Complimentary Tickets - Creation and Redmeption

Travis MontyBromer

We are new to Altru this year and I cannot wrap my head around complimentary tickets. Maybe we are unique, but can anyone explain how they create and issue comp tickets for major events? Especially if you are barcoding, printing and distributing them to be redeemed later.

We have multiple major events throughout the year where hundreds of complimentary tickets are gifted and redeemed for events. One event in the fall has over 5,000 complimentary tickets redeemed over 4 days thanks to a sponsorship agreement. So comp tickets are a big deal to our attendance tracking.

Joe Killian

@Travis MontyBromer
There are a few different ways to tackle this; you can have recipients request their own tickets, do some bulk orders for the sponsor and send the tickets to them, or even use a Group Sale to keep track of how many comped people arrive. You could also create a separate event within the program just for the sponsor attendees, which is often easier when you're dealing with 100s of comps for a single program.

For folks to request their own tickets: you can setup an online/daily sales promo code that reduces a standard ticket price to free. The perk is folks do their own sign-up and you collect their data with minimal staff involvement. Downside is that you can only limit the number of discounted tickets per order, rather than for an entire event/program. [EG, a code is limited to two tickets per order, but there's nothing stopping an individual from placing 10 different orders with the same promo code; So if you are worried about discount abuse, you do have to monitor it.].

Another approach is to create a ticket price type of zero dollars, labeled “Comp/Sponsored/etc.". This price type is then only used in Daily/Advanced sales - which does take a lot more staff resources, but prevents abuse.

For barcode distribution, the above methods allow for barcodes to be emailed or printed on stock, depending on how you've set up your ticket templates. (We do fully digital tickets using a third party that sends them out automatically, along with reminder and followup emails)

Travis MontyBromer

@Joe Killian Thank you! I like the idea of creating a “separate event” in the group sales module and then printing the tickets for distribution. Can you expand a little on how you are exporting these barcodes for printing? What 3rd parties are you using? Our previous POS system had barcode exporting built into it. So it was more straightforward. Needing to go through ticket template setups and third parties for barcode creation is new to us.