In this article, we are going to look at how to set up Booking Charges and Booking Fees in your account. Within Ticketsolve it is possible to set up visible or hidden per-ticket Booking Charges, as well as being able to set per-ticket or per-cart Booking Fees, which can be customised depending on the order type (Box Office, online or phone).
What's the difference between Booking Charges and Booking Fees?
In Ticketsolve you can set Booking Charges, or Booking Fees, or both, up in your account. Both work slightly differently, and each organisation will have its own preference depending on the type of charges/fees you want to have. We've summarised the difference in the below table:
| Booking Charges | Booking Fees |
|---|---|
| Always per-ticket | Per-ticket, per-cart, or per-ticket & per-cart |
| Set and amended at Account or Ticket Price level | Set and amended at Account, Subdomain, Program, Show or Event level (unless per-cart which can only be amended at Account level) |
| Always applies to all order types - Box Office, Online, Phone | Can be set and amended depending on order types - Box Office, Online, Phone (unless per-cart which applies to all order types) |
| Can be visible to customer or included (hidden) within the ticket price | Always in addition to ticket price and visible to customer |
| Cannot be capped per order | Can be capped per order |
Booking Charges
Booking Charges are a great option if you want a per-ticket charge to apply for all order types. It's also the only way to add hidden/inside charges (like a hidden levy) to be incorporated into the overall ticket price and not visible to the customer. Booking Charges can be set to apply across the whole account, or added to specific ticket prices only.
A summary of Booking Charges:
- Always per-ticket
- Set and amended at Account or Ticket Price level
- Always applies to all order types - Box Office, Online, Phone
- Can be visible to customer or included (hidden) within the ticket price
- Cannot be capped per order
Setting up a Booking Charge at Account level
1. Go to Settings > General Settings.
2. Find the setting called "booking charges".
3. Click +Add new booking charge.
4. In the pop-up complete the following:
- Description - This is the name of the charge (such as restoration levy, admin fee, or just booking charge).
- Amount - Value of the charge. This can can be a set value (such as 1.50) or a % (such as 10%). Currency symbols are not required when entering a value.
- Hidden charge? - When ticked, this booking charge will not be displayed to customer, but instead will be wrapped up as part of ticket price (so if a ticket price is £10 with a hidden booking charge of £1, it would show to the customer as £11). These are sometimes referred to as 'inside charges'.
- Tags - if you usually have booking charges / fees for Benefit Product holders removed but do not want that to apply to this charge, enter the tag 'noskip' here.
5. Click Add.
6. Click Update to save.
- If the booking charge is set as a percentage, the percentage amount is only calculated on tickets in the cart, not products or other booking charges / fees.
- Percentage fees can be capped by using the format 15%:2 which would result in a 15% fee which is capped at 2.
- Multiple charges can be added if required.
Setting up or amending a Booking Charge at Ticket Price level
Rather than adding a charge across the Account, you may want to only add it to certain Ticket Prices. Or, you may need to amend an Account level charge for specific Ticket Prices only.
1. Go to Manage > Pricing > find your Pricing Scheme > click into your Ticket Price.
2. Go to the Settings tab.
3. Find the setting called "booking charges" and click into the setting.
4. In the pop-up box click +Add new booking charge.
5. You can now add a new charge - either to add a Booking Charge to the Ticket Price from scratch, or to overwrite the Booking Charge already set at account level.
Complete the following:
- Description - This is the name of the charge (such as restoration levy, admin fee, or just booking charge).
- Amount - Value of the charge. This can can be a set value (such as 1.50) or a % (such as 10%). Currency symbols are not required when entering a value.
- Hidden charge? - When ticked, this booking charge will not be displayed to customer, but instead will be wrapped up as part of ticket price (so if a ticket price is £10 with a hidden booking charge of £1, it would show to the customer as £11). These are sometimes referred to as 'inside charges'.
- Tags - if you usually have booking charges / fees for Benefit Product holders removed but do not want that to apply to this charge, enter the tag 'noskip' here.
5. Click Add.
6. Click Update to save.
In this example, we can see that we have overridden the £1.50 Booking Charge set at Account level to only £0.50 for this specific Ticket Price only.
