Express Pay for Gala

Hi Alyssa -

We do this, although it isn't without its own excitement. We have express checkout forms that we pre-send to Gala invitees and then flag people who haven't yet given us a credit card to ask them at check-in as well. We give them LED party favors (its been a ring in the past few years) to show that they have pre-registered their credit card. This allows them to buy raffle tickets and other lobby delights without having to do anything more than show their nametag (which has their customer ID on it).

It isn't a perfect system, and it can bog down the check in lines, but people really like that whole 'not having to check out' part.

I've been to other galas where you can go register your credit card at any time during the night (which seems like the ideal to me).

- Heather

Hi Alyssa!

We elected not to try to do this directly in Tessi for a variety of reasons, but one of them was that one of our events was off-site without reliable internet access, which I don't think applies to you.

We used Greater Giving to manage two events with live and silent auctions last year. It's designed to do exactly this, and despite a few minor kinks I'd say it worked out really well for us. We leased a couple of physical credit card terminals, and then check-in is just a matter of typing in a bid number and swiping a credit card, at which point you can print a physical CC slip. If you already have a CC for somebody who pre-registered, you can pre-load it in the terminal before the event. Of course, then there's a fair amount of work reconciling between GG and Tessi, but I figure it's worth investing that time in the days after the event if it can save you from having to stare down a long line of impatient people waiting to check out. I don't know if it would work with your timeline and budget, but I expect we will definitely return to them in the future.