We are looking to refine how we track tickets that are underwritten by foundations, corporations, etc for students to attend public performances (non-student matinees) and I wondered how others are handling this situation.
We are currently using a generic comp code. Since we are unable to distinguish staff comps from these underwritten comps, we are considering creating a new Education comp code that will have a $0 value. I think that fixes the tracking issue, but we are left with the concern that these "comp" tickets will affect the overall average ticket price for productions which affects what we pay in royalties, report in sales, etc.
What are you guys doing? Is anyone doing any kind of transfer from contributed to ticketed income?
Thanks,
Keri
We used to pay for all comp tickets (except papering the house) with a “priced comp” price type using a payment method that tied to department (we used Administration, Development, Marketing, Music/Production). We had one comp for subscriptions, another for single tickets.
For budget purposes, departments would be “charged” for the tickets they used.
We no longer do this: All our comps are $0.
We had a program a couple of years ago where tickets for certain patrons (based on a raffle they had entered) were paid for through a grant. We paid for those using a payment method tied via GL to the grant. I don’t know how our accounting department tracked this, and in theory on the ticketing side we had no limit to how much we could pay for with this payment method. I’m wondering if a better method wouldn’t have been to set up a gift certificate with a set limit, and pay for that with the ticket subsidy payment method, and use it to pay for the affected tickets. Haven’t tested this, though…
Lucie
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Lucie Spieler
IT Development and Training Manager FLORIDA GRAND opera
Lucie,
Thanks so much for your thoughts on this subject. The gift certificate idea is intriguing. I'll bring some of these ideas to the table and try to remember to post what we end up doing and whether or not it works!
-Keri