We are trying to explain the differences in various ticketing reports to our Board. My staff counted the number of subscription seats sold as of a certain date, and I can't even get close to that number on any of the reports. I've tried the Daily Sales Report, Package Sales Report, Performance Sales Summary, Season Sales Summary (Seated/Unseated Detail) and even the Package Order Listing. None of them really match and I'm being asked to reconcile reports to the amount of seats we counted from the paper orders.
Does anyone out there have any solution to this problem?
Thanks,
Susan Ashcraft
Box Office Manager
Sarasota Opera
Susan,
There are number of things that may make your reports seem out of balance. Do you allow payment plans because some of these reports only look at fully paid seats when counting seats? Have you started/do you allow exchanges? Exchanges can change the category on a seat and will break the seat out of the package. Are you doing upgrades and could you have any unseated packages – because again many of these reports only look at seated orders? Do you still have unpaid rollovers – this may also cause some reporting issues since many of the reports only count paid tickets?
I find that a combination of the Package Sales Report in the Ticketing Box Office Folder and the Package Sales by Campaign found in the Ticketing Subscription Reports folder gets me the best information about our subscription campaigns. Something to keep in mind is that the Package Sales by Campaign counts total number of seats the package represents and not just the package seats. (i.e. if you have 4 shows and purchased 2 subscription seats this report will count 8 seats and not 2 seats.)
Also do you have T-Stats? There are some settings with T-Stats that allows you to look at unpaid rollovers and keep exchanged seats together with packages that may also help.
Hope this helps,
Elizabeth Carlock
Director, Ticketing Services
The Granada Theatre
From: Tessitura Ticketing Forum [mailto:forums-ticketing@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Susan Ashcraft Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2011 10:43 AM To: Elizabeth Carlock Subject: [Tessitura Ticketing Forum] Tracking Seats Sold
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Having been responsible for hand counting subscriptions at a previous organization with a software that will remain nameless, I will ask how confident are you in the accuracy of your hand count? Do you have a form for every single order? Is it possible that seats have been added to an order and not updated on the form? When we discovered that our software could not count subs accurately we had to adjust our practices to get an accurate hand count. It took almost a full season to train the box office to be aware of the process, and consumed a large part of my time.
That all being said, the reports in Tessitura do look at different characteristics to report on. Most reports have a help document attached that spell out what the report pulls on. Once you know what you are wanting to report (fully paid, partially paid, seated, unseated, etc) the help docs should help you find the right report.
Thanks, Elizabeth. We've tried to explain all these things to the Board, but no luck so far. They can't seem to understand why we can't just give them definite numbers. I've already done exchanges, we have unpaid orders from the payment plan, some problem orders are still unseated, etc. We've been using Tess for 3 years, but we have new Board members who want exact totals. Back to the drawing board!
Susan
Hi Boann,
I'm fairly confident that the hand counting is close to correct, however, with 3 people counting I can't be positive. I'm trying to avoid counting again. We're still booking new subscriptions and preparing the subscription tickets for mailing so time is an issue. I'm still working on reports to see if I can come close then I will feel a little better.
Thanks.