Selling a workshop for up to twelve participants online

Your pottery studio has twelve wheels. The workshop "Wheel throwing for beginners" is on your website with a request to send you an email. A week later you have fourteen emails, three bank transfers without a reference and a spreadsheet in which two people share the same name. Who is actually booked, and who do you have to disappoint?

For a workshop, the number of places is not a rough guide. Twelve wheels means twelve participants, and the thirteenth has nothing to work on. This article explains how to sell a workshop like that online, so sales stop by themselves at twelve and you know the name of every participant.

Why twelve really has to stay twelve

If you keep track of bookings by hand, you count afterwards. Two people who want the last place on the same evening both get a confirmation, and you only notice when the payments come in. Then you have to email someone who has already paid to give their money back.

Selling online solves this, as long as the counter lives in the system and not in your head. That is the case here: an event with twelve places sells twelve, in your ticket shop and at the desk, and then nothing more.

Setting up your workshop as an event

A workshop on a single date is an event in the back office: a name, a date and a number of places. After that date it disappears from your ticket shop by itself.

1. Go to Sales → Events and click New event.
2. Fill in the Name of the event, for example "Wheel throwing for beginners", and pick the Date: Saturday 14 November.
3. Set Seats in total to 12.
4. Use the Description for what participants need to know: 10 am to 1 pm, clay and firing included, wear clothes that can get dirty.
5. In the second step, create one ticket type. Leave the name empty and set the price to 65. Your participants simply see the name of your workshop with one price.
6. Click Create.

Use one ticket type for a workshop. Seats in total is applied to each ticket type separately. If you create a ticket type "Materials included" and one called "Own materials", you get twelve places twice, not twelve. Every step and field is described in the guide under Events.

The name of every participant

If someone buys three places for themselves and two friends, you want to know who those two friends are. Open the ticket type under Sales → Products and turn on Name on the ticket. The ticket shop then asks for the name of each participant when ordering, and that name appears on each ticket. You'll find your participant list under Tickets, with the name on each ticket and whether it has been scanned.

On the same screen, set Maximum per order to 4 if you don't want one person to buy half the workshop. That leaves room for others.

What your participants see

Your ticket shop shows how many places are still free, just below the price: "3 places left". Once the workshop is full, it says Sold out and nobody can buy it any more.

If two people want the last place at the same moment, exactly one of them gets it. The place is checked and taken in a single step, then held for the buyer for ten minutes while they pay. If they drop out at the payment step, the place becomes free again by itself.

After paying, the participant gets their ticket in the confirmation email and can add it to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet. On the day, you scan it at the door with the scanning app, or tick people off your list.

Someone cancels

It happens at every workshop. Open the order under Orders and click Refund. For a full refund, the switch Cancel the tickets and release their places is on by default. The ticket becomes invalid and the place goes straight back into your ticket shop, so someone else can buy it. How this works is explained in Cancelling and refunding.

The same workshop on several dates

Running "Wheel throwing for beginners" twice in November? Create two events, each with its own twelve places. You don't have to start from scratch: use Copy on the ticket type under Sales → Products and change the date. The copy starts out inactive, so you can check it first.

If the workshop comes back every week, say every Wednesday evening, a product with time slots is more practical. You create all the Wednesdays of the autumn in one go, with 12 under Seats per time slot. Each evening then has its own twelve places, and your participant picks a date in a calendar. See Time slots.

What it costs

A workshop with twelve places fits comfortably within the Free plan: up to 100 paid tickets per event, with the ticket shop, the scanning app and wallet passes. There is never a charge per ticket on top. If you also want to sell at your studio's desk, you need Start (€9.00 a month). Gift vouchers for a workshop come with Growth.

Payments go through your own payment provider. Compare the plans on the pricing page, or read how a club sells tickets for its fundraising dinner without commission.