Ticket sales
Ticket sales cover everything between the moment someone decides to come and the moment a valid ticket is checked at your entrance.
The words of ticketing, explained
One short page per term: what it means, where it tends to go wrong in practice, and how it works with us.
Everyone who sells tickets runs into the same handful of words, and almost nobody was taught them. A treasurer looking for a free ticketing system, a curator pricing timed entry ticketing and a volunteer asked to scan at the gate are all reading the same vocabulary from different ends. These pages set out what each term means in ordinary language, what the practical catch is, and where it sits in our own software.
Selling tickets
The online ticket shop
An online ticket shop is the page where a visitor picks what they want, pays for it, and gets their tickets back within seconds.
The e-ticket
An e-ticket is a ticket that exists as data rather than as card, sent by email and shown on a phone at the entrance.
The admission ticket
An admission ticket is proof that one person may enter one event at one time, which is exactly as much as it needs to prove.
The box office
A box office is the desk where people who did not book online buy their way in, and where those who did come to collect.
Advance ticket sales
Advance ticket sales exist so that you know roughly how many people are coming while there is still time to do something about it.
Free tickets
A free ticket is still a place in a room, which is why an event that charges nothing needs a list just as badly as one that charges.
Systems and software
The ticketing system
A ticketing system is the single place where a sale, a payment, a ticket and a door check all refer to the same list of places.
Ticketing software
Most ticketing software looks the same on the sales page, and differs in the three places you only reach after you have committed.
The ticket widget
A ticket widget is a small piece of the ticket shop placed inside your own website, so the sale happens on your page rather than somewhere else.
White label ticketing
White label ticketing means the buyer sees your organisation throughout, from the shop to the ticket, rather than the name of the software you happen to use.
The ticket app
The ticket app is the organiser's side of the evening: how many are in, how many are left, and what has been sold since you last looked.
At the door
Access control
Access control is the few seconds in which a ticket stops being a promise and becomes a person standing inside your building.
Ticket scanning
Ticket scanning is reading the code on a ticket and getting a plain yes or no back before the next person has finished walking up.
The QR code ticket
A QR code ticket holds its code in a square pattern that a camera can read from any angle, which is why it took over from the barcode.
Offline ticket scanning
Offline ticket scanning means the gate keeps working when the network does not, which is the situation at a surprising number of venues.
Ticket fraud
Ticket fraud at community events is rarely criminal forgery; it is almost always the same ticket arriving twice in two different hands.
The guest list
A guest list is everyone who gets in without having bought a ticket in the usual way, and it is the part of the door that is usually improvised.
Ticket validation
Ticket validation is the rule set that turns a scanned code into one of three answers, and the answers have to be unambiguous.
Box office and till
The point of sale system
A point of sale system is the till at the desk: tickets, drinks, programmes and raffle strips all rung up in one place.
Counter sales
Counter sales are the tickets people buy face to face, which in most community venues is still a sizeable share of the room.
The receipt printer
A receipt printer exists because some buyers want paper, and because a queue moves faster when nobody is waiting for an email to arrive.
The card terminal
A card terminal is the box on the desk that takes the payment, and the fewer numbers a volunteer has to key into it, the better the evening goes.
The end-of-day report
An end-of-day report is the moment you stop selling and write down what happened, while everyone who knows anything is still in the building.
Booking and time slots
Timed entry ticketing
Timed entry ticketing does not limit how many people come; it limits how many arrive at once, which is a different and more useful thing.
Online booking
Online booking mostly replaces the phone call nobody had time to answer, which is why its biggest effect is on the people who work there.
Capacity management
Capacity management is deciding what full means for your room, and then making sure the sale respects it without anyone watching the numbers.
The waiting list
A waiting list turns the people who arrived too late from a lost audience into the first ones you contact when a place comes back.
The booking system
A booking system is the thing that stops two people being given the same place, which turns out to be most of what it is for.
Registrations and passes
Event registration
Event registration is the difference between hoping people turn up and knowing who they are before they do.
The registration form
A registration form is where most sign-ups are lost, and almost always because it asked for something nobody needed to know.
The attendee list
An attendee list is only useful if the person holding it at the door has the version that was correct ten minutes ago.
The season pass
A season pass sells the whole year in one go, which is excellent for your cash flow and slightly harder at the entrance.
On a phone
The wallet ticket
A wallet ticket sits with the bank cards and the boarding passes, which is the one place on a phone people can always find again.
The mobile ticket
A mobile ticket is whatever the visitor has on their phone when they reach the front of the queue, and it is rarely what you imagined.
Payments
The payment provider
The payment provider is the company that actually handles the money, and whose account it is decides how quickly you see it.
Payment methods
Payment methods are regional habits more than technical choices, and offering the wrong set quietly loses you the sales you never hear about.
Payouts
A payout is the moment the money stops being a successful transaction and starts being a balance you can spend.
Costs
Booking fees
A booking fee is the amount a buyer pays on top of the ticket price, and it belongs to whoever is running the platform rather than to the event.
Per-ticket fees
A per-ticket fee is the charge that grows precisely when your event goes well, which is what makes it hard to judge in advance.
Ticketing without commission
Commission on ticket sales takes a share of the reason you held the event, and for a volunteer organisation that share is the whole margin.
The gift voucher
A gift voucher is money received today for a visit that has not been chosen yet, which is a pleasant problem to have and an awkward one to record.