Tixigo

A ticket category is defined by Tixigo as a type of item to sell in the ticketing office. We talk of tickets as the general term in a ticket office and the notion of categories allow to define what is and could be sold as offered by your activity.

It is also important to distinguish between the concept of ticket categories (item sold or simply a ticket) from the electronic ticket, which can be printed too. The later serves to control access at your events by using the TixiScan application. You have to decide which ticket categories will produce an electronic ticket.

A ticket category must also indicate whether it is meant to identify a person or a product. This information allows you to better communicate with your customers on what they have purchased. For example, if it is possible to buy a ticket for the entry at your event and to purchase merchandise such as a T-shirt and a beer, then it would be essential to make sure the customer is aware of having purchased one ticket instead of two in order to avoid miss-understandings. Thus we will be talking about one person and one product, or in the above example one person and two products. The product could produce an electronic ticket which would allow to it to be easily scanned and give the products in return.

The price of your tickets is not part of the definition of ticket category. Tixigo is very flexible in this sense as it allows you to modulate the price of your ticket categories offered from an event to another within your activity. It is the price list which allows to make the choices of ticket categories to offer at their own price and we assign the price list to one or multiple events.

The Ticket Categories page, which can be found in Menu - Settings - Ticket Categories, allows you to create categories with the name of the category and a brief summary of certain information useful situated between [ ]. To visualize and modify all the contained information of a category, you must use the pencil icon.

Ticket Categories Page

At the tickets categories page level we distinguish the categories between packages and groups of categories.

Ticket Categories Page followed

Categories

Categories are the different types of tickets offered. Examples of person categories are Adults, Child or General Admission.

Example of a person category

Name: Name of the category. You can adapt the name of the category depending on where it appears in the ''other names'' section. You have to input the name in all the languages that your activity supports.

Description: A description of the category to give more details to your customer. It is optional and will be written in smaller characters under the Name in the ticket office.

Summary Code: This one to four letters code allows you to rapidly identify in the Reception/Maitre D' page what kind of of tickets were sold whether they are persons or products. In the above example the Adult category has a code of ''A'' in caps which allows to quickly know that a this ticket sold is an adult. Multiple categories can hold the same code such that they are grouped together in the summary of the Reception/Maitre D' page.

Item type: ''Person'' or ''Product'', it allows the correct identification if a ticket represents a person (access for ...) or a product. It serve mainly to better communicate with the customer. Please note that TixiScan allows to scan one single person type ticket that then checks all the other person type ticket in the same order or group as scanned. This option is not available for the products. Also, a product cannot count for a spot in the available space capacity inventory.

Does not count: This check box, once ticked, means that the tickets sold do not count for a spot in the available space capacity of the event location. An example is a baby ticket category, it could not count as it does not occupy much space and is under parental supervision but you might want to stay informed of the baby's upcoming presence as it may be necessary for your internal management. This applies only to person type tickets. Normally, a person type category should count for a spot in the capacity inventory.

Merchant: This check box, once checked, means that this category is available and visible only to the merchant. The category will not be public and thus will not be available in the ticket office online for your customers. By being connected on the portal, the usage of the ticket office will allow you to use all the categories.

Deactivated: This option turns off the category and thus will be inactive such that it will not be available for a new price list. It will not affect the price list currently containing the category. To use if you cannot delete the category because Tixigo does not permit it.

Electronic ticket: You decide if the category produces or not an electronic ticket. Whether it may be for a person or a product, this option allows to better control the use of an electronic ticket. Please note that if you do not want to use the electronic tickets you can globally deactivate the feature in settings (Customization - Electronic ticket).

On the other hand Tixigo recommends to always decide the electronic ticket option specific to each category early on for the eventual day you may choose to use the electronic ticket feature. It will be easy, once the global e-ticket feature is activated, such that each category will already have the e-ticket option ticked or not. If a category does not produce e-tickets, and later on change your mind by turning on the feature, the existing orders will not have e-tickets for the category, only the new orders will contain e-tickets.

Allowed for groups: This option indicates if the category is available or not for a group organizer or member. The objective is to hide certain categories that would not be pertinent to offer to a group such as a reduce price group package.

Minimum and Maximum number of tickets: Allows to limit the sale of tickets of this category. Indicating a minimum does not force the customer to purchase the minimum as not purchasing a category is always allowed. But if we choose to purchase a certain category the minimum and maximum amount of tickets are the mandatory conditions of the sale.

Sale start and end time: Allows the appearance and disappearance of the categories within a certain time frame. You can indicate a precise date and time or relative to an event, which is more generic if you have repetitive events. A typical scenario would be a pre-sale that would have a end date X and a regular category which would have a beginning date identical to the end date of the pre-sale. At this precise date, the ticket office would offer regular while before it would offer pre-sale. These two categories must be in the price list assigned to an event.

