What Are the Benefits of Using Ticketing Software?
Posted: Monday, August 09, 2010
by Malkay
http://www.handytix.com
Many small to medium venue operators or not-for-profit organisations who are presently using a pen and paper method of recording ticket sales to their events may be unsure what advantages they would gain if they were to use box office ticketing software to manage all their ticketing . So let's take a look at a number of the principal advantages.
Once a program and event is set up , ticket selling involves just a few clicks of the mouse to select the seat, select or enter the patron's name, record the payment and print the ticket. Many software programs can also print an address label and receipt if required.
Sell tickets online
Most box office software these days provides the ability to sell tickets online and print-at-home PDF tickets which can not only expand sales opportunities, but save time and labour in handling telephone or mail-order bookings, processing the payments and mailing out the tickets. Bar coded PDF tickets may also be possible which offer better protection against fraud .
Enhanced and more in depth reports
Most box office ticketing software is cabable of producing a wide range of reports to be either viewed online or printed for later analysis, including financial, transaction, attendance and customer records. Information is live and up-to-the-minute. If interactive seating charts are used, particulars on any ticket purchased can be looked up instantly or seaches conducted by patron name and other fields .
Enhanced patron database
A comprehensive customer database can be used to generate more marketing opportunities and develop a better relationship with patrons . Most ticketing software will include the capability to send out e-mails or print pre-formatted letters to customers directly from the database. The ticketing software may also offer the ability to group customers in different ways for marketing purposes
Time and labour saving
Entering data into a software system is much quicker and more accurate than most other manual systems and the inbuilt linkage ensures that ticket sales are allied with payments and with printed tickets. Avoids duplicate entering of customer details .
Permits multiple operators
A good box office ticketing system will allow any number of administrative personnel to access and use the system either from the admin side or as ticket sellers. And if it is a Web-based system, any registered user with password and login would have the ability to access and operate the system no matter where in the world they are located.
Faster and simpler transaction lookups
With interactive seating charts, an administrator can easily look up to whom each ticket has been sold, the amount paid, the date the transaction occurred and possibly also the ticket seller's name.
Print tickets on demand
Ticketing software will normally offer the choice of either printing tickets immediately a ticket has been sold or at a later time . It will also allow for will call tickets, voucher ticket sales, group tickets, season tickets and other types of tickets .
Visual display of ticket availability from interactive seating charts
A seating chart gives the administrator or ticket seller the ability to swiftly see which seats have been sold, which seats have been reserved and which seats are still available so they can quickly offer the best seats to a potential patron .
Season tickets
Box office software may enable season tickets to be quickly sold by allocating seats in all relevant season events concurrently. The best ticketing software may offer the capability of rolling over subscriptions from one season the next , retaining the exact same seat numbers for subscribers .
Sales linked to verified payments
Because a ticket sale will only be registered if the payment has been also confirmed, a software system will help to eliminate possible mistakes in crosschecking payments received versus tickets issued . As most box office ticketing software is directly coupled to a payment processor via payment gateway , tickets will only be regarded as "sold" when the credit card payment has been approved .
Malcolm Kay writes on behalf of HandyTix which supplies box office software systems to help small to medium organizations sell tickets online
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