus contribution net and subscription net)

System requires email for boxoffice credit orders

Starting May 1, 2009, the system requires an email in order to process a credit order. This will ensure that the patron will receive a confirmation email reminding them how the charge will appear on their credit card bill. Please adjust your boxoffice procedures to collect the email address along with the other credit information.

The reason we require the patron's email is because without that, they never receive any notification that the charge will be listed on their bill as MMCIS/Ticketstage. So when they get their bill they don't recognize it and they often lodge a complaint with their credit card company and we are charged $20 for having to produce proof that it is a valid charge. The bank doesn't return that $20 even if the charge turns out to be valid.

Select orders that have been reseated

The order selection page has a new option that lets you limit the orders to those that have been reseated.

Payment selection screen text; Credit Only paytype for a performance

Two new options have been added to the Performance Maintenance screen. The first allows you to specify special instructions for the payment selection screen during the patron order process. This is the screen that follows the seat selection. For example, one theater used this to explain a pricing error in a printed flyer. The second option allows you to restrict payment type to credit card only for that performance. This option only appears if the default paytypes for the Theater include Membership.

Canceling Subscription Orders

The system now allows you to cancel open subscription orders. Up until now it had just ignored the request.

Assigned Seating

A third performance type has been added to Reserved and General Admission: Assigned Seating. Assigned seating is similar to General Admission in that the patron does not get to select the exact seat. The boxoffice will assign the seats and notify the patron. At some future time, the system will permit the boxoffice to use the the reseat capability to allocate the seats in the system so that the seating chart will reflect the actual assigned seating.

Coupon support added

TicketStage supports coupons for discounts on tickets. See Performance Pricing help for complete performance pricing instructions.

Coupons are associated with a performance. The performance edit screen has a coupon section right below the seat price maintenance section.

The coupon fields are:

Coupon Code: The code that the patron must enter to get the discount. This code cannot contain a colon character (:)
Coupon Discount: the dollar amount of the discount for each ticket on an order
Coupon Uses: the maximum number of times the coupon can be used for an order. Leave blank or enter a negative number to allow unlimited uses.
Coupon end date: As of this date the system rejects the coupon as invalid (so the coupon is valid up through the day before this date)
Users/Order: Limits the application of the coupon to a maximum of specified seats on each order. Leave blank to have the coupon apply to all the seats on an order.

To establish multiple coupons for a whole show, enter the coupon information in the venue record before creating the performances. To delete a coupon, blank out the coupon field and update the performance. Each time you add a coupon and update the performance (or venue) record, the system will give you a new coupon entry row at the bottom so that you can add an unlimited number of coupons.

If a performance has a coupon code associated with it, the patron payment screen will include a field to enter a coupon code.

If a patron enters an invalid coupon code or a valid coupon code that has expired (count has gone to zero or end date has passed), the system will ignore the discount and display the reason next to the coupon code in the order display. If a valid coupon is entered, the system calculates the order discount by multiplying the coupon discount amount by the number of paid tickets (i.e., it will not count seats paid for by membership). The system will then subtract that many uses from the use count. Currently if there are more paid tickets on an order than there are remaining uses (as long as the remaining uses is greater than 0), the system will give the discount for all of those tickets, resulting in an overall use count that may be greater than the specified coupon max use count.

Coupon can be limited to a specified number of tickets per order

The coupon specification on the performance maintenance screen has a Uses/Order field. If you put a number in this field, the system will limit the coupon discount to a maximum of that number for each order. So if the coupon discount is $2 and the Uses/Order field is 2, an order for 1 ticket will get a $2 discount, an order for 2 will get a $4 discount, orders for 3 or more will also get $4.

Coupons for percentage discount or free tickets

Performance Coupons can now specify the discount amount as a percentage of the total order. For example:

Coupon percentage

specifies a discount of 50% for the total ticket amount with a maximum of 2 tickets per order. So if someone a ticket costs $20 and a patron orders 3 tickets with this coupon code they will pay $40 ($10 each for the first 2 tickets and $20 for the 3rd) plus any applicable handling fee.

To specify free tickets use 100% as the discount. You must specify exactly those 4 characters: 100%. The system will convert the Pay Type for either all tickets (if no uses/order specified) or the first n tickets where n is the uses/order to complimentary and these tickets will not be assessed a handling fee if the order is a credit order.
So with this Coupon specification:

Free Ticket

A patron using the Coupon code of FREETIX will get the first ticket in his/her order as a Complimentary ticket.

See Performance Pricing help for complete performance pricing instructions.

Confirmation email subject now contains Theater name

The subject of the confirmation email patrons receive for regular orders, contributions, or subscriptions now reads:

Limited Access Logins

All other functions are prohibited, including creating shows or performances, member record maintenance, updating theater options, display or access to credit information. Just request this when updating or creating a user login.

Subscription Order Report

The Order Report selection screen contains a "Limit to Subscriptions" choice. The resulting report lists the order number, date, name, order total, subscription total, fee total and contribution.

Contribution (Donation) payments

TicketStage supports online collection of donations or contributions. Theaters can ask for donations separately or as part of a ticket order. See the full explanation here

Preview subscription order form

There is a new link on the Theater Options page if you have a subscription form that lets you preview that form before it goes into production.

Credit Paid report

You can now view your credit paid reports from the Reports menu item. Choose Credit Paid Reports from the Reports drop down menu.

Print confirmation from boxoffice order completion

There is now a Print Order Confirmation link on the order display, order edit, and closed order edit pages that will display a confirmation suitable for printing in a new window for that order.