Tags: Allow to identify a particular category within the system to apply promotions for example. It is an advanced option that generally remains empty.

Event info for ticket: For each category this section gives you the ability to change the default values assigned to tickets such as defined in the parameters of the activity or of the event if you are in multi-event mode. Useful if the ticket is for a date or a precise place during an event or simply to change the message displayed on the ticket.

Packages

The package's goal is to combine categories in order to sell at a fixed price various combinations of person type tickets and product type tickets in one single order choice. We will touch on the sub-categories topic later on in this article.

A package must contain at least one sub-category and normally it is mandatory which implies the purchase of a package forces the inclusion of its one or multiple sub-categories. The later give the details of the package in terms of tickets required or included in the bundle. In the ticket office, the mandatory sub-categories have a set quantity of tickets, which does not change unless when purchasing multiple packages. Please note that sub-categories could be visible or not for the customer but they are not required in order to provide details of the composition of the package. Even when invisible, the sub-categories could produce an e-ticket in order to control access.

In order to reduce the complexity of the packages, the Package category cannot produce one e-ticket. The e-ticket aims one person or product while a package aims multiple at once. The package does not contain a selection of person or product ticket type, the sub-categories are those that hold this option.

You can select also to include non-mandatory sub-categories in a package. The later behave exactly as a regular category but are available only if we chose at least one package during the sale process. Furthermore, you can limit the number of allowed tickets by using the Min & Max tickets within the categories. Know that the Max will be multiplied by the number of chosen packages.

Here are a few examples of packages (bundles):

A family package or bundle that includes two adults and two children with a possibility of additional children at the same reduced rate as the children included in the package.

Example of a family package

A package that offers a reduced price for a bundle of 10 seats or more. This package has nothing to do with the group concept and sharing of payments. In this example we want to allow on person to be able to purchase 10 tickets or more at a reduced price. Please note that it is possible to offer to the purchaser of such a package a group ticket office that automatically allows the addition of additional participants at the reduced price. Please contact us for this feature.

Example of a package for group pricing

A package that offers entire tables for your event. A table allows 8 people and we wish $800 for the table. The package will produce 8 e-tickets so that the participants can enter the venue and most importantly such a purchase will occupy eight places in your space inventory.

Example of a package for an entire table

Please note that you can assign a price to the package or to each mandatory sub-category and even to both. Although, it wouldn't make much sense. To assign a price per ticket to the sub-categories of a package, you must assign a price of 0 to the package which will activate the package in the price list and then allocate a price to the mandatory sub-categories. A 0 package price will not display 0 in the ticket office if the sub-categories have a price, it will not display anything. On the other hand, if you offer a free package then $0 must be assigned to the package and sub-categories. In the later case, the ticket office will display either the default text of ''Free'' or the chosen text written in settings.

How to build a package

In order to add a package, click on the (+) button either at the top right or in an existing group.

A package creation window will open as follows.

The fill spaces for Name, Description along with the settings options such as Merchant, Deactivated, Allowed for groups, Minimum and Maximum of tickets, Beginning and End of sale and Tags in the creation of package window are the same as described in Categories above.

Once the package information added, there is automatically a first empty sub-category created within the package.

Modifying a category: In order to complete a package it is necessary to modify the first new sub-category and to add according to your needs. By clicking on the pencil icon to the right of the sub-category a modification window will appear as follows.

All the fill spaces along with the control starting from Name to Deactivated are the same as described in the Categories section above in this article. The differences are the Mandatory and Visible options. When Mandatory is chosen, the Minimum and Maximum number of tickets disappear leaving the place to the Visible option.

Mandatory: This option obligates the purchase of a certain number of tickets of the sub-categories when the package is chosen as it constitutes the package. (Example of two adult and two children in the family plan)

Please note: If more than 1 package is chosen in the ticket office, the maximum number of tickets of the non-mandatory sub-categories is multiplied by the number of chosen packages while the minimum remains the same. Using the same example, choosing two family packages implies there is a choice of minimum 1 additional child while the maximum is of thirty. This makes for large families!

Visible: Allows, when selected, the ability for the consumer to see the information such as the name and the description of the sub-categories in the package selected. In the other case, only the information written in the package such as the name and description are visible on the public ticketing office. (Example of the full table package displayed above where the category Participant is not visible.)

Group of Categories

Tixigo allows you to group categories together in order to identify them under a title. The group reduces the space taken on the ticketing office when you have many categories to offer. The group itself is not really a ticket category, we cannot assign a price to a group. It is only a tool to better present your categories in the ticketing office.

