Hi
We have an ongoing problem with our accounting for ticket agencies and are hoping to improve our processes.
We deal with a number of external ticket agencies and once their sales have been confirmed we issue tickets to them using a Constituent ID and Price Type (the price type reflects our selling price to the agent i.e. less any commission).
We also use a separate Payment Method for each individual agency.
We then run a bespoke report for sales to each ticket agencyover a period of time using the following criteria: Payment Method, Transaction Date, Production and Performance Date.
This report prints a line for each ticket order detailing Seat Numbers, Amount and Price Type. However, as it reports at an order level rather than at a transaction level any changes to the number of tickets being charged or refunded do not appear correctly on the report. As the agencies require a ticketing schedule detailing all tickets sold, we therefore have to export the report to Excel and correct it manually.
Our Finance Department then use that final Excel report/ticket schedule to invoice the agent outside of Tessitura.
There is an added complication for our Finance department in that our tickets are UK VAT exempt, however there is VAT on the commission we pay to agents.
All in all it’s a fairly long-winded process.
Has anyone got any alternative (and more efficient) methods of dealing with external agencies? Does anyone use Invoicing on Tessitura for external ticket agencies? Anyone got any reports to share?
Hi Aidan
It's the holy grail as far as we're concerned. We've tried several different options and currently we reserve the seats with a hold code and send the agents a butchered version of the hold code report. This works because they print their own tickets, we don't send our stock (which incidentally saves us some money on ticket stock!). However it does mean there can be errors on the agents' side as they can issue the incorrect seats.
There is a discussion at TLCC2010 about this subject if you're going to the conference this year, it's on Tuesday 10th at lunchtime. Info is here:
http://www.tessituranetwork.com/network/Conference/Conference%20Schedule/L1%20D%20Ticket%20Agencies.aspx
Good luck
Siobhan
Thanks Siobhan - I hadn't noticed that scheduled discussion. I'm not going to the conference but I'm sure one of my colleagues who is going can attend.