Forcing required ticket types

In this article, we are going to show you how to set certain ticket prices to require another ticket to be purchased alongside them. For example, you might have a children's workshop that requires an adult to accompany the child, so you need to force the customer to purchase both an adult and a child ticket.

To facilitate this, we have a functionality called required tickets. Required tickets are set up by tagging the Ticket Prices accordingly. Before we start, please note that this functionality only works online. 

Setting up required tickets

In the following example, we will use adult and children tickets, but you can use any ticket types you wish, so long as you tag them appropriately. 

1. First, you need to set up a Pricing Scheme with the desired Ticket Prices.

2. On the Ticket Price that is required (i.e. the ticket that MUST be included to allow the booking to progress) tag the ticket with a unique tag. 

3. In this example, the tag 'adult' is added to the Adult Ticket Price.

4. On the Ticket Price that needs a required ticket to be added in order to purchase, add in the tag you have added to the required ticket, with a prefix of 'requires:' so 'requires:tag'. 

In this example, we would therefore add the tag 'requires:adult' to the Child Ticket Price.

5. Add in a ticket Description explaining the requirement, so that customers can see what ticket is required online. This description will appear underneath the Ticket Price name.

 Ticketsolve Tip

You can also apply this across multiple Ticket Prices or Pricing Schemes. For example if a child ticket can only be purchased with an adult ticket OR additional to a family ticket we would:

• Tag the Adult Ticket Price with 'adult_or_family'
• Tag the Family Ticket Price with 'adult_or_family'
• Tag the Child Ticket Price with 'requires:adult_or_family'

How required tickets are enforced online

When the customer tries to book just the Child Ticket Price online, they will get a message that flashes in red at the top of the payment screen that informs them that they need to buy an Adult Ticket Price as well and cannot continue with the payment until they do so.

 Ticketsolve Tip

Note that the payment screen is blank, and the message flashes in red at the top. Customers might miss this message initially so might get confused as to why they can't add their card details. Therefore, it is always a good idea to make it clear in the Show Description and the Ticket Price Description(s) if a certain Ticket Price requires another to also be purchased, which should mean that few people ever get to the stage of seeing the error message.

So long as at least 1 required ticket is added, you can add as many tickets with those requirements as you wish; in this example we have 3 children and 1 adult added to the cart. 

Want to know more?

• Pricing Schemes and Ticket Prices
• How to remove booking fees and charges from free/comp tickets
• How to set up pay what you can pricing
• Exclusive access to ticket price or allocation