Event ticketing system

[kcoombes0]

Hey folks!

Currently we have two Square Registers, one is dedicated to our admissions and one for gift shop. We run a museum and keep track of our admissions and gift shop separately thus different machines. 

Anyway, regularly we host concerts, about 10 per year excluding private rentals. With those concerts we sell tickets online and in-person. Currently we have a woocommerce shop for online and use our Gift Shop register for concerts. All day we keep track of online and in-person sales. We have separate cost for adults and youth.

Tried setting up square sync with woocommerce, but it never worked. As for tickets, we print them the day of using our office printer.

I'm looking for a new ticket solution for concerts. It's all general admission, we want in-person and online sync and want to use our square system. Ideally we could buy a new printer to print cardstock tickets with the platform.

I looked at TicketsCandy and sent them an email, no response. I looked at TicketSource and a few others but nothing looked good. We are a Canadian non-profit if that helps. Thank you! 

[kcoombes0]

Each concert holds about 200 people. Our current setup uses variations but square doesn't allow variations to share the same stock count.

We used to use Redtail thus Woocommerce being an established system. Our website is already WordPress so made sense.

We were looking for a proper ticketing mostly to create automatic reminders, maybe direct integration for physical tickets (not qr codes on receipt paper), scanning functionality would be an upgrade, and centralized event hosting. While we host 10 concerts, we also have maybe another 5-10 privately ran and we don't offer ticket selling due to the complexity.

Regarding square online, how does money transfer work? Does it auto deposit the next day? Because we need to keep track of funds, ideally without needing a square account and using the registers. 

[Pintuna]

Hi @kcoombes0, this is Ashwin from Pintuna, a trusted Square partner. The Pintuna Events and Tickets App can meet all the requirements you have mentioned above. Happy to demo if you are still looking for a solution.

[kcoombes0]

Hey there,

Looking at your site, it seems there's a subscription. We're trying to minimize that as much as possible, and we would only be looking for tickets, nothing else. It also doesn't seem to integrate with our WordPress site.

[Manny_SelSq]

@kcoombes0 

This is an interesting little problem, and I think there might be a much simpler solution for your specific situation that would not a require a big change to your workflow.

The tricky part seems to be the 200-person limit shared across two different ticket types. Square tracks inventory for adult and youth tickets separately, but a small app could track the total number sold, whether online or at the Register, and then mark both ticket types as sold out when that limit is reached.

The catch is that Square's notifications to third-party apps aren't instant. They usually arrive pretty quickly, but there can be delays. Say you have five tickets left, someone buys three online, and before the app gets notified, someone else buys five at the Register. You could end up selling 203 tickets.

If 200 is a hard limit, one simple workaround might be to cap sales at 190 or 195 to leave yourself a little buffer. It wouldn't completely eliminate the risk, but it would help.

A couple of questions:

You mentioned not wanting a Square account, but since you already have two Square Registers, you must have an account. Do you mean you don't want to create a second one?

For physical tickets, do they need to print directly from the Register, or would a separate ticket printer work? For online purchases, you could just email the tickets to customers.

Another thing I've seen people running events with Square looking for is a way to keep track of attendees. A simple list of everyone who bought tickets, maybe with QR codes that staff could scan at the door, would make checking people in much easier.

All of that could potentially be handled by a fairly small app that works with the Square setup you already have.

[kcoombes0]

Hey Manny,

Currently, we set the capacity slightly lower for our online sales because of the human sync and to ensure we don't oversell.

Regarding not needing an account, I'm looking at reconciliation. Our museums operate using summer students, and they do our daily cash. As such, they don't have personal Square accounts, as daily cash can be completed using the registers. Ideally, a setup wouldn't require those staff to have an account. If not possible, that's fine. But we do need a way to track our daily sales.

For physical tickets, it would be ideal to have them printed from a separate printer attached to the register (as opposed to the receipt printer). We prefer physical tickets over digital merely for ease. The current setup is printing onto colored cardstock, cutting them out, and handing out the tickets the night of. At each door, we have ushers who check the tickets.

We definitely want a list of people who have bought tickets to be able to track who showed/who didn't

[Manny_SelSq]

I'd have a look at Event Tickets Plus, since you're already on WordPress. It connects to Square and supports shared capacity across ticket types.

https://theeventscalendar.com/products/wordpress-event-tickets/ 

SimpleTix also connects to Square and has attendee tracking and support for ticket printers.

https://www.simpletix.com/ 

I'd just confirm with both that sales from your existing Registers sync with online sales and count against the same capacity. Also check whether they can print the cardstock tickets you want directly from the Register.