How to set up Pay What You Can pricing

Natalie Watson

Updated June 22, 2023 10:07

In this article, we'll take a look at how Pay What You Can (PWYC) can be set up for shows on Ticketsolve. We'll cover two ways to do this - offering a free ticket with a suggested donation, or offering a variety of ticket prices within a pricing scheme. The article is split into a couple of sections:

What is Pay What You Can and how it can be implemented

Option 1: Free ticket + donation

Option 2: Pricing scheme

What is Pay What You Can?

Pay What You Can is a way for venues to allow customers to pay however much they want to pay to watch a show. The concept of PWYC has been around for a while; some venues really love the flexibility that it can give to their visitors, whilst other venues worry that it can be a risky move, because income is not guaranteed.

If you want to find out more about PWYC, take a look at our webinar.

Options for implementing PWYC in Ticketsolve

There are two methods you can use to implement PWYC on a show:

Option 1: Free ticket + donation

This method gives you the most amount of flexibility as it allows the customers to choose any value they wish, e.g., £/€6.37. However keep in mind:

1. Donations would not report against the show, so you would need to set up a specific donation for that show to identify the funds correctly. If you have your PWYC going into a general pot, you will find it difficult to split out standard donations from PWYC donations.

2. UK venues must ensure they don't claim Gift Aid on these donations - it is explicitly forbidden by HMRC. Click here to check HMRCs rules on what you can and can't claim on Gift Aid.

Option 2: Pricing scheme

With this method the customer selects the ticket price they want to pay from the ticket selection screen.

1. Reporting and analysis is a little easier, because the ticket value is stored against the show; tickets would be the same as a normal non-PWYC show.

2. You would be more likely to get a normal donation as part of the booking process.

3. The drawback is that you need to specify prices. This means, you run the risk that someone who would have paid more can't because of the pricing constraints. It is worth doing a price analysis in Your Reports beforehand, so you understand the general price range for tickets. You can also easily add more prices to your pricing scheme if you find that people are consistently paying the highest level on your PWYC.

Free ticket + donation

1. Create a pricing scheme with one ticket price in it called 'Pay What You Can' and set the price to €/£0. Click how to create a pricing scheme if you need more information.

2. Create your show and give the show a tag - in this example we've added 'pwyccomedyshowcase'. If the show is already set up and you also have regular price tickets available, add a new ticket allocation to the show with the PWYW pricing scheme.

3. Create a donation product that has the same name as the show, so in this example 'Comedy Showcase - Pay What You Can'. This is important, as it will allow you to work out from reports where the money for these donations should be placed.

4. In the Donation prices box give some suggested amounts.

5. Be sure the toggle for Allow price override is on (toggle is blue not grey). This allows the customer to enter a price of their choosing, should they want to give a different amount.

6. Add some text into the Comment box to encourage customers to donate and explain why they should add a donation. Be sure to let them know they need to click on the donation and add it to the cart as we have seen that some customers can miss that step.

7. Next on the donation, add the following tags:

prompt - allows the donation to prompt.
prompt_filter:[show_tag] - replace [show_tag] with the tag you added in step 1 when you set up the show. In this example, it would be prompt_filter:pwyccomedyshowcase. This step is important as it will only allow the prompt to appear on shows with the same tag as defined in the prompt_filter.
skip_listing - stops your PWYC donation from appearing in the general donations page on your Ticketsolve pages.

You can also add the following optional tags to automatically handle some aspects of PWYC donations:

auto:000 - this tag will automatically add a donation amount to the customer's cart so they would have to remove it if they didn't want to give anything or update it if they wanted to give more. The number value is what will be auto-added in pence (e.g., auto:500 will automatically add a donation of £/€5 to the cart).
noremove - this will not allow the customer to remove the donation at all - for that reason always ensure you have a 0 option available.
skip_auto_add_when_not_online - this will not add an automatic donation when processing an order over the box office/phone.

8. Once set up, test it to make sure everything is working as expected.

Pricing scheme

1. Create a pricing scheme called 'Pay What You Can' and add ticket prices ranging from £0/€0 up to the top price you want available to customers. Add prices in £1/€1 or 50p/50c increments so as not to overload the page with too many prices - most customers will chose a rounded or 50p/50c figure rather than random pence/cent amounts.

As a good rule of thumb, start at £0/€0 going up to £20/€20. While this may seem like a lot of work (it should take about 30 minutes to create the pricing scheme), you will be able to use it again and again on different shows.

2. Set the Priority so that prices will show up sequentially to the customer. Click to learn more about Priorities.