Following up orders

Somebody rings: "I have paid but I cannot find my tickets." Somebody is standing at the door with a phone that has no signal. Somebody wants to know whether their bank transfer has come in. For all those questions you go to one screen: Orders.

This article explains what is in that screen, how you find somebody again and which actions you can take. Refunding gets an article of its own: Cancelling and refunding.

Order, entry, ticket: which is which?

Three words that look alike but are not the same thing. Once you see that difference, the rest of the screen becomes logical by itself.

An order is one purchase, by one person, at one moment. It has a buyer, an email address, a total amount and a number. Compare it with the till receipt from the supermarket: one receipt per visit to the till.

An order entry is one line on that receipt: one product, a quantity and a price. "3 × Adult at 12.00" is one entry. So an order with adults and children has two entries.

A ticket is the admission document itself, with a code of its own and a QR code of its own. Those three adults produce three separate tickets, because three people are going through the door and each of them has to be scannable separately.

Bestelling  ORD-3TWKQ8VZPN   Marieke Peeters   36,00 euro
  Regel 1   Volwassene       3 x 12,00
     Ticket 46cfc50d-b048…   Ticket eb3f3f3f-5bee…   Ticket b510fec0-9cc9…

An order number from your ticket shop starts with ORD-, a sale at the desk with POS-. A ticket code is long; in the lists you only see the beginning.

One order, one entry, three tickets. That is the whole hierarchy. See also the glossary.

Something else hangs on an order: the payments. Those are the attempts at your payment provider (the company that collects the money from your visitor, see What is a payment provider?). There can be more than one, and that is normal: whoever starts with Bancontact, breaks off and then pays by card leaves two rows behind. Only the successful one counts.

What you need beforehand

• An account with the Owner, Administrator or Desk role — those three may view orders. The Scanner role may not.
• To resend the ticket email, change a name or cancel a ticket: the Owner or Administrator role.
• The order number or the visitor's name.
• Two minutes. There is little to break here: the screen is deliberately almost entirely for reading and hardly editable.

Step 1 — Opening the list

In the left-hand menu, click Orders. You are shown a table with the most recent order at the top. That is deliberate: whoever opens this screen is almost always looking for something from a moment ago and not for something from last season.

The columns:

Column	What is in it
Number	The order number. There is a little copy button next to it, so that you can paste it into an email
Buyer	The name, with the email address underneath it in small print
Status	Where the order stands in its life — see the table below
Channel	Where it comes from: Online, Desk, Reseller, Back office or museumPASSmusées
Total	The amount paid, including VAT
Tickets	How many tickets this order produced
Paid on	Date and time of the successful payment; a dash means: not yet paid
Created	When the order came into being

Is a column missing? Some columns you can switch on and off yourself with the button above the table. Created is hidden by default, because Paid on is more useful for most questions.

At the top right there is also Open the shop. That is a shortcut to your public ticket shop, handy for seeing what your visitor sees.

Step 2 — Finding somebody again

Above the table sits a search field. In it you search on order number, on the buyer's name and on the buyer's email address.

If you have somebody on the phone, ask in this order:

1. "Do you have the confirmation email to hand? There is an order number on it." That is the quickest route: the number is unique and you get exactly one result.
2. "What name is the order in?" Type the surname. Note: people often order in their partner's name, and then you find nothing under the name they give you on the phone.
3. "Roughly when did you order?" Combine that with the filters below.

Next to the search field sit four filters:

Filter	What you use it for
Status	Showing only the paid ones, or just only what is hanging on Pending
Channel	Separating your online sales from what you rang up at the desk
Paid today	The quickest check on a busy day
With tickets	Only orders that really did produce tickets

Filters stack. Channel: Online together with Paid today gives you today's online sales in one click.

Step 3 — Reading an order

Click a row. You land on the detail screen, made up of four blocks below one another: Order, Buyer, Lines and Amounts. Below those sit two more tables: Tickets and Payments.

The Order block holds the number, the status, the channel and three moments: created, paid on and cancelled on. A dash means each time that it has not happened yet.

