Hello friends,
My name is Chris and I am at Des Moines Performing Arts. We are a presenting organization/performing arts center. We recently had our TMS kick-off call and were made aware of some things we did not know about from our prior meetings with Tessitura about TMS. We are hoping that some of you fine people are at a presenting organization/performing arts center and can help us with these questions.
Here are some of the hurdles we need to overcome:
1. We learned that you cannot do a refund by credit card number, only by CCRef number and using the refund button. While this makes sense, we will also be having quite a few Broadway shows that tickets were sold through WorldPay that we may need to refund and we do not want to issue checks (because of the liability of waiting for guests to cash them and for the customer service that that is not). Have any of you found any ways to overcome this?
2. We learned it is recommended that all returns/refunds/exchanges are done in the original order. We do not currently do this (for a myriad of reason) and trying to wrap our head around how this would affect reporting (as it's already very difficult to report on refunds and exchanges). If you are like us, and have done exchanges, refunds, and returns in a new order, could you share your process for changing to everything in one order and any bumps and hurdles you experienced?
3. We currently have our credit cards setup (for controls and reporting) so that there is credit card payment method for each way to buy (phone, internet, window/in person). We do this because it is a very easy way to do settlements with our presenting organizations, especially touring Broadway. If you also had your credit card setup this way, what hurdles and bumps did you run into for reporting and settlement with this new behavior?
4. We learned that on one-page giving for TNEW, credit cards are not save automagically if the guest is signing up for sustaining giving. Instead, we have to call the guest to get that same credit card to enter into the payment plan that is the sustained giving. Have any of you found ways to overcome this? We don't see this as donor friendly and would definitely be more work for our Devo staff to make sure they call and get those credit cards.
Thank you everyone for any and all answers.
Thank you everyone for all your advice and insight. It's helpful in relearning how to do something that has been done a certain way for sooooooo long. LOL
Hi Chris, regarding #4, which I don't think anyone answered, right now the Alliance Theatre sustainer society uses the old donate/contribute1 TNEW pages instead of one page giving, where it makes you login before you checkout, so you can save the card there, though it's not particularly intuitive. There may be some reasons regarding logins or legal-ese that it doesn't happen on one-page giving, but I agree it would make sense if possible.
-Henry