As we look to the possibility of canceling our 2020 summer festival we have decided to offer our patrons the option to get a credit that can be used in the next two years, in addition to the option to donate their tickets or get a refund. I've looked at putting this money on account, but am thinking that in addition to that perhaps I should issue them a gift certificate. My concern is that there are contributions that start out with on account monies and I haven't seen a way to segment it. I'm curious how other organizations handle credits that are specifically for tickets and for a limited time.
Thanks
We created a separate On Account payment method for money from cancelled performances.
We also have a separate On Account to Donor On Account and also separate Gift Certs.
Heath and Shelley, have you confirmed that the new gift certificate payment method will work on your website?
Another issue is that if your staff attempts to redeem the GC using your original gift certificate payment method (instead of your new GC version), Tessitura will say that that GC number does not exist (for that payment method, which is correct) and will also put a mirror lock on that gift certificate. This results in that GC number being locked and it cannot be used. Your staff may need to close their batch (the batch that attempted to use wrong GC payment method) so that Tessitura will release the mirror lock. Another option is to use SSMS and update the mir_lock to 0 for that GC.
We have a few dozen GC's from a 2nd GC payment method and this causes us issues. Mainly because there is nothing on the GC design to differentiate between the 2 different GC payment methods.
Hi Shelley and Neil -
Your TNEW site can redeem any gift certificate from any payment method, but you first need to give your Web User Group permissions to use the payment method in Security. Let us know if you're finding that's not the case and Support can follow up.
Thanks,Patrick
Something to consider when deciding if you want to use on-account vs gift certificates if the intention is to have a 2-year expiration: my understanding is federal law requires gift certificates not expire in less than five years from date of issue. Additionally some states have regulations that prohibit them expiring at all - which I believe applies based on the location of the purchaser rather than the issuer. You may want to research such regulations to help decide if gift certificate is the preferable path for you.
In New Mexico it's 10 years from date of issue. My plan is to use the GC function, but call them Ticket Credits. I think that will get me around the law sense they aren't really gift certificates.
I'd also check with your legal team. It's different in every state and country, but if you are communicating that your credit note is a hold over for a specific thing that may have different legal implications than a standard Gift Certificate. I know that is the case in Australia but definitely running your T&C past your legal boffins.
Depending on what the laws are, our legal team said as long as we had an expiration date on our gc's that we could expire them. So, our gc's currently have a disclaimer that they expire one year after the issue date, and they list the date of issue on them.