Membership or subscription order processing

Ability to clone an order

The system now allows you to "clone" an order from the display or edit order screens. This allows you to enter multiple orders for the same patron without having to re-enter the patron information each time. Click on the "Clone this Order" button at the top of the Display Order screen or at the bottom with the other buttons on the Edit Order screen. This copies all the information except for the performance and seating information to a new order, and puts you into the select performance screen. If you do not immediately select a performance for the new order, you can resume assigning the performance and seats by clicking on the Reseating button on the Edit, Display, Download orders screen.

Confirmation email message

The order edit page contains a new field: Confirmation Note. The contents of this field are included in the confirmation email sent when the boxoffice clicks on the "Update and send confirmation email" button for this order. This allows the boxoffice to include messages about reseating or other adjustments to an order so the patron can distinguish between the original confirmation email and the updated one.

Outlet Ticket Handling

A new Outlet order source value has been added. This new order source is totaled in a new column in the Number of Seats by Order Source summary report. The boxoffice can use this in conjunction with the Outlet paytype to maintain visibility of seats that are on consignment to an outlet while producing counts of seats actually sold through the outlet. Outlet (and Email) have been added to the Order Source limiting field on the Order Display selection page.

Order information download now includes Last Name and First Name fields in addition to NAME

Several theaters asked for the Last Name field to be broken out for ease in sorting order information. The download file now contains the Last Name and First Name fields in addition to the Name field.

Boxoffice menu now available at top of every page

The boxoffice menu selections are now available at the top of every boxoffice page, reducing the number of clicks it takes to get from one maintenance to another.

Seats released when reassigning are placed in RESERVED status instead of OPEN

In order to give the boxoffice full control over the reseating process, the seats originally owned by the order are placed in RESERVE status instead of OPEN. This prevents these seats from being selected by a patron before the boxoffice has a chance to assign them. Don't forget to use seating chart maintenance to make them available if that is the intent.

Seats allocated to Outlet orders now show up as a different color in boxoffice displays

The seat image displayed in performance seats charts such as boxoffice seat selection, seating chart maintenance, and the first screen of the edit performance screen is now a different color for seats allocated to an order where the payment type is outlet. This lets you see at a glance which seats are really sold vs. those which are held by the outlets.

Submit credit orders from boxoffice (for theaters using TicketStage Merchant Account)

Organizations using the TicketStage Merchant Account can submit credit orders entered by the boxoffice for credit processing. If the TicketStage Merchant Account is being used, the Order Edit maintenance screen has a "Submit Order for Credit Processing" button when:

When the order is submitted for credit processing, any missing or invalid fields will be reported as an error in a message just under the menu across the top of the blue section of the result page. Once the credit card has been processed successfully, the order is CLOSED since the credit card has been charged that exact amount. To reseat this order, you must first change it back to CONFIRM status, and then the reseat operation must result in the same exact order total.

Remember last performance options

The system now remembers the last performance record you updated, and uses the specified properties of that performance for creating the next new performance. So things like admission type, special notices, and price levels only have to be entered once, for the first performance of a new show.

Theater Options Maintenance

Sold Out Performances

When generating the list of active performances, the system checks for no more seats available. If there are no seats available, the performance is listed without a link with the message that the performance is sold out and to contact the boxoffice.

Enhanced Show Maintenance

The system now generates the show code so that it is guaranteed to be unique and the correct format. Shows cannot be deleted without first deleting the orders and performances associated with that show. There will be a new function for archiving show (along with the associated performance and order records) after the show is complete. Currently archiving is done by TicketStage webmaster.

You can associate a sort date with the show that is used to sort the shows in the order maintenance and performance maintenance screens

General Admission

The system now supports General Admission performances. Use the Reserved Seating/General Admission buttons on the performance maintenance screen to select General Admission. The default is Reserved Seating.

There is no difference for the admin side except that for all order screens, the seats are simply a sequence number within that order (seat 1, 2, 3, etc. ). From the patron side, instead of getting a seat selection chart, the patron gets a page that lets them select the number of seats in each different price class. When you set up the performance, you must specify price text that is meaningful for the patron.

Sort Order Display by Seat

The orders are listed in the physical order of the seats, which may not correspond to the Seat Numbers. In the physical order, seat # 1 is the left most seat in the first row, and the last seat is the rightmost seat in the last row.

Multi-level pricing

For each seat type in a performance, you can specify multiple levels of pricing (e.g. senior citizen or student pricing). The performance maintenance screen has been enhanced with input controls for the pricing and the text associated with each price. Normally the first price you specify is the norma pricing and you do not supply any text with it. The performance maintenance screen always shows one more price level than is currently defined.

To add more levels, enter the next price level and click on the Update Performance Record button. The screen will then display an additional empty price level/text/pair.

Multiple Venues

Ticketstage now supports multiple venues for each theater. You will notice a change in the show creation and maintenance forms. These now contain a drop down selection for the venue

Also the Maintain Default seating chart form on the Performance maintenance menu contains a drop down select box for selecting the venue.

New venues must be installed by the TicketStage webmasters. We need the seating chart with default pricing for each different class of seat.

Order Selection by Show

The Display, Edit, Cancel Orders selection form now has a section that lets you select all the performances for a show by just specifying the show rather than having to do a multiple selection of all the performances.

Bulk Update of Delivery Options for Orders

The Display, Edit, Cancel Orders selection form now has a button labeled: Update Delivery Options. You specify the orders to be processed in the usual way. When you click on Update Delivery Options, you will get a listing of the selected orders with a radio button cell for each record that lets you update the Delivery Options. Simply set the delivery option for each record and then click on the Update Orders button at the bottom. The orders will be updated and redisplayed.

New Box Office Features

Separate line on confirmation for peformance date and time