We have been struggling with how best to process "vouchers" for the past few seasons.
Our local community theatre group sells subscriptions which includes 6 tickets to their season - 5 paid and one comp. The patron does not have to pick their shows at the time of sub purchase. So essentially they are purchasing 6 vouchers. The way I have done this in the past is to create 6 fake performances; 5 of which cost money and one that is free. I then sell a package that contains the 6 fake perfs. When the patron actually picks their shows I exchange one of the fake performances to one of the real performances. This setup does work except for one major issue. It is very difficult to get an accurate reflection of payment methods in the real performances because of the exchange. We charge the theatre group a fee for selling the tickets when paid by cc to cover our costs so I need an accurate relection of tickets sold by cc.
Has anyone come up with a method that works well for processing vouchers that would allow me to still retain payment method information in the actual performance?
A quick off-the-cuff thought: I am guessing that you are returning the voucher, putting the money on-account, and paying off the new exchange order with the on-account monies?
One approach to payment tracking (if the above is the case) might be to create specific on-account types for exchanges, reflecting credit-card vs. non-credit-card payment methods on the original order. You'd have to verify how each order was paid for before doing the exchange, but you'd have payment methods (which would show up in Payments by Performance etc.) that would show the movement of vouchers paid by CC out of the voucher events into the real ones.