We have a flex package (non-fixed seat) which causes a lot of headaches for us in reconcilliation. There was a new method introduced in version 8 or version 9 of Tessitura that allows the non-fixed seats to be assigned to a specific performance without making an exchange of the original purchase.
Can someone give me a quick overview of how this appears in reports? Does the money follow the performances or does it follow the original package sale? Are there any reports that have been built specifically to deal with non-fixed packages?
Thanks
Kevin,
I think your explanation was better than mine. I will ask the box office manager here to chime in as well. But hopefully I can make enough sense.
Prior to the 09-10 season, when the box office wanted to redeem a seat from a flex package, they would return one of the non-fixed seats and use that money to purchase a seat at the desired performance. Finance hated this because ticket sales in the Flex package would fluctuate. Peaking early and then declining as more and more seats were redeemed later in the season. So a couple of custom reports were built that addressed this by ignoring those redemption returns and keeping the flex income with the original package sale. This led to a lot of trouble reconciling between finance and the box office at the end of the year. The box office is using their custom report and finance is using the Excel export of the Sales Summary by PTC report.
The new ability you mentioned is the one I was thinking of. The box office now keeps all the original flex package sales in place and selects performances without any financial transactions happening. I had hoped this would help our reconciliation issue, but we are still having trouble. The first big question I’m being asked is “What performances were selected by people redeeming their flex packages”. I can’t really find any reports that include non-fixed seat packages so I’m a bit stuck.
I’ve got some SQL working right now that I hope will give me a better picture of some of these issues. I think the biggest thing I’m looking for is a good way to report on non-fixed seat packages. I’ll probably learn a lot more at conference next week, but the auditors are coming next week so I need to try to sort some of this out now J
Levi Sauerbrei - Database Administrator
Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts
816.994.7227 lsauerbrei@kauffmancenter.org
http://kauffmancenter.org
Are the pricetypes used for the flex pkg specific to that type of package at all? Basically, could you report on it at the pricetype (or pricetype group) level, instead of dealing with whether the seat is in the package itself or not?