Our Ticket Office has been using the same performance codes that were carried over from Artsoft. Artsoft would sort shows by alphabet so they would group series performance codes by letter, which is is not intuitive for the ticket office staff and patrons to understand. Chamber Series performance codes are: 24RA, 24RB, 24RC our Piano series are 24PA, 24PB, 24PC. It does not tell you the date or information about the performance to help our staff decipher what show is.
We have using the same performance code for 15 years and we are wondering if changing the structure would ruin anything? Would it affect any reports? Will it break anything? Has anyone in this group gone through this change and can share their experiences? We want to know the pros and cons of changing the structure for next season.
Like everyone has said, it shouldn't break anything from a Tessitura point of view. Still, I would definitely do this in Test and check all the regular reports you and other departments use that show perf codes to check everything is still showing as expected and doesn't clash with anything any other departments use, if they set up anything in Ticketing set up.I would also make sure to look at the End of Day/Posting report and run through this with your Finance department to check if these changes will have any effect on how they import money taken into their Finance system - our perf codes for shows drive a lot of where money is posted in our Finance system, so you'd want to check this isn't the case for you too.
I'd also recommend documenting the current set-up and what the new corresponding code is along with a guide in how future codes should be set up. This will help any new staff to set up codes consistently going forward, but also a reference on the old codes should there be any questions on past seasons in the future.
Another vote for documenting everything! I have documentation on our perf code naming conventions so keep everything consistent. But if you are changing that, keep the old and add in the date you stopped using it and then include the new conventions and when you started using them. And I would also include a key that shows what changes.