Hi friends,
A nonprofit in my city is starting a subsidized ticket program in an effort to make the arts more accessible, but also support the presenting organizations at the same time. My org has been selected for the pilot program, along with a couple other Tess orgs in town. The deal for the patron is that they can purchase flat rate $10 tickets to any performance, any seat, and the supporting NP will cover the remaining ticket cost via invoice at the close of the production. We're super excited to be a part of this initiative, but I'm having a hard time figuring out how to make it work in Tess.
A few specifics are that the patron needs to be able to purchase online (making a phone call would be a barrier to many folks we're trying to reach), they must be able to select their own seats, and we need to be able to track the full value of the ticket when it was sold to account for dynamic pricing. I also want to be able to put that invoiced revenue into the show GL in Tessitura so we can track the full revenue accordingly, but I don't want to impact seating/attendance numbers.
I know I can create a pricing rule for the patron to get $10 tickets. I'm working with my DBA to see if we can get the value information in Analytics, though that's not as straightforward as we'd hoped; the various values for Ticket Base Value, Ticket Home Value, Ticket Current Base Value, etc etc don't seem to be giving us what we're looking for. I'm considering creating a dummy performance for each production where I can enter the invoiced value of the tickets so that it will go into the correct GL, but I'm not sure of the best way to set that up so that it wouldn't impact attendance data.
We have a different subsidy program through a few corporations in town that pay for half of their employees' ticket costs, but those patrons have to call to order and we process those orders as split payments with one half paid by the patron, and the other paid by another payment method that we treat like an invoice. When we get the lump payments from those employers, we enter the credit through the employer's account to balance the books. This was how I was originally hoping to approach this new pilot program, but I don't think it's possible without an agent entering the order.
Any ideas would be appreciated, we're hoping to get this off the group ASAP so we can have folks attend our Christmas show, which is already under way.
I am super new to Tessitura, but would there be any way to create a Promo Code specific to the NP for them to share with their clients to get the $10 ticket? I am not sure how that works with dynamic pricing, but could you pull a report on the number of times the promo card is used to create an invoice for NP balance and then apply as a credit to correct GL on back end? Or would it be feasible to create a dummy performance of the show, and add the total paid by the NP as a flat fee price type? Money would go to correct shows GL, and actual attendance numbers would remain intact? Analytics might still be skewed though... Just a thought. Good Luck, it is a great initiative.