Hello!
I'm wondering if anyone can share their process for upgrading from general admission to membership? We still have memberships set up as contributions but hope to transition to memberships as products soon. Our current process that I'll outline below is complicated for our ticket staff and often results in errors.
1. Customer purchases general admission and saves receipt. If they want to upgrade to a membership they can apply eligible price types towards a membership
2. Customer gives receipt to ticket staff the day of their visit and they pull up the original order, delete the eligible price types, and return the negative amount to the cash payment type. They DO NOT give the customer any cash. They make note of the price types returned and the balance.
3. In a new order they create the constituent record and add the membership to the cart. In the payments screen they apply the amount they returned as cash towards the membership. This balances out their cash drawer. It's also usually the step where mistakes happen.
4. Finally, they add the price types back to the cart at the member level and complete the transaction. The customer makes payment for any remaining balance.
This process is a major issue for our team. It also takes some time to process so it isn't a great guest experience. I'm open to any tips, tricks, solutions, etc! Thank you!!
Hi Rebecca,
We use an On Account payment method to transfer funds from admission ticket orders to membership contributions. It looks something like this:
1. Visitor purchases general admission and saves the ticket/email, which has an order number on it.
2. Visitor decides to upgrade to membership and gives the order number to a staff person. The staff person goes into that order and returns the eligible tickets, then goes to Payments and selects the payment method On Account Membership to transfer the refunded money to.
3. The staff person starts a new order for the constituent (this is so we can track source codes for membership purchases that are distinct from the original ticket order's source code). The membership contribution is added on the Contributions tab. If there is anything else to add to the order, like member tickets to a show in the IMAX, those are added to this new order. In the Payments screen, the staff person first applies the balance from On Account (helpfully, the amount is listed with the payment method in the dropdown as well as being in the constituent/order detail header). The staff person can then see the remaining balance due and gets payment from the visitor to apply (cash, card, etc.).
This works pretty smoothly and quickly in real time. The only errors I have seen, and this is rare, is when the returned GA tickets cost more than what's needed to pay for the membership and the staff person forgets to refund the balance to the person's credit card. We occasionally go back and check for outstanding On Account funds on constituent records so we can clear up what should be done with the money in those cases.
Emily
Hi Emily,
I like the idea of using a payment method! That would help with applying the correct amount. What I really wish Tessitura had was a button that could be selected to apply tickets towards a membership. That'd be ideal. :) Thank you for sharing your process!
Another option is doing the ticket return in the new order. The balance would then be available in the new order and immediately applied toward anything new you add to that order. That would skip the step of holding the money on account in between orders. Alternately you could, in the original order, do both: return the tickets and add the membership contribution. This would also eliminate that extra step.
If your business rules require both that the return occur in the original order and the upgrade occur in a new order, then using On Account as a holding mechanism is probably your best bet.