Hi.
My question is specifically for those organizations who have at one time been dealing with a single house, Fixed Seat Package and are now using multiple venues in a Super Package season.
What tips or suggestions can you provide since we cannot rollover our Super Packages from season to season - how do you function and structure your renewal data so that it is accurate for the Renewal Invoices since we can't use Tessitura.
I am continuing a practice that I started last year, our first moving from Fixed to Super. I run a list of all current subscribers and populate it in the Customer Data Export Utility - this gives me their patron information as well as their previous seating information for the season in each different configuration.
I take that and save it into an Excel spreadsheet. I have to manually go in and clean the list so that seating information from the current season will be correct for the upcoming season. I also manually add pricing information, since it will change from current to the upcoming season. Then once I have all that information in a spreadsheet I do a simple mail merge onto a Word document so that the fields I want populate where I want on a blank renewal document.
This is EXTREMELY time consuming, especially since our sub base has grown so much. Is there an easier way to do this? Maybe a way that utilizes Tessitura that I am not aware of?
It was so much nicer to have the rollover functionality, but since it's not available with Super Packages it makes it difficult to be accurate and precise with our renewals.
Also, do you still utilize a paper renewal or do you also utilize the Online Renewal functionality even though with a Super Package, non-rolled over renewal it would appear that patrons are purchasing a new subscription online?
It doesn’t create accurate renewal orders by itself. You have to complete the renewal order manually. So after rolling over the one sub package you can rollover, you have to load each rollover individually. When you do that it will automatically add the missing sub packages as unseated line items to complete the super package. You then need to seat each of those unseated sub packages. Once you do that, you can generate accurate renewal notices. It’s a lot of work (seating each order in the new facilities), but its work you are going to have to do sooner or later. At least if you do it sooner, you can generate renewal notices straight out of Tessitura.
The alternate option I mentioned is to use the conversion process to set up dummy performances in the new facility to rollover. You still have to assign seats to every subscriber, but this way you are doing it in a import file (essentially a spreadsheet) which you use to give them seats in the dummy performances (one to represent each different sub package) and then you can roll over those dummy performances into the real sub packages for complete super package rollover orders.
Kevin Sheehan
Documentation & Learning Resources Specialist
Tessitura Network
1 888 643 5778 ext 329 Office
ksheehan@tessituranetwork.com