museumPASSmusées

Anyone who shows a museumPASSmusées gets into a participating museum free of charge. This article explains what that pass is, how your museum takes part in it, how you register a visit at the desk and in the shop, and how you turn that into a monthly file for the settlement.

What museumPASSmusées is

It is an annual pass for museums throughout Belgium. The holder pays once a year and may then visit the permanent collection of every participating museum as often as they like, free of charge. Temporary exhibitions are often included free or at a discount.

A few facts that help you understand what you are taking part in:

• The pass is valid for one year from purchase.
• More than 260 museums take part, spread across Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels. That makes it one of the few cultural projects that works across the community borders.
• The pass is managed by a company with a social purpose, set up by the Brussels Museums Council, the Vlaams Museumoverleg, ICOM Belgique and Musées et Société en Wallonie, and publiq vzw.
• The visitor shows the pass physically or through the museum pass app. In the app there is a QR code that serves as proof of admission.
• There is also a reduced rate for anyone entitled to it, just as with UiTPAS. For you that changes nothing: you simply see a valid pass.

For you as a museum the most important thing is that the publisher pays you a fee per visit. So a visitor with a museum pass is not a free visitor: they are a visitor who has paid elsewhere and for whom you receive a fee afterwards, on the basis of the number of visits you have registered. That is why the counting matters so much.

How your museum takes part

You arrange taking part directly with the publisher, outside Passavo.

1. Go to museumpassmusees.be and look for the contact route for museums.
2. Get in touch and explain which museum you are and what you offer.
3. A conversation follows about the conditions: which parts of your museum fall under the pass, what happens with temporary exhibitions, and what fee you get per visit.
4. After the agreement your museum appears in their list and in their app, and you can start registering visits.

Ask the publisher for the exact conditions and amounts; they are not fully published on its website.

Does it work? Yes

From card to settlement it goes like this:

1. the visitor shows their museum pass; you type the number into the single input field at the desk, or they type it themselves in the shop;
2. Passavo recognises it by its number (10 to 13 digits) and registers the visit as a ticket of zero euro, with date and time;
3. at the end of the month you click Download settlement (CSV) and send that file to the publisher, who pays you per visit.

A CSV is a simple table file that opens in Excel or Numbers. That is all it is.

What Passavo does not do: ask the publisher whether that one card is still valid. No such service exists, for any ticketing system; for UiTPAS it does. So at the desk you glance at the card yourself, exactly as you do today. The difference with today is that the tally sheet can no longer get lost.

What you need beforehand

• A current agreement with the publisher of the museum pass.
• The Owner role: only the owner may set up the external passes.
• An admission product with a normal price, so that there is something the visit can be set against.
• Five minutes to switch it on; after that it costs a few seconds per visit at the desk.

Step 1 — Switching on

1. In the menu on the left, under the heading Settings, click External passes.
2. Switch on We accept museumPASSmusées.
3. Click Save.

There is no more to it. There are no keys, because there is nothing to connect to.

A museum pass number has 10 to 13 digits; that is how Passavo recognises the card. The screen shows you which format is recognised. If someone shows a valid card that is not recognised, send the number to support. We adjust the recognition; you don't have to do anything.

Note: if you also accept UiTPAS, a number of exactly thirteen digits is read as a UiTPAS. If a museum pass has thirteen digits, report it to support.

Step 2 — Registering a visit at the desk

1. Ring up the ordinary admission ticket, as though the visitor were going to pay.
2. Type the pass number into the UiTPAS or museum pass field.
3. Click Apply.
4. The price of one ticket goes to nought.
5. Settle up with Free.

That first step looks superfluous but is not. By ringing up the ordinary ticket first, the system knows which visit this was and what it would have cost. That is precisely what has to be in your settlement later.

Step 3 — Registering a visit in the shop

In the web shop the same happens on the checkout page: the visitor puts their ticket in the basket, fills in their Pass number under Do you have a UiTPAS or a museum pass? and clicks Apply.

