Training Course #2: Box Office (Advanced)

Hi there!

Welcome to Ticketsolve. In this module, James from the Support team will be walking you through all the advanced features of the Ticketsolve Box Office. After each video, there will be a short task to complete so that you can put your knowledge into practice. 

If you're new to Ticketsolve, you should first complete the Ticketsolve Box Office (Fundamentals) training module and then return here to complete this Box Office Advanced course.

Have fun, and happy Ticketsolving! 

What you will need before you start

Please ensure you or your system Admin has set up the following for you in your Ticketsolve account:

  • Login details (Username, Password).
  • Event for test sales
  • Customer record for test sales
  • Voucher product for test sales
  • Benefit product for test sales (if your organisation sells them)
  • Two test customer records using the same email address for merging

Introduction to the training module

 

 

1. Sales Sessions

 

Task 1

In this task you will walk through joining and exiting a Sales Session.

  • Load up Ticketsolve using the URL provided to you by your system Admin.
  • Enter your login credentials and select to Start or join sales session.
  • Select New sales session and join.
  • Locate the Ticketsolve 'T' icon and click it.
  • Click Currently in session to view a pop-up with your Sales Session and any other active Sales Sessions in your account.
  • Locate the Ticketsolve 'T' icon again, click Currently in session and then select to Exit current sales session.
  • Select No when asked if you want to generate a report.

 

 

2. Group Bookings

 

Task 2

In this task you will practise how to make a group booking at the Box Office.

  • Navigate to the Box Office and go to the Events tab. 
  • Find an Event from the listings that is an allocated seating event. 
  • Click View Tickets to open up the seating map. 
  • Select multiple seats e.g. a row of 6 by clicking, holding and dragging to lasso the desired seats.
  • Now, before selecting the price, select another 6 seats as well from a different row. Do this by holding down the shift key and then lassoing the additional 6 seats.
  • You should now have multiple seats selected across two rows.
  • Select a Ticket Price from the right hand side to add these seats to the Cart. 
  • Click the to exit the seating map pop-up and return to Cart.
  • You can now either proceed to the Payment Options screen to practise taking payment and confirming an order, or reset the Cart to cancel. To empty your current Cart, click the ellipsis at the top of the Cart box and select Reset and create a new cart.

 

 

3. Collections

 

Task 3a

In this task you will create an order and leave it with an amount outstanding to be paid at a later date.

  • In the Box Office find an Event and add a Ticket to the Cart - it doesn't matter what ticket it is, as long as it has a monetary value to be paid.
  • Add a test Customer Record to the Cart. When creating orders with amounts outstanding it's important to make sure there is a customer assigned to the order and the email address is correct so you can request payment later.
  • Proceed to the Payment Options screen. 
  • Instead of taking payment, tick the box at the bottom that says Allow outstanding?
  • Before confirming we'd recommend also ticking the Skip sending confirmation email? box. This means that when the order is confirmed with an amount outstanding, the customer won't get a confirmation email or their e-tickets at this stage.
  • Click Confirm Order.

Task 3b

Next we'll walk through how to request a payment for your order with an outstanding amount using the Collections feature.

  • Navigate to Box Office > Collections.
  • Straight away we can see all orders with outstanding amounts. 
  • Search for the order you just placed and find it.
  • To email a payment request link out to the test customer, tick the box next to the correct order on the left hand side.
  • Now your order is selected click the Email Customers (1) box.
  • In the pop-up, enter the email subject, any BCC email addresses, and write the email message in the content box. Be sure to leave the {{ order.payment_link }} field in the content box.
  • The customer will now receive an email with a clickable payment link. When clicked on, this will open up an online Cart where they can make the remaining payment due.

 

4. Carts

Task 4

In this task you will practise finding an online Cart and opening it up in the Box Office.

  • Go to your Ticketsolve online site e.g. myvenue.ticketsolve.com/shows as if you were a customer of your venue.
  • Find an Event (it doesn't matter which one) and add a Ticket to the Cart online.
  • Go back to your Ticketsolve Box Office (Admin side).
  • Navigate to Box Office > Search Carts.
  • Here you will see all open Carts, both at Box Office and online, listed. 
  • Find your online open Cart from the listings.
  • Select your Cart by either clicking on the Cart itself or using the Additional Options icon (3 dots) on the far right. In the pop-up, you'll see the Cart Summary.
  • Double-check this is the correct Cart you want to open, as when you open an online Cart in the Box Office it disables online access to it.
  • In the pop-up click Open Cart.
  • The Cart will now be opened in the Box Office for you to continue the order and confirm it.
  • As this is a practise task, you can now either proceed to the Payment Options screen to practise taking payment and confirming an order, or reset the Cart to cancel. To reset your current Cart, click the 3 dots at the top of the Cart box and select Reset and create a new cart.

