Exchanges and reporting

Martin,

We use a source code  MOS and  catagory for exchanges for tracking.  I recommend doing Exchanges in a new order, keeps printing simpler.  The tickets have a Subscriber ID and Release code printed on each ticket which allows us to do Exchanges over the phone knowing that we are dealing with the right Constinuets. 

I hope this is clear and helps you.

Bruce Smith

Box Office Manager

The Laguna Playhouse

For our flex package we will do the original exchange in the same order. That way we our box office agents can see right away how many flex coupons were exchanged into which show. This is also a free exchange so no exchange fee is set to charge for this transaction.

Any additional exchanges of flex coupons or our seated series tickets are done in an Exchange MOS. This is where we have the exchange fee set to charge.

Any package fixing we have to do (don't we all!) is done in the original order and we document it in the notes field and/or the Notes section under the research tab.

Hope that helps!

Hi Martin,

We have done both new order exchanges and exchanges within the original order. Putting exchanges into a new order seems to keep everything a little neater and streamlined for us as far as reporting as well as being able to quickly find things (the original order can get a little clogged up when multiple exchanges are done).

However, if you ever use dynamic pricing (or think you will be using it at any point in the near future), placing the exchanges in the original order is the easiest way to keep your prices straight and once your staff is fully trained on the proceedures, it is not too much more complicated.

I'll add that if you are using sources to track ROI on things, you'll want to ultimately set the source for the exchange order as the source for the original order, or else you'll end up with all that money attached to "exchange" instead of "newspaper ad" or whatever.

As an idea for the one-time freebee- a constituency or research note that creates a header icon would be an easy method for the operators- though you then need to update all that info at the beginning or end of the season.

Martin - Just to address your second point (we do exchanges in a different order, but we don't dynamically price sub tickets, which helps with that issue).

We don't do the 'free exchange' limit, but we do have a 'Seat Repeat' program that allows them to come again to a show once per season for free.

I've written code that checks for that in my custom header and then displays an icon if they've used their Seat Repeat. You could do a similar thing (conceptually, code wise it would be vastly different) to your header to indicate when someone's used their free exchange.

- Heather