Hello,
I am looking for insight on how other organizations use Tessitura to manage fundraising events coinciding with a seated performance. Here at BLO, we will have a special performance of an opera coinciding with our Annual Gala. So, patrons arrive and see the performance, and immediately attend the fundraising event after. I am most interested in learning how you record performance ticket revenue and event revenue.
We ultimately need to be able to use a performance seating map in a ticketing order to seat patrons in the performance. I am wondering if we should record the entire gala revenue in the elevated event, noting appropriate tax deductibility for performance tickets, and use comps to arrange seating in the performance level. At the end, doing a one-time GL transfer in our accounting system. The downfall of this would be none of the ticketing revenue shows up in the suite of Tess ticketing reports. The upside is that the transactions would be cleaner.
We could also split up a transaction, so we could pay for an elevated event and place the performance ticket value on account, then follow up with using the on account funds to purchase a ticket in a ticket order. My concern with this, although the funds would be accurately recorded in the ticketing reports and ticket history, is the headache we would create for finance seeing many transactions go back and forth between the contributions screen and ticketing.
In addition to this, there will be ticket buyers who have performance tickets that ultimately wish to be exchanged into the Gala performance, and to pay the difference for the gala ticket. If we go the route of putting the revenue entirely on the elevated event, we would of course need to put the ticket value on account and use that to help pay for the gala ticket in the contribution screen.
Any tips, insight, or best practices you could offer would be helpful as we navigate through the best way to set this up.
Thanks so much!
Andrew
We typically have one or two events like this per year, and we basically do what you describe as your second option. If the advertised price that includes a ticket to the performance is x, then the contribution will be entered as a value of x - performance ticket amount. And we also use an on-account payment method to move money between ticketing and contributions, or vice-versa. We don't sweat the extra on-account transactions -- we just focus on the resulting postings.
As others have noted, the reality is that someone's report numbers are going to look odd, and at the end of the day you need to decide which is more important to your organization. We decided it was more important to keep the performance revenue consistent, and understand that the event revenue did not include the performance ticket. We did create a custom report based on (I believe) the Special Events Receipting report that adds the constituent's ticket purchase (filtered by event, order category, and price type) to their non-deductible contribution amount, so that the customer receipt was consistent with the invitation material and payment.
Disclaimer: I mentioned this method at a NYCTUG meeting a few months ago and people looked at me like I had antennae, but I wasn't sure of the suggested alternatives.
Hi Nick -- I was originated leaning toward the split between tickets and events, but I think our organization values event-level reporting over the performance ticketing, and we will go with putting value fully on the event. We also try to avoid high volume of account transfers, and so moving the funds in one direction only (from ticketing to account for current opera ticket holders switching in) to the event will be best for us. As I mentioned to Laurel, I'll report back with what we finalize.
Thanks!