Selling tickets for a fair: online and at the door

Your club runs a fair: a craft fair, a book fair, a swap meet for collectors. It used to be a table with a cash box at the entrance, and on Sunday evening someone counted the stubs. Now you want to start selling tickets for a fair, online and at the door, without the queue stretching into the car park and without guessing how many people are inside.

Take a hobby club with a craft fair in the sports hall as an example, on Saturday and Sunday from 10 am to 5 pm. Adults pay 6 euros in advance and 7 euros at the door. Children under twelve go free. The club expects around nine hundred paying visitors a day.

One event per fair day

Set up each fair day as an event of its own, with its own date. That way each day has its own number of places and its own count, and on Friday you can see whether Saturday or Sunday is selling better.

For each event you fill in Seats in total, for example 1,200. That is one pool for all ticket types together, and a hard limit: the ticket shop and the till at the entrance sell from the same pool and stop automatically when it runs out. How to set up an event is explained step by step in Events.

Cheaper in advance than at the door

Every visitor who buys in advance is one person fewer in the queue at the till. A one-euro difference is often enough to steer that. In the wizard, the switch The same price at the desk as well is on by default. Turn it off, then give each ticket type its own desk price: 6 euros online, 7 euros at the door.

On your poster and your Facebook page you simply show both prices, with a QR code that leads to your ticket shop.

Children free, but counted

A child who goes free takes up as much room in the sports hall as an adult. So create a ticket type Child (under 12) priced at 0. It counts towards your pool of 1,200, you can see how many children came, and at the till you tap it just as quickly as a paid ticket. Free tickets do not count towards the number of paid tickets in your plan.

At the entrance: scanning and selling side by side

Set up two lanes next to each other. Anyone with a ticket on their phone walks on to a volunteer with the scan app. Anyone who still has to pay goes to the till: a tablet with large buttons, taking card or cash. Every sale at the till appears straight away in the same count as the online sales.

Your volunteers at the door get the Scanner role: they can scan tickets and nothing else. They see no revenue and no orders. If the wifi in the sports hall drops out, the scan app keeps working; see Scanning tickets at the door, even without a network. Inviting and linking volunteers is covered in Scan app and scanning staff, and the till in Desk till.

Popping out to the car and back

At a fair, people sometimes take a full bag back to the car. When they return, the scan app shows CHECK: this ticket has already been scanned, with the time of the first scan. Your volunteer then knows straight away that this visitor was already inside, and you agree in advance what happens next: let them through, or ask to see the hand stamp. A ticket that has been forwarded to a friend stands out in the same way.

How many people are already inside?

The dashboard has a block called At the door today, with three numbers: Expected (all tickets valid today), Already in (how many of those have been scanned) and Still expected. That is the figure you give to the fire service or your safety officer, without estimating. Volunteers with only the Scanner role see that block too. More explanation is in Reading your dashboard.

If you want to go further, with several entrances and an exit, read Access control at your event.

Pitches for stallholders

If you also sell the stalls, set them up as a separate event, for example Craft fair pitch with forty places. That way the stallholders do not eat into your visitors' pool, and you can see in one list who has paid.

What does it cost?

Work it out for a weekend. Two days with nine hundred paying visitors each come to 1,800 tickets. A made-up platform that charges 1 euro per ticket then costs you 1,800 euros, or your visitor pays it on top of their 6 euros.

With Passavo you pay a fixed amount per month. The till at the entrance is included in the Start plan, for €9.00 a month and up to 3,000 paid tickets a year. If your club only runs a few activities a year, you pause the subscription in the quiet months. A small fair that only sells online can also use the free plan, with up to 100 paid tickets per event. All plans side by side are on the pricing page.

How to set it up

1. Create an event for each fair day via Sales → Events → New event.
2. Under Seats in total, fill in how many visitors you can fit in per day.
3. Add the ticket types: Adult and Child (under 12) priced at 0.
4. Turn off The same price at the desk as well and give each ticket type a desk price.
5. Invite your volunteers as Scanner and set up the till on a tablet.
6. Put the QR code to your ticket shop on your poster.

You will find more examples for Christmas markets, craft fairs and book fairs on our page about markets and fairs.