Hi there!
I'm curious if anyone has any clever ideas for this. I track scan rates for our performances in a few different widgets (most of which are simple Attended Count vs. Ticket Count calculations). We had one show last weekend where the scanners were down for a bit after the house opened, so the ushers did not scan about 2/3 of the house; unfortunately, they did not keep ticket stubs for us to manually enter in the Record Attendance utility later either. They did, however, keep a headcount, so we do know how many people attended. I'm wondering if there's a way I can hard code in the attendance count for this one performance, while still using Attended Count for the other performances in the run. I'd like to avoid just randomly "scanning" in the correct number of tickets for the performance because I also think it is valuable to know which patrons were and were not actually in the theater that night. I appreciate any thoughts or creative solutions you might have!
Thanks!
Lauren
Lauren,
Not sure I have any great ideas about avoiding randomly "scanning" in the correct number of tickets besides just assigned that number of comps to some form of house account and doing it that way.
That said, if the scanners were down for some internet/Wi-Fi/connectivity reason (as happens with us from time to time), if your staff/volunteers are not already trained in Offline Scanning, I cannot recommend it more highly. We have found it extremely useful to be able to scan tickets and then later upload them to the database and keep track of things that way. Is it perfect? No. But it is better than being in a situation where, like you are, you are trying to basically "invent" people so you can have an accurate scan count.
Either way, best of luck!
John A. Moskal II
And agreed, I am a big proponent of Offline Scanning when possible (we had a newer staff member subbing as the Front of House manager for that show, so I don't think he had been trained on that, unfortunately). And I think the problem with this one ended up being related to the Doors Open times on the performance. Thankful for an adept ticket office team that was able to make the adjustment shortly after house open!