Removing Booking Charges from Shows or Ticket Prices
To remove all Booking Charges (and Fees) from a Show, Event or specific Ticket Prices, you can enable the setting "skip per ticket booking charges" at the appropriate level. For more information read the below guides:
Booking Fees
Booking Fees are a great option if you want to be able to set a different fee amount depending on the order type (Box Office, online or phone). Booking Fees also offer more flexibility, because they can be set at various levels through the system from Account down to a specific Event. You're also able to set Booking Fees as per-ticket, per-cart, or both.
A summary of Booking Fees:
- Per-ticket, per-cart, or per-ticket & per-cart
- Set and amended at Account, Subdomain, Program, Show or Event level (unless per-cart which can only be amended at Account level)
- Can be set and amended depending on order types - Box Office, Online, Phone (unless per-cart which applies to all order types)
- Always in addition to ticket price and visible to customer
- Can be capped per order
Setting up Booking Fees at Account level
First, we need to set what kind of fee we want.
1. Go to Settings > General Settings.
2. Find the setting called "booking fee".
3. Choose between:
- NobookingCharge - no fees are applied
- PerCart - A one-off fee is applied per cart (amount for this can only be set at account level)
- PerTicket - Fees are applied per ticket (amount for this can be set at various levels and can be capped)
- PerCartandPerTicket - multiple fees are applied for the cart and for any tickets added (only one amount for this can be set and applies to both cart and tickets, and can only be set at account level)
4. Now we need to set the fee per order type between Box Office, online, and phone. You can set different amounts for each order type - for example, if you would prefer to push your customers to online bookings you may make the charge for phone bookings higher.
5. In Settings > General Settings find the setting called "boxoffice booking fee amount".
6. In the box write in the value of the charge. This can can be a set value (such as 1.50) or a % (such as 10%). Currency symbols are not required when entering a value.
7. Click Update.
8. Repeat steps 5 - 7 for the "online booking fee amount" and "phone booking fee amount" settings.
- How percentages fees are calculated:
- On booking fees set per ticket, the percentage amount is only calculated on tickets in the cart, not products or other booking charges / fees.
- On booking fees set per cart, the percentage amount is calculated on tickets and products in the cart, but not other booking charges / fees.
- Percentage fees can be capped by using the format 15%:2 which would result in a 15% fee which is capped at 2.
Setting up or amending a Booking Fee on Subdomain, Program, Show or Event level
Rather than adding a fee across the Account, you may want to only add it to certain Programs or Shows. Or, you may need to amend an Account level fee for specific Programs, Shows or Events. All you need to to is find the same "boxoffice booking fee amount", "online booking fee amount" and "phone booking fee amount" settings at the relevant level and amend them.
Note: Only per-ticket Booking Fees can be amended at other levels. Per-cart fees can only be set at Account level.
To set or amend a Booking Fee at Show level, for example:
1. Go to Manage > Shows and find your Show.
2. Go to the Settings tab.
3. Find the relevant setting, e.g. "boxoffice booking fee amount" and click into it.
4. In the pop-up box you can now amend the value of the fee for this Show only. Write in the new value e.g. '3'.
5. Click Update.
In this example we can see that we have overridden the £2 per-ticket Box Office fee set at Account level to a £3 per-ticket fee for the Show 'Rent the Musical' only.
Setting a cap on Booking Charges per order
You can limit the maximum Booking Charges added to an order irrespective of the ticket amount.
For instance, let's consider a scenario where there's a £2 Booking Charge per ticket, and a maximum limit of £10 for Booking Charges in a single order. If a customer purchases 8 tickets, they will only incur a £10 booking charge, rather than the original total of £16.
1. Go to Settings > General Settings.
2. Find the setting called "booking charge limits".
3. In the boxoffice/online/phone boxes enter a numerical value, such as '10' or '5.50' and the total amount of booking fees for the corresponding order types will be capped at the value set.
3. Click Update to save.
In the example below we have limited the Booking Charges to £/€10 for box office, online and phone orders:
Important
This setting applies to Box Office, phone and online per-ticket Booking Fees only. It does not apply to or affect per-ticket Booking Charges at all, as these cannot be capped per order. This setting can also only be determined on Account level.
Comments
Please sign in to leave a comment.