Identifying Seat Count

I feel like I may have asked the listserv for help on this before, but I can’t recall what the solution might have been. I am trying to simply establish the formula to count all seats in my house…but everything I’m trying is returning a different number for every performance in the same venue.
 
My house count is 987 seats. But no matter what criteria I try, I am not seeing a consistent total seat count across performances (see screenshot below).
 
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Does anyone have advice on how to fix this? Thank you in advance!!
  • Try Ticket Count and Seat Unsold Count with a filter Seat Hold Code of None.

  • Thanks for the reply, Neil! For the widget, should I try to filter to only a hold code of none?
    Graphical user interface, application

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    If so, those two formulas gives me pretty weird numbers… and again, the sum varies widely per performance.
     
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    Anh Le (she/hers/hers)
    Director of Marketing & PR
    OPERA THEATRE OF SAINT LOUIS
    email: ale@opera-stl.org
    phone: 314.963.4294 | mobile: 760.834.5926
    210 Hazel Ave St. Louis, MO 63119
     
     
  • $organization in reply to Anh Le

    It depends on what holds you have (if any). The total seat count would be the ticket count + seat unsold count. Also, sometimes it displays the sum of something as the total. As in, the SUM(Ticket Count) is the same as [Total Ticket Count].

    I'd start there and then start adding hold codes. Maybe someone has added some that you didn't know about.

  • $organization in reply to Anh Le

    One more thing, remember that the data in Analytics is one day old (unless you are self-hosted and have it set to update more often). In other words, any changes you made today will not show up until tomorrow.

  • Thanks for the example, Neil! I tried exactly that and fiddled with every hold code that the widget filter would allow, but nothing got me to our actual seat count…see below.
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    I may just end up putting in a support ticket for this – it definitely seems like something might be wrong with our system.
     
    Anh Le (she/hers/hers)
    Director of Marketing & PR
    OPERA THEATRE OF SAINT LOUIS
    email: ale@opera-stl.org
    phone: 314.963.4294 | mobile: 760.834.5926
    210 Hazel Ave St. Louis, MO 63119
     
     
  • $organization in reply to Anh Le

    If you get close to the target, use the House View in Season Manager to look at an individual performance. Maybe something will jump out at you.

    I know that one issue can be that if you have a seat on hold, but have rights to break that hold, means you can sell that ticket WITHOUT breaking the hold.

    For our large fall event, I had to daily check the House View for any of seats with tickets sold but also still had a hold so that the counts would not be thrown off in Analytics. I would break the hold and then on the next day the numbers would add up properly in Analytics.

  • Sorry, I keep thinking of one more thing. 

    Sometimes tickets are in an in-between state (maybe in someone's cart?) at the time when Analytics is doing its update of your data. This can also throw off your numbers. This issue usually clears up the next day (and then you notice that another perf has that issue, lol).

  • I appreciate the continued brainstorming! I actually think I’m going to submit a ticket – you were right to advise me to compare this to the House Manager. It looks like the missing seat count is almost entirely matching up with the number of tickets we have on payment plans…apparently those don’t show up in “Reserved, Unpaid” even though it would make sense for them to do so.
     
    Thanks again, Neil!
     
    Anh Le (she/hers/hers)
    Director of Marketing & PR
    OPERA THEATRE OF SAINT LOUIS
    email: ale@opera-stl.org
    phone: 314.963.4294 | mobile: 760.834.5926
    210 Hazel Ave St. Louis, MO 63119
     
     
  • Hi Anh,

    If you talk to Support, please follow back here with the resolution for the thread. In the meantime, I'd expect a SUM of the value called [Seat Count] to give you that number. From help:

    Seat Count: The number of seats (inventory) for a product. Only price layers in the Ticket Price price category are counted for this field. If multiple Ticket Price price layers exist for a performance, the Ticket Price price layer with the min start date and min price layer type rank is counted. If you break out counts by price layer, layers in all other categories will have a count of 0.

    One caveat to that is this setting: Include Blacked Out Seats. When set to No (the default) seats that are held with a blackout hold code are not included in Tessitura Analytics. Setting this entry to Yes will include seats held with blackout hold codes in unsold seat counts and capacity calculations. If you include them, you can filter them out with a Hold Code filter on the widget or dashboard that is set to exclude the kill holds.

    I would avoid using Ticket Count as a method of counting the sold segmentation of your seat capacity, as a single seat could be sold multiple times (benevolent returns), and a ticket could be unseated and still count toward an overall sold ticket count. 

    A similar issue can occur with distinct counts of Perf Seat Key, Seat Key, and Seat ID as tickets without seats will still have a placeholder value (e.g. -999999) that will contribute to the overall total unique count of values. 

    Best,
    Chris

  • I appreciate that additional information, Chris. I tried the Seat Count criteria and it must be combining multiple price layers, since the counts are wildly higher than my 987-seat house. However, I’m not sure how to further manipulate this down to just one layer, since only one is showing up at the moment (see below). I’m sure this is user error, but might you have any further advice?
     
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    Anh Le (she/hers/hers)
    Director of Marketing & PR
    OPERA THEATRE OF SAINT LOUIS
    email: ale@opera-stl.org
    phone: 314.963.4294 | mobile: 760.834.5926
    210 Hazel Ave St. Louis, MO 63119
     
     
  • Thanks for trying that for me Anh. That's not expected and a support ticket is in order. As a work around for non-GA seat maps, try:

    ( [# unique Perf Seat Key] , [Seat Key > 0] )