Note that if you use the group feature you can only have categories out of the group only if they are positioned above the first group. Once a group exists, all that is under the later, in the list, will be part of the group until the creation of another group.

Background color: it corresponds to the background color of the rectangle that defines the group. By clicking on the color a small window will appear that will allow you to choose a color from a wide variety along with the possibility of copying the uniform computer color code.

Text color: it corresponds to the color of the displayed text within the background colored rectangle.

Display type: this choice box offers three choices for displaying groups.

Manual - opened: This option means that when reaching the choice of ticket categories page, your customer will see the ticket categories immediately within the group with the choice to close the group in order to reduce the the space taken on the page by clicking on the arrow to the left of the group rectangle. When it is closed, the arrow will be pointing downwards.

Manual - closed: Similar to Manual - open with the difference that initially the group is closed and the client must open it to chose from the ticket categories it contains.

Always opened: This choice does not allow to either open or close the group thus will always take its place in the ticketing office.

The titles: These allows to position the titles up to three texts within the group zone. It is strongly suggested not to use all three at the same time as on mobile phones display space limited. For example, a group could be limited to serve for the VIP tickets and the title to the left could be VIP Zone and to the right $100 to $200.

Impact of modifying the categories

Tixigo allows you to to change the categories at any time. Although, it is important to understand that there are implications of such changes on the existing orders and those that follow.

An order keeps a copy of the essential information of the ticket categories that are purchased which allows to modify the categories afterwards with few impacts over the existing orders. Here are the factors to take into account, any other do not have an impact:

• Change of the summary code - No impact for the customer, you can change it at any time in order to correctly display the summary code necessary for your portal.
• Change of item type - The item type is not kept with the order, so changing it will affect all the previous orders with the later orders holding this type. The impact is limited, it will change the summary of the tickets for the portal and the customer. The later will only change the presentation of the information which composes the order and only on dynamic documents (by URL link). Without negative impacts.
• Changing the Does not Count - This is data kept with the order as it impacts the inventory. This impact will be seen when reimbursing or cancelling a ticket. The existing orders will therefore not be impacted and there will be no negative effect. If a category is not counted and becomes counted note that the existing orders will not reduce the capacity inventory and could be an issue which is out of Tixigo's control.
• Change for e-ticket - The information is kept with the order as there is no dynamic change of the number of e-tickets of existing orders. The change will be that orders will either have useless tickets or no e-tickets for the categories changed. There is no way to change this and so we strongly suggest that e-tickets feature is correctly setup from the start. In case of issues, contact Tixigo in order to help when making important changes as a result of mistakes.
• Going from category to sub-category - You can move a category to either join or exit a package. There is no major impact as existing orders will not be affected.

Please note that making changes in the categories, price lists and promo codes while the ticket office is open and accessible by your customers could cause a transaction failure. The ticket office obtains information at the beginning of the process. During the final transaction, the Tixigo server validates that the information remains pertinent with the real configuration in order to prevent fraud. If a change occurs during the use of the ticket office, the server could detect that the current transaction does not correspond with the new configuration and will reject it. Therefore, we strongly suggest to close the ticket office, wait 15 minutes, make your changes and open it afterwards to avoid such a situation to your customers.

Ticket Summary

The ''Summary Code'' serves to display an order summarized or orders from groups summarized in the Reception/MaitreD page.

The column Ticket Summary indicates the total of person type tickets followed by an " = ", then the codes in each of the categories list and the number of tickets sold for each.

A total in the style of A/B indicates that there are A number of counted person type tickets over B number of Does not count person type tickets.

The number in ( ) is the number of places taken by a closed reservation without emitted tickets if such option is available. The total amount of tickets includes this number as it reduces the capacity inventory.

Finally all the items with category type object are identified within the [ ] zone if there are any.

In the group Friends of Gilles, the ticket summary of the group indicates the entire group order as 8/1=A5,E3,H1. This means that there are 8 person types tickets which are counted and one person type ticket which is not counted ( a child less than two years old that we want to keep track of ).

"A" is the code for the Adult category, "E" is for Child 11 years or less and "H" is the code for Child 2 years or less category.

The summary view of each of the individual orders is possible by clicking on the file next to the name of the group.

The summary code found between [ ] is the number of product type tickets with their code being "T" for Decadent meat pie, "C" for a Sleigh ride and "S" for a Can of maple syrup.

• Gilles is the group creator and main contact, he paid for one Adult ticket.
• Jean joined the group and they are two Adults and three Children of 11 or less. He ordered one Decadent meat pie and two Maple syrup cans as products.
• Jeanne reserved for two Adults and one Child less than two yeas old. She has purchased a Decadent meat pie with two Sleigh rides.