One pass counts for one person. If a family comes with three passes, add them one by one; the entry is split each time.

Why nought euros and not a discount

A museum pass visit is not a price reduction but a subscription that has been paid for elsewhere. That is why the amount really is nought and not "price minus discount". Otherwise VAT would be calculated on a sale that does not take place here.

For the same reason such an order gets the museumPASSmusées channel and does not count towards your daily turnover at the desk. It is not turnover; your fee comes from the publisher, later and in one go.

Note: that also means that your till does not match your visitor numbers in the evening. That is normal. Check your visitors in the overview and not in your till total.

Step 4 — The monthly settlement

1. In the menu on the left, under the heading Settings, click External passes.
2. At the bottom of the museumPASSmusées block, choose the month. The previous month is filled in by default.
3. Look on the screen at how many visits have been registered this month and last month, so that you know what to expect.
4. Click Download settlement (CSV).
5. Open the file and check it over before you send it off.

The file contains one line per visit:

Column	What is in it
datum, tijdstip	When the visit was registered
pasnummer	The number as it was typed in
product	Which ticket it would have been
bestelling	The order number, so it can be found again
normale_prijs	What it would have cost without the pass
aangerekend	What the visitor paid (nought)
valuta	The currency, usually EUR

The file opens in Excel without questions: semicolons as the separator and commas in the amounts.

Withdrawn visits are not in it. A reversed visit that is settled anyway is exactly the kind of mistake that stands out when the publisher starts counting themselves. A visit is only withdrawn when there is a refund through your payment provider — and a visit of nought euros never has one. See below for what to do with a visit that was registered by accident.

Common mistakes

Not ringing up the ticket first. There is then no product and no normal price with the visit, and your settlement is unusable. Always ring up the ordinary ticket first.

Simply letting the visitor through without registering. That is a visit you get no fee for. For you every unregistered visit is lost money.

Using one pass for several visitors. One pass is one person. Add every pass separately.

Sending off the export for the wrong month. Check the year-month field before you download, and compare the number of lines with the number on the screen.

Booking the visit as a discount of a hundred per cent. VAT then lands on a sale that does not take place here, and the visit counts towards your daily turnover. Use the pass field.

What if …

… a valid card is not recognised?

The number format is a setting and has not been confirmed by the publisher yet. Pass the number on to us and the pattern will be adjusted, without a new version being needed. In the meantime do not leave the visitor out in the cold: settle up as free and write the number down by hand, so that it can still go into your settlement.

… somebody shows a pass that looks expired?

There is nothing to check it against. Look at the expiry date on the card or in the app, as you would with a paper list. If in doubt: let them in and report it to the publisher.

… a visit has been registered by accident?

Cancel the ticket on the order, so that it no longer works at the door. The visit does stay in the monthly settlement, though: the panel has no button to withdraw a museum pass visit. So delete that line from the CSV file yourself before you send it off, and note the order number so that you can still explain it later.

… the publisher asks for a different file format?

Open the CSV in Excel and turn it into what they ask for. The columns contain everything needed to find a visit again: date, time, pass number, product and order number.

Frequently asked questions

Is the pass number checked? No, only on its shape. There is no service to put it to. Whoever shows the card physically has it — that is also how it goes at a desk with a paper list.

A valid card is not recognised. What now? The format is a setting. Pass the number on to us; the pattern will then be adjusted, without a new version.

Can I have the export run automatically? No. Download the file yourself every month with Download settlement (CSV); it is a single click.

Do I get paid anything for a museum pass visit? Yes. The publisher pays the museum a fee per visit. How much that is, is in your agreement with them; Passavo does not know that amount and so does not calculate anything with it.

Does a museum pass visit count towards my visitor numbers? Yes. The visit exists as a zero-euro ticket with the museumPASSmusées channel. It counts towards your visitors, but not towards your turnover.