 

 

5. Applying Discounts

 

Task 5

In this task we will cover how to apply a Manual Discount to items in the Cart. 

  • In the Box Office find an Event and add 3 Tickets to the Cart - it doesn't matter what they are, but make sure they have a price (e.g. are not already 0!). 
  • In the Cart click the Manage item button, located underneath the box containing the tickets.
  • You'll now get a Manage Cart Items pop-up box.
  • Click the green arrows to expand the dropdown list to view the items in the Cart, until you are able to see the list of individual tickets (e.g. Auditorium - D17).
  • In this example, we’ll select 2 Tickets to be discounted. To select the items, click into the white box next to two of the tickets listed, and you’ll see they then turn blue with a white tick.
  • At the top of the pop-up, select the Discount items button.
  • Because we are discounting individual items, we can choose to discount by a % or by a fixed amount. Click into the dropdown and select By fixed amount.
  • We are going to discount the two tickets by €/£2, so in the Value box enter '2'. 
  • Click the pink Apply Discount button.
  • Look back at the dropdown list of tickets and you will now see that under the Discount (€/£) column, two of the Tickets have a '2.00' discount. The third Ticket should not have any discount applied.
  • Select Update Cart to save the Discount and apply it to the items.
  • You'll now be returned to the Cart. You should be able to see in the Cart under your tickets box that it says 'Discount €/£4.00'. As long as you can see this, you've applied the Manual Discount correctly!
  • You can now either proceed to the Payment Options screen to practise taking payment and confirming an order, or reset the Cart to cancel.

 

Remember, when amending an order, Automatic Discounts including promo codes won't apply. To discount items when amending an order, you will need to follow the above steps to do this manually, making sure that you remove the Tickets from the Cart and re-add them, and then apply the Manual Discount.

 

6. Vouchers

 

Task 6

In this task you will sell a Voucher and then use it as payment. 

  • Go to the Box Office and to the Products tab.
  • Find a Money Voucher product and click on it.
  • If the Voucher is a set monetary amount, select quantity of 1 and Update Cart. If the voucher is 0 with a price override box (i.e. a voucher that can have a custom price on it), enter a monetary amount in the box e.g. '10' and then Update Cart.
  • Add your / a test Customer Record to the Cart.
  • Proceed to the Payment Options, process a payment e.g. Cash, and Confirm Order.
  • You now need to use the Voucher you have just sold as payment.
  • Go to Box Office > Vouchers
  • In the search box, search the Customer Record name and find the voucher you have just sold from the list.
  • Click the 3 dots icon and select View voucher.
  • You'll now be on the Voucher details page where you can see the Amount on the voucher when it was sold, the Amount Redeemed (should be 0), and the Amount Remaining (should be the full amount). 
  • Copy the Redemption Code from the top left hand side - it'll look something like C7DQEB3K3C.
  • Now return to the Box Office and create a new Cart, with an event ticket.
  • Proceed to the Payment Options screen and under the payment methods select Voucher.
  • In the pop-up box paste the Redemption Code into the box to search for it (you can also search by customer record).
  • Click to select the correct Voucher.
  • The payment amount will be set by default to the full Cart total or the maximum value on the voucher, if it's lower than the Cart total.
  • Click Pay Now to process the Voucher payment.
  • You can now Confirm Order
  • If you now return to the Box Office > Vouchers section and search for your Voucher again, you'll see that the Redeemed and Amount Remaining figures will have changed.

 

 

7. Merging Customers

 

Task 7

In this task you will walk through how to merge duplicate Customer Records to help keep your Ticketsolve customer database clean. 

