We are new to Tessitura and are ready to embark on our first season package sales. We will offer payment plans for this. How do other organizations handle donations as part of the season ticket order? Do you include these on the payment plan and if so, how?
Hello – We include donations in season renewals, and allow them to go on the payment plan, which is 4 equal monthly payments (including the donation amount), all of which have to be paid off before the season begins – so we stop taking payment plans 3 months or so before the season begins.
Our business rules are such that the donation is “paid off” first followed by the tickets (the customer never knows as it is one monthly transaction on their credit card).
Payment plans can only be handled on the phone, in person or by mail as the web is unable to get into Tessitura the credit card Token that allows us to re-charge the card used on the web (we only get a token for web transactions that allows us to refund, and we don’t do saved cards in our Tessitura). There is a way around this so we could take cards on the web with a token that would allow us to charge monthly payment plans, but the customization is expensive, involves both the CC processor and the web company, and we have not yet done it. We use Vantiv currently for cc processing and BlocksOffice for our ticketing implementation.
Jen
Signature Theatre (VA)
From: Tessitura Ticketing Forum [mailto:forums-ticketing@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Brian Parker Sent: Tuesday, January 10, 2017 4:17 PM To: Jen Buzzell <buzzellj@sigtheatre.org> Subject: Re: [Tessitura Ticketing Forum] Including donations on payment plan with season tickets
Denise,
First off, full disclosure: our ticket sales happen outside of Tessitura (our local performing arts center uses ProVenue), so I don't have specific experience using Tess for this purpose.
That being said, you should be able to handle donations with a season ticket order, even with payment plans. My guess is that you won't want a donation to be payable in installments with a package, though; I'd personally have the donation due in fall at the inception of the gift and then charge the first installment of the package at the same time.
If you sell on the web through TNEW, you should be able to achieve this as well; the patron will add their package to the cart with the payment plan in place and then be prompted at some point in the process to make a donation (based on how your TNEW pathing is set up).
Let me know if I can be of any more specific help on this.
Thank you,
Brian
From: Denise Smithson Green <bounce-denisesmithsongreen1563@tessituranetwork.com> Sent: 1/10/2017 3:49:26 PM
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Jen,
Thank you for this information! Do you allow sales and donations on your website? If so, how do you have the donation piece set up?
Thanks again,
Denise
Hi Denise,
The most common way I've seen donations set up when included with any type of ticket purchase is an on-account payment method. The money would process through on the ticket order transaction credit card and then the donation portion would be directed to an on-account payment method to be used by Development to process the donation. I think you could also use the membership functionality instead but I've not see how that is setup to be included in the purchase path of a season ticket renewal or order.
Christopher