In the Amounts block you see four figures next to one another: the subtotal, the discount and vouchers, the total, and next to that how much VAT is in that total. So the VAT is in the total; it is not added to it. If a discount code or a gift voucher was used, the code is shown below, under Discount code or Gift voucher.

Note: those amounts were taken over at the moment of the sale and are not recalculated. If you raise your price tomorrow, what this visitor actually paid stays here. That is the intention — an order is an accounting document, not a snapshot of your price list.

The statuses of an order

Status	What it means	What you do
Draft	A basket that has not yet left for the payment	Nothing
Pending	The visitor has gone to the payment page, there is no confirmation yet	Wait a moment; see below
Paid	The money is in, the tickets exist and the email has left	Nothing
Cancelled	The order has been stopped	Nothing
Refunded	The full amount has been paid back	Possibly still cancel the tickets
Partially refunded	Part of the amount has been paid back	The rest simply stays valid
Expired	The visitor never came back from the payment page	Nothing; this clears itself up

Whether somebody may come in at the door depends on the status of the ticket, not on that of the order. A refund does not make the tickets invalid by itself: even with an order on Refunded they stay valid until you cancel them yourself. That is deliberate: somebody who got one of four tickets back simply comes in with the other three — you choose which ticket you cancel.

The statuses of a ticket

A ticket has its own status, apart from that of the order. In the Tickets table at the bottom of the detail screen you see per ticket the code, the name, the product, the day on which it is valid, the status and the time at which it was scanned.

Status	What it means
Valid	May go through the door
Used	Has already been scanned; the time is next to it
Cancelled	Has been withdrawn and is refused at the entrance
Refunded	Belongs to an entry that has been paid back

If it says Used while your visitor swears they have not been in yet, look at the time next to it. Nine times out of ten somebody in the party has already gone past the scanner with the same screenshot.

The payments

In the Payments table you see per attempt: the provider, a reference, the method (Bancontact, card …), the amount, the status and the time. That reference is the number you can search on at your payment provider itself — handy when you ring their helpdesk.

This table is never cleared out. Failed and abandoned attempts stay in place, because precisely that history is what you need when a visitor claims they did pay.

Step 4 — Resending a ticket email

The most frequently asked question at any ticket desk: "I cannot find my email any more."

1. Find the order and open it.
2. Click Resend the ticket email at the top right.
3. Confirm in the window that appears.
4. You get a green message with the address the email went to.

The email leaves for the email address that is on the order — you can see it in the Buyer block. The ticket itself stays unchanged: the same code, the same QR code. So no second valid ticket comes into being, and the first email simply keeps working too.

Note: the button only appears when the order is set to Paid and an email address has been filled in. With a desk sale where you did not ask for an address, there is nothing to send it to.

Step 5 — Correcting a name on a ticket

If there is a name on your tickets, you will find the Change the name action with every row in the Tickets table. Type the right name and confirm. The code does not change and the visitor does not have to download anything again.

This is meant for a typing error or for a ticket that is passed on to somebody else.

Step 6 — Cancelling a ticket

In the same table, Cancel the ticket also sits with every valid ticket. Confirm, and the ticket becomes invalid: the scanner refuses it at the entrance. If the ticket was already in your visitor's wallet, that pass stops working too — see Wallet passes.

The seat comes free again as a result. The time slot or the event no longer counts that ticket as sold, and someone else can buy the seat straight away. A ticket that has already been scanned can no longer be cancelled: that visitor was already inside.

Note: cancelling pays no money back. That is a separate action, and deliberately so. Read Cancelling and refunding before you press this button, certainly when your visitor is expecting their money.

A cancelled ticket does not disappear from the list. It stays with the Cancelled status, so that the scan app at the door can say "this ticket has been withdrawn" instead of "this ticket does not exist". That difference keeps a discussion at the door short.

What you cannot do

Delete an order. That button does not exist, and that is a choice.

An order is an accounting document. What is on it is what was really paid, and that should still be findable three years from now. Anyone who could adjust an amount by hand turns their bookkeeping into an opinion.

For the same reason you cannot edit an order either: no amount, no quantity, no product, no email address. What you can do is above: refund, resend the ticket email, correct a name and cancel a ticket. With each of those four it stays visible what happened.

