Hello Houston! In your organization, do you currently use the On-Account functionality? If so, would you be willing to share your use cases, and your policy? I'm specifically wondering:
- What you communicate to patrons regarding their on-account funds
- How you are reminding them of said funds
- If you have a policy for how long the balance can remain on the account
- If so, what happens to that balance once it "expires"?
Thanks in advance! It was great meeting several of you at TLCC, and I look forward to seeing many of you at MFAH soon :)
Hello Michelle,
We used on-account funds during our 2019-2020 seasons due to our cancelled programs. At the top of the pandemic we communicated what the funds could be used for and when they would expire via email, as well as any phone conversations we had with our patrons. With on-account funds we decided to not make them redeemable via our website but only by phone.
As we had to move the funds forward another season, when we weren't able to perform in person during our 2020-2021 season, we made the decision to roll all on-account funds into a "Houston Ballet Credit", logistically a gift certificate, allowing the patron to redeem the funds online, in-person or over the phone. They were presented with the certificate number in email form and we would run reminder email campaigns throughout the year saying "Hey don't forget to use your HB Credit. We have these great shows coming up." We did have a hard expiration date this last season as those funds did need to be actualized for finance. Our patrons were informed of the deadline during each communication step.
Depending on your organizations finance policies you should be able to set an expiration window that works well with your exhibition windows and fiscal year. You will also need to setup up a process with your finance department on how they would like to see those funds resolved at the end of the validity window. The event cancellation utility and the gift certificate expiration utility will serve you well in actually processing the fund movement within Tessitura.
Welcome to Tessitura and I am so excited you will be joining us for the Round up next week.
Best wishes,
Brittany
Ticketing Services Manager
Houston Ballet