Reservations let you hold tickets for a customer without taking payment right away. They’re ideal for group bookings, customers who need time to confirm details, or anytime you want to secure seats temporarily while plans are finalised.
In this article, we’ll cover how reservations work, how to manage them, and the key actions you can take - like confirming, editing, or splitting tickets into a new cart when needed.
Note: This article covers the reservations workflow when the new promotion code discount feature is enabled. This feature will be rolled out to all accounts in early February 2026.
Creating a reservation
Go to the Box Office so that you are ready to create a new order.
1. Search for the event required for the reservation.
2. Click View Tickets and select the number required for the sale, and click Update Cart.
3. Add any valid Promotion Code or click Manage Cart to apply any manual discounts.
Don't Forget!
Promotion code discounts can be applied to reservations - and they’ll stay with the booking if you amend it, re-reserve it, or convert it into a confirmed order.
The only exception is if the promotion code discount has expired before the reservation is converted to a confirmed order - in this instance, the discount won't be honoured, and you'll need to remove the promotion code from the cart.
4. In your cart, assign a customer. (If you don't assign a customer to the cart, you won't be able to reserve it).
5. At the bottom of the Cart, you can click the Additional Options icon (3 dots) and select Cart comments to add any additional comments or notes that this is reserved.
6. Click the Payment Options button to confirm the reservation. Note: It is possible to take a deposit / partial payment on a reservation, but not advised as the reservation will eventually expire.
7. Click the Reserve Order button at the bottom the screen.
8. In the calendar pop-up, select the date you would like to reserve the order expire.
Reservations expire at midnight on the date you select. If you choose 1 December, the tickets will expire at 23:59 on 1 December and will be available at 00:01 on 2 December.
9. Click Save. Now the order is reserved, and the 'Reservation Summary' pop-up box will appear.
10. As long as you have the "send reserved checkout mailer" setting enabled, the customer will be sent a confirmation email for their reservation.
Finding reservations
In Search Orders
The easiest way to search for individual reservations is under Box Office > Search Orders. Any orders which are reservations will have a 'Reserved' label attached to them.
You can also filter the orders list by clicking the Reserved option and then clicking Search Orders.
In the Events Dashboard
You can also navigate to Box Office > Event Summary (or Box Office > Events Dashboard) to view all the reservations for a specific event:
Reservations List sales report
The Reservations List sales report (Reports > Sales Reports) allows you to generate a list of all reservations across a Program, Show, Run or Event.
Converting a reservation into a confirmed order
1. Go to Box Office > Search Orders.
2. Find the reservation from the orders list.
3. Click the 3 dots on the order line and select Amend order.
4. The reservation will now open up in the Box Office with an active cart. You'll see:
- When the items are reserved until
- The option to release the reservation
- The reserved items in the cart as normal
5. Make any changes/updates necessary to the reservation. You will see that any promotion codes are still saved against the reservation and that the tickets are still discounted.
6. At the bottom of the cart, click the Payment Options button.
7. Go to Payment Options and take the payment as normal.
8. Make sure that "skip sending confirmation email" is not ticked so that the customer receives their order confirmation and e-tickets (if applicable) as they won't have received them with the reservation.
9. Click Confirm Order to complete.
Amending reservations
Changing items and re-reserving
1. Go to Box Office > Search Orders.
2. Find the reservation from the orders list.
3. Click the 3 dots on the order line and select Amend order.
4. The reservation will now open up in the Box Office with an active cart. You'll see:
- When the items are reserved until
- The option to release the reservation
- The reserved items in the cart as normal
5. Make any changes/updates necessary to the reservation. You will see that any promotion codes are still saved against the reservation and that the tickets are still discounted.
6. At the bottom of the cart, click the Payment Options button.
7. Click the Reserve Order button at the bottom the screen.
8. In the calendar pop-up, select the date you would like to reserve the order expire. This can be the original reservation date, or a new one.
9. Once you click Save the reservation amendment is now complete.
Please note that when amending reservations, there is no cancel amendment button. If you do need to cancel the amendment, you will need to follow the steps above to re-reserve the order.
Releasing reservations
To release a reservation:
1. Go to Box Office > Search Orders and find your reservation.
2. Click to Amend the order so it opens up in the Box Office cart.
3. Click the red Release (x) button to end the reservation.
4. In the pop-up, click Release to confirm that you want to release the tickets. (Or click Back to Cart if you clicked in error and don't want to release the tickets).
5. The reservation is now released. Please note that the tickets will remain in the open cart until you remove them, but they are no longer reserved.
6. To remove the tickets and customer record from the cart, click the 3 dots (additional options) icon and select Reset and create new cart.
7. The cart will clear, ready for a new transaction.
Splitting reservations
Sometimes - like with a big group booking - you might need to take payment for some of the reserved tickets, while keeping the rest on reserve. The split cart process lets you pick specific tickets from the original reservation and move them into a new cart, so you can take payment and convert just those tickets into a confirmed order.
You can also use split cart to move a selection of tickets into a separate reservation - for example, if they need to sit under a different customer.
1. Go to Box Office > Search Orders and find your reservation.
2. Click to Amend the order so it opens up in the Box Office cart.
3. In the bottom right corner of the Cart, click the Additional Options icon (3 dots) and select Split cart.
4. In the pop-up window, you can now see the event details plus the quantity of tickets.
5. Click on the green dropdown arrow to expand on the event and see details on each ticket type.
6. Click again on the next green dropdown arrow to expand on the ticket price and view individual tickets.
7. Now you need to select which tickets you want to move to the cart to convert to a confirmed order (or put into a new separate reservation).
8. Tick the box next to the tickets that you want to use. Any unselected tickets will be saved back to the original reservation.
9. Click the Create New Order button.
10. You'll be taken back to the cart view, with the selected tickets in the cart. The unselected tickets will remain in the original reservation until the expiry date.
11. You can now proceed to convert these tickets to a confirmed order or put them into a new reservation. You'll need to assign a new customer (or the original customer) back to the cart.
12. You can go back into any reservation and repeat the steps above to split the cart again and take payments for any other tickets remaining on reserve in the order.
Customer reservation emails
You can choose for the system to send customers a couple of different emails about the reservations:
- Reservation checkout mailer
- Reservation expiry warning
Reservation checkout mailer
This can be sent to the customer an email once you create their reservation by enabling the "send reserved checkout mailer" setting in General Settings. It doesn't contain their tickets (of course!), but it does contain:
- Items in the reservation
- Date and time the reservation expires
- Customisable "reserved order banner" snippet to add any additional text.
Find out more here.
Reservation expiry warning
You can also send a reservation expiry warning to customers with reservations so they don't miss out on finalising their booking by enabling the "should warn customers when expiring" setting in General Settings.
This will be sent when the customer's reservation is soon due to expire and contains reservation details and the date and time of expiry.
Find out more here.
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