Nor do you create new orders here. Those come into being in your shop or at your till, see The counter till.

Common mistakes

Cancelling a ticket and thinking the money has gone back. That does not happen. Your visitor is on the line again two weeks later, angry this time. Do the two actions deliberately, one after the other.

Not finding today's order because a filter is still switched on. Filters stay on while you carry on working. If Status: Paid is still on, you simply do not see that order from a moment ago that is hanging on Pending. Empty your filters before you decide that something does not exist.

Being alarmed by several payment attempts. Two or three rows in the Payments table does not mean that somebody has paid twice. Look at the status: only the row set to Paid counts, and the total at the top adds up.

Resending the ticket email ten times. If the first email does not arrive, the tenth will not either. First check the address in the Buyer block and have your visitor look in their junk mail folder.

What if …

What if an order stays on "Pending"?

The visitor has left for the payment page and no confirmation has come back yet. With a bank transfer that is entirely normal: that takes days.

With a card payment, wait a quarter of an hour and refresh the screen. If it stays hanging, look at the Payments table: if it says Failed, Cancelled or Expired there, no money has come in and your visitor has no tickets. Have them order again. See also When a payment goes wrong.

What if I only have an email address?

Type it into the search field: you also find an order by the buyer's email address. If you find nothing, your visitor probably ordered with a different address. Two ways round it:

1. Ask your visitor for the order number from their confirmation email.
2. Ask for the name the order was placed in, not for their own name.

What if the email address contains a typing error?

You cannot adjust the address on the order — that screen is for reading only. You have two routes.

Either you help the visitor without an email: the ticket codes are in the Tickets table and you can copy them. In the Tickets menu every ticket also has the Show QR button: it shows the QR code on your screen, so that you can have it scanned at the entrance. The name on the ticket helps you find the right one.

Or you put it right with a new sale: cancel the tickets, refund the order and have them order again with the right address. That costs you a transaction fee, so only do it when it really is necessary.

Preventing is better. Put your contact address in large print on your confirmation page, so that somebody who receives nothing knows straight away where to go.

What if the visitor says they have paid, but there is nothing there?

Ask for proof: a screenshot from their banking app, or the amount and the time. Then search on name. If you really find nothing, look at your payment provider itself with that time and that amount. If nothing comes out of that either, the payment was probably broken off before it began — a page that fell shut, an app that did not come back.

What if the same person is in the list twice?

Then they are two orders, with two numbers and two amounts. That happens when somebody gets impatient and starts again. Look at both statuses: if one is on Paid and one on Expired, there is nothing wrong. If they are both on Paid, money has been collected twice and you refund one of them.

What if I cannot see the buttons at the top right?

First look at the status of the order. Resend the ticket email only appears for an order on Paid with an email address. Refund only appears for Paid or Partially refunded, as long as there is still something to pay back, and only if the payment went through a payment provider — it does not appear for a cash sale at the desk.

If the status is right, then you probably have the Desk role. That role may view orders and sell at the till, but not refund and not manage tickets. Ask your manager to do the action or to adjust your role. See Staff and roles.

Frequently asked questions

Does the old ticket keep working if I resend the email? Yes. No new ticket is created. The code and the QR code stay exactly the same, so it does not matter which of the two emails your visitor opens.

Does a cancelled ticket still count towards my capacity? No. As soon as you cancel, the seat comes free in the capacity of your time slot or your event, and someone else can buy it. That is exactly why you cancel when someone drops out, even when you do not refund.

Can I see which channel somebody bought through? Yes, that is in the Channel column: Online for your web shop, Desk for your till, Reseller for a partner such as GetYourGuide, Back office for a test payment you made yourself under Settings → Payments, and museumPASSmusées for a visit with that pass.

Why is there VAT on an order from an association without a VAT number? Because the VAT rate belongs to the product and not to your organisation. If everything is at 0%, then of which VAT says 0.00 as well. See Products and prices.

Can I download an order's tickets myself? For the visitor the ticket email is the way: resend it. At the door you do not need the email — in the Tickets menu, Show QR shows the QR code of every ticket, so that you can have it scanned.