My museum just upped our pricing for children. As a good-will thing (and to hopefully stop the potential pushback), we want to create a "Pay It Forward" option. We offer Free Admission to all on Saturday mornings, and a lot of the time patrons will tell us 'oh we want to donate what would have been admission to the museum anyway.' So we figured this "Pay it Forward" would get supplied by that.
However, I do not know of an easy way of doing this. Originally, I was going to create a Fee with a solid $10 attached (because the kids tickets are now $10) to accept the donation. Then when a family wants/needs to use it, I would create a ticket type in our GA performance labeled "Pay It Forward." That seemed simple enough until I realized we need a way of tracking how many we use, so as to not offer tickets we don't have.
We are currently creating a physical pass (a business card size) to hand to a family, who will then fill out the info requested and hand it back to our Front Desk staff. But I want a way in Tessitura to track as well. I can use a "Ticketing Fee Revenue" report, but is there a better way in real time for my Front Desk staff to know how many of those passes are left?
We recently switched to v16 if that makes a difference.
Hi Chelsea,
I'd like to suggest a process my team currently uses for gift vouchers. We had to stop using traditional gift certificates due to some state laws that are tedious to get into here, but the solution was to offer a voucher, intended to be the value of a single seat, that expires at the end of each season. They are sold as a GA ticket that is allocated to a General Ticket Revenue GL. To redeem them, we start an exchange under the original account owner, return the voucher GA seat, and move it into the actual performance that the recipient wants. We then change the owner of the exchange order to the recipient. The voucher order number is noted in the redemption order to make the paper trail easier to follow. So far, the system has worked well for us.
Alternatively, instead of changing the owner on the order, you could complete the exchange entirely under the original owner account, and put the recipient as the Initiator. This should then show the redemption order in the recipient's order history, and give you access to their email in the redemption order in case you send mobile tickets.
Codashti, do you do anything on TNEW for these vouchers?
Hi Eric,
We sell gift vouchers through TNEW, which you can check out here: https://kcrep.org/gift-vouchers/
We don't currently utilize this as a pay-it-forward option, more so just in place of the gift-certificate-as-payment-method, so I'm not sure this is much help if that's what you're considering it for. But here's the mobile ticket they receive after purchasing, which includes redemption instructions:
okay, time for a dumdum question. I'm filling in on this project and have SUPER limited ticket office setup knowledge. A gift voucher... looking at your site, it almost looks like it has a production and product ID. is it a perf? does the buyer have to communicate who the gift is going to? or can it be applied manually later? If you don't mind, tell me EVERYTHING about gift vouchers. Message only rules/dummy perfs aren't going to work because the perfs are all editable prices.
It is a dummy perf for us, because we needed something to function as a gift certificate but with an expiration date. I build a Vouchers Title and Production, and I have separate Prod Seasons for Mainstage and Special Events, because this is also where I build in our community ticket donation vouchers, and then I have two gift voucher performances, one at a mid-price level, and one at the top price level, so folks have options. This is the $45 and $79 options you see on the page I linked previously.
The performances themselves are set to a date after our last show closes so that they can be purchased up to that point. They are GA, and only have one price type (Voucher). That is set to go to our General Ticketing Revenue GL. Once the voucher is exchanged for a real ticket, the revenue then gets allocated appropriately to the correct show.
The buyer does not tell us who the voucher is going to. If they use it themselves (they sometimes do, say a spouse buying a ticket for their partner on a household account), they can request the redemption through their Upcoming Events page in TNEW, which creates a CSI. Otherwise, they can forward that email to the recipient, who either emails or calls us, and gives us the voucher Order number to complete the transaction. This also allows the system to function similar to a gift certificate in that the recipient may purchase seats that are more expensive, or purchase more seats than they were gifted, by just paying the difference in the exchange order.
We have had a couple folks ask if we could send them a more gift-y looking voucher, but I typically decline those requests. I have directed folks to our press folder on our site where they can access show art if they wanted to have something to print out.
I hope that's helpful?
Extremely helpful, thank you! I've not done any mobile ticket setup before either. I'm guessing you designed all of that. What does the QR code go to? I suppose I could scan it...
The QR codes for dummy performances don't do anything useful; it's the barcode data for the ticket that will be exchanged into a real performance. I did not do our initial mobile ticket setup, and the person that did is also the person who manages all of our email templates. The switch to mobile tickets vs Print at Home is probably a bigger discussion to be had within your organization. But regardless of which type you use, you should have some flexibility to create a voucher template that you can tie to a voucher price type so it will always send redemption instructions.
got it. very nice. I'll have to dive into digital delivery soon. We don't do many tickets at all, so I've not had to learn it thus far! Here's where I'm at for now: https://community.tessitura.com/topical_groups/ticketing-admissions-tessitura-community/f/discussions/35499/buy-one-give-one-ticket/92286#92286