  • Navigate to Customers > Search Customers and find the two duplicate records you want to merge and copy the email address.
  • Go to Customers > Merge Customers.
  • In the dropdown select Search by email address and in the second box enter the email address used on the duplicate records that you just copied. Click Search.
  • You'll then see suggested duplicates that have the same email address.
  • If you need to remove unwanted records - i.e. records that shouldn't be included as part of the merge, select the tick box next to them and click remove (1) customer from the merge list.
  • Tick the boxes next to the records you want to merge. When selected the box will be blue with a tick in it.
  • Next you'll need to decide which record to retain and merge the other one into. If one has a Member Login (email address listed under this column) you'll want to merge into this. Otherwise, merge into the record with the most recent Last Order date. Click the circle button in the Merge To... column for the record you want to merge into. You'll see the customer record you are merging into now has a blue dot in the circle.
  • Now you can check and edit the customer information by clicking the pencil icon.
  • On the editing page, update fields using the green arrows to transfer data from the old record to the new one. Once all fields are updated, click Update Customer.
  • Return to the Merge Customers screen and click Merge Customers (2) to merge the records. This is an irreversible action so be sure to check you've got the correct Customer Records selected and edited the correct customer details!
  • A pop-up in the left-hand corner will confirm the successful merge, and you'll be taken back to the Merge Customers search screen.

 

Ticketsolve Support can help you to clean your customer database en masse. If you've got lots of duplicate records, we can run a report to extract suspected duplicates based on email address for you. All you need to do is check the duplicates are correct and then we'll run a script to merge these records for you. Find out more in our article on merging a large amount of duplicate customer records en masse.

 

8. Print Batches

 

Task 8

It's not so easy to practise creating Print Batches! For this task, we'd recommend working with a colleague in-house the next time that they are creating an Event or Order batch so you can walk through the steps.

In the meantime, follow the video about to get familiar with the Print Batches area of the system and read our guide for more information on how print batches work in Ticketsolve.

 

 

9. Memberships

 

Task 9a

In this task you will practise selling a Benefit Product (Friends, Patron scheme) at the Box Office.

  • Navigate to the Box Office and go to the Products tab. 
  • Add a test Customer Record to the Cart.
  • First, you'll need to check if this test customer has an online account (Membership) as this is required before a customer can purchase a Benefit Product. Click on the Customer Record from the Cart and you will get a pop-up Edit Customer box.
  • To find if they already have an online account on the Contact info tab. (You can also go across to the Membership tab to perform these actions).
  • Look at the Membership box
    • If the customer has an online account already, you'll see this is toggled out to blue and faded, and the date the customer created their online account. In this case, you're good to continue so click the X to close the pop-up and return to Cart.
    • If the customer record doesn't have an online account, the toggle underneath the Membership box will be grey. Click the toggle to on so it is lit up blue, and then click Update Customer. You'll see that the Membership details now are populated. Click the X to close the pop-up and return to Cart.
  • Now you can select the Benefit Product (Friends, Patron etc. scheme) that you want to sell. Click on it and you will see a pop-up with details of the selected Benefit Product.
  • Under Assign benefit product click the option for To current customer
  • Click Update Cart and the pop-up box will close.
  • Your Benefit Product should now be in the Cart.
  • Proceed to the Payment Options, process a payment e.g. Cash, and Confirm Order.

Task 9b

In this task you will now check that the Benefit Product has been assigned correctly to the Customer Record.

  • Go to Customers > Search Customers and search for the customer you just sold the Benefit Product too.
  • From the search results you should now see a label populated under the Benefit column for that customer. 
  • You can also click the 3 dots and select View Customer.
  • Go across to the Membership tab and you will see the name of the Benefit Product, expiry date, email associated with it, and that it is active.

 

 

10. Events Dashboard

 

Task 10a

In this task you will explore the Events Dashboard area of the Box Office where you can view information on upcoming Events.

  • Navigate to the Box Office and go to the Events tab. 
  • Find an Event from the listings that has some sales on it.
  • Hover your mouse over the View Tickets button until you see 4 icons appear - a question mark (Event Details), a pencil (Comments), a clock (Waiting List) and a calendar (Event Summary/Event Dashboard).
  • Click the calendar icon to go to the Event Summary.
  • Using the tabs available, answer the following:
    • How many tickets are reserved?
    • Which allocations have tickets been sold from?
    • Which ticket prices have been sold and how many of each?
    • How many orders for this event have been amended?
    • Which dates were orders placed for this event?

Task 10b

In this task you will explore the different Reports that can be pulled from the Events Dashboard.

  • Remaining in the Events Dashboard from Task 10a, navigate to the Event overview tab. 
  • Click the View / Print lists button.
  • From the dropdown, explore the different reports available to answer the following:
    • Which reports lists the seat row and number (if applicable) for each customer attending?
    •  Which report includes any Extras that have been requested from the customer at the time of booking?
    • Which report lists any Add Ons (Products) purchased along with the event tickets?
    • What is the different between the Events Summary and the Events Summary (External)? 

Congratulations, you've completed the module!

 

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