Best practice in limiting seats for a specific price type

I believe Allocations can be used for this -- you can allocate a certain number of tickets to a certain price type. 

Hi Dawn. The one way I have been able to limit the total number of a certain price type being sold is to make the offer through a pricing rule. For instance, we offered our members a pair of comps to a certain show.  But the artist only allowed up to 60 tickets to be offered. The pricing rule basically says when the Member price type is used for this show, change the price type to the Member Comp price type for up to two tickets per order/customer. But in the pricing rule there is a way to limit the maximum seats to 60. Once the 60 are gone, the pricing rule should no longer fire. One other way which has some limitations is to use "Allocations" on let's say 60 seats. If you create a seat allocation called "Sale" for instance and assign it solely to a special discount Mode of Sale accessed by a promo/source code, AND that Mode of Sale contains the sale price type, patrons using that promo code will have access just to the seats that you allocate as "Sale" using the sale price type.  You limit the total number sold by only allocating 60 specific seats for the sale. Problem is, those 60 seats are not necessarily made available to your normal Web Mode of Sale.  So in this case they are taken out of the general inventory for public sale. I suppose you can add the new allocation to your normal Web Mode of Sale which I am guessing will give all patrons access to the new allocation of seats at regular price. But that may defeat the purpose by potentially cutting down on the 60 max offered for the sale?  Hope this helps and sorry for the long-winded explanation.  Michael Dundon 

Thanks Michael, I have managed to set up price type change pricing rule as you suggest. How do you message to explain to the customer that the offer has reached its limit? When I tested, the rule just stops firing and the customer gets charged full price with no explanation. My rule is attached to a source code. I also tried to add a message to the rule to explain that the discount would be applied in the cart, but this is not appearing on the Event Item Detail page, still working on that one!
Many thanks
Best wishes

Dawn

Depending on who is accessing the offer, I often put added explanations in "Performance Purchase Instructions" in TNEW either at the Production Season level or the Performance level. Putting a Pricing Rule message that appears in the TNEW cart also works, but has certain limitations if the patron is not paying attention to whether or not they are receiving the discount or comp price type. At least it could warn them that the offer is limited to the first 100 (let's say), and to please be certain the discount has been applied to the cart items. Otherwise, call the box office, etc.  Also, you mention a source code.  Are you using a promo code to access this offer. If so, that makes it problematic to put a pubic facing message in TNEW Performance Purchase Instructions for an offer to a limited population using a promo code.

Also, something I have not been able to get working (yet) is the text message that you can attach to a source code using a promo code, which is set up in System Tables TR_WEB_SOURCE_NO  I have tried to put qualifying instructions such as "Offer is Valid in Section B ONLY" that in theory should pop up when someone puts in a promo code.  But for some reason, such text is not appearing in TNEW. Gotta work on that one!

Hi Michael,

Are you looking to achieve something akin to the sample below?:

We tend to favour Pricing Rule messages as they're a tad more reliable, but was wondering if this was the sort of thing you were looking for?

Thanks,

Martin

Hi Martin

Yes, I'm also trying to get the message to fire on that page, but without success. I can get a message to fire in the cart when the offer has applied no problem, but if I choose any of the pre cart page message options, it doesn't work. I expected what I can see in your screenshot, that would be ideal to communicate that the offer is limited and won't apply once the limit is reached. Any tips on troubleshooting welcome! Screenshot of main rule:

And messaging screen. I've tried both Single Ticket Selection and Single Ticket Listing pages without success. I've tried shorter messages but that's not it either. The cart message works.

Thanks

Dawn

Martin, your message appears to be text associated with a promo code, correct. If so, yes I've wanted a message to pop up after a promo code was entered but before seats were chosen.  That is what does not seem to work for me. Do you add this text in TR_WEB_SOURCE_NO?  I too find messages in Pricing Rules more reliable, but like Dawn cannot seem to place the message prior to the selection of seats.  Thanks

If you want the message to fire when the promo code is applied, then you use the Text 1 filed in TR_WEB_SOURCE_NO:

Here is an important note regarding Anne's comment.

Tessitura v15 Help System - TR_WEB_SOURCE_NO (tessituranetwork.com)