Hello,
In trying to reconcile year end sales numbers using reports like the Performance Sales Summary, or Ticket Sales by Period there always seems to be differences. The closest I can come to figuring out what might be causing these differences is that the reports handle partially or unpaid sales differently. Has anyone had experience with this? How do I know for my year-end numbers, the total amount of $ that we have already received? It seems like in general, we book the revenue after an order is paid in full, not as each payment is made. But at the same time, we don't have any ticket receivable that would show how much revenue has already been "ordered", but not paid for. Since we are an accrual based accounting system, this is causing some discrepancies that could be material for the audit. Can someone help me out here in figuring out what is included in each report? Our system "expert" does not understand accounting or numbers and thus struggles to explain this to me.
I appreciate your help as we are right in the midst of our year-end close/audit process and would like to be using correct numbers.
Thank you,
Danette
Hi Dannette,
I know you're not asking about T-Stats but this article from the T-Stats FAQ explains a bit about why the two reports you're comparing are not expected to line up:
https://community.tessituranetwork.com/topical_groups/tstats/w/tstats-wiki/459/why-doesn-t-t-stats-match-the-ticket-sales-by-period-report
Hope that helps shed some light on it.
Amanda,
Thank you so much for your response! It does help some. At least gives me a way to explain to the auditor's why I can't be sure of which numbers are exactly correct.
Theoretically, though, at the end of a season, since there wouldn't be any lag between dates at that point, shouldn't the numbers tie out?
Also, as you mentioned, I wasn't asking about T-Stats, but do you know if the Performance Sales Summary reports get their numbers from the same tables at T-Stats?
Hi Danette,
The short answer is that T-Stats and the Perf Sales Summary are generally referring to the orders and sublineitems tables. Whereas Tickets by Period, as the article indicates, references transaction tables. So one way to explain the differences is that the former looks at net activity while the latter looks at debits and credits (as mentioned in the article). But another is to explain as it they're literally looking at different datasets. One isn't more correct than the other, but they're answering different questions. If you have either report limited to a particular date period, the results will be different because they are filtering on different date columns in different tables. Even if all the dates in question have passed orders are not changing, the filters are still potentially different. Which report is "correct" for the question the auditors may be asking will differ depending on the nature of the question.
If the question that is being asked is what was the total ticket revenue (paid or unpaid) for a particular show (net of any refunds, etc.), which report is the accurate one?
Danette -
The confusing answer is that they're both correct, for what they're looking at. The difference is in how they count number and value of tickets. Essentially, the Performance Sales Summary counts seated, paid tickets (fully paid) and breaks them out by price type category, putting anything unpaid into the Reserved column. Performance Sales Summary by PT category has a couple of refinements including breaking out zero-value tickets as Comp. By contrast, Ticket Sales by Period lists the actual amount paid, whether orders are seated or not, and the number of fully-paid tickets if orders are seated, summarized by performance and by sales channel or MOS category. So you'll get slightly different results based on how much of an order is paid and whether the amount paid is enough to fully pay off any tickets in the order. Here's an example:
There's a presentation from various iterations of TLCC called "Financial Reconciliation for Ticketing" which goes into this in a lot more detail. I would recommend taking a look at the several versions of that for some more in-depth analysis.
Jonathan
Excellent, Jonathan. Thank you!
So, really, for accounting purposes, neither is actually correct, because I need to know that $60 was sold, $10 was still unpaid and thus a receivable, and we received $50 in some sort of payment.
I will look for those TLCC presentations, because I'm sure they will be helpful. I asked the question figuring that it probably had been asked before (although i couldn't find it with a search) and answered because this is going to be something every finance department would need to know.
Appreciate your response.
You will be able to get the "$50 paid in some sort of payment" from GL reporting. Because the GL sub-ledger in Tessitura only makes entries for what has actually been received, versus the /value/ of what has been sold, your GL report in the instance documented above would show $50 credited to your single-ticket sales GL and $50 debited to the payment method GL for the payment used. This would then balance to the amount shown in Ticket Sales by Period, which is the amount actually paid for the tickets in question. However, the ticketing sales process does not make an explicit GL entry to a receivables GL for a partially or completely unpaid order. (You could force that by writing out the remainder of the due amount to an Invoice payment method, but that's a complication for another topic...) Given this setup, you should be able to say that- as a rule- the difference between the total value in Performance Sales Summary (which includes fully-paid tickets and reserved, which includes un- and partially paid), and the total value in Ticket Sales by Period, which shows only received actual income, for the same set of performances, should equal your receivables, and that the amount shown as ticket revenue in Ticket Sales by Period for a given range of sale dates should match to the amounts credited to ticket sales GLs in posting reports run over the same period - assuming that TSbP is running for all price layers and categories, batches are posted in a timely fashion, and postings do not contain batches from outside the sales date range for which you're running Ticket Sales by Period. Sorry- you tripped my "Tessitura finance nerd" trigger.
Don't be sorry. That is exactly what I was trying to figure out. As a "finance nerd" it drives me crazy when the reports don't match the way I think they should, and it's usually because I don't understand what they are actually reporting. This explanation verifies what I was seeing and gives me a "rule" that will help me document the differences in a way that will satisfy my boss and the auditors.
It was really the differences between the GL postings and the Performance Sales Summary that started all this. We do post on a daily basis, and are careful about the dates we use, etc. But when the reserved ticket $ was not equal to the difference between the GL cash postings and the total revenue, it was confusing. Realizing that partially paid amounts were not included in the Subscription, Single, or Discount ticket amounts was a first step, but then the differences still between that and the Ticket Sales by Period was starting to make my head spin. Now I can feel comfortable with our daily postings (if accurately done) are correct, and have a way to explain the differences between that and the ticket sales reports (whichever one we use). And, if they are off, know to investigate and make sure our season was set up with the proper GL accounts.
Thank you.