One event, two ticket prices, finite seats available

scot_henley · October 2009

We're migrating a series of educational programs and their registration/ticket sales from the non-Convio half of our website to Convio events. Here's the problem... each program has 9 available seats. However, there are two ticket prices ($459 for members, $499 for non-members). It doesn't matter how many of each ticket is sold, the bottom line is that there are only 9 seats available. To complicate things, we are also selling tickets over the phone.

While working with Charity Dynamics to help us build the template for these events, it was explained to us that we won't be able to have a total ticket inventory of 9 in Convio, since each ticket value must have a number of maximum tickets attached to it. It doesn't make logical sense to limit 5 seats to members and 4 for non-members, or 6 and 3, or any combination, but it looks like that is the only way in Convio to di it and arrive at a maximum capacity of 9 that is updated realtime in Convio and automatically sells out.

The makeshift solution we'll be using is that each event has the two tickets available with "No Limit" (Convio auto language) as the limit. We manually have to go in each day and check to see if any of the events have sold out and manually make any further ticket sales unavaible. Plus, we risk making people angry if they charge tickets on their credit cards, expect that they're all set to attend, only to get a phone call from us the next day saying that there were only two seats available, not the five that they purchased. They just have no way of seeing how many seats are available.

This leads me to two questions:

Is there any solution in Convio events that would allow the two ticket types to draw from one total inventory of tickets available, thereby adjusting the inventory down with each sale and automatically selling out when the tickets are gone?
Our contact at Charity Dynamics said that Convio Events does not have the capability to generate an email to an administrator each time a ticket purchase is made. Is that true? That would be a better makeshift solution to our problem, as info will come directly to staff instead of staff having to go into Convio to get it.

I hope I've explained this well enough... Thanks for your help!

Scot

Andrew Beyer · February 2010

So I am looking to do the same thing, and was hoping to find an answer here. I'm replying partly to bump the thread in hopes others will chime in, but also to ask if anyone has tried another possible solution:

My next idea to try is a Multi Part Event where you have a base registration for the lowest price ticket, which is limited to the total number of seats. Then create child events as "upsells" to the registration for higher priced tickets, and leave each of these with no limit, as the initial registration is already limited. I think this should have the desired effect, but haven't tried it yet, and am worried it might confuse users.

Has anyone tried this and know if it work? Works well? Any other ideas?

Brian Mucha · February 2010

Andrew Beyer:
So I am looking to do the same thing, and was hoping to find an answer here. I'm replying partly to bump the thread in hopes others will chime in, but also to ask if anyone has tried another possible solution:

My next idea to try is a Multi Part Event where you have a base registration for the lowest price ticket, which is limited to the total number of seats. Then create child events as "upsells" to the registration for higher priced tickets, and leave each of these with no limit, as the initial registration is already limited. I think this should have the desired effect, but haven't tried it yet, and am worried it might confuse users.

Has anyone tried this and know if it work? Works well? Any other ideas?

What if you used the eCommerce package instead? We don't have Events, and we are trying out using eCom so that we can handle events with multiple tickets (event, dinner, raffle, etc.) in a single transaction.

Products in eCommerce can have an inventory. They also can have options that affect the final pricing. These options appear as a drop-down to users. You might have a 'Standard Ticket' and a 'Member Ticket' option. The standard ticket option could add XXX dollars to the end price. You can also have discount codes that are available to anyone, or to members of a specific group.

Regards, BPM

Andrew Beyer · March 2010

Brian Mucha:
What if you used the eCommerce package instead? We don't have Events, and we are trying out using eCom so that we can handle events with multiple tickets (event, dinner, raffle, etc.) in a single transaction.

Products in eCommerce can have an inventory. They also can have options that affect the final pricing. These options appear as a drop-down to users. You might have a 'Standard Ticket' and a 'Member Ticket' option. The standard ticket option could add XXX dollars to the end price. You can also have discount codes that are available to anyone, or to members of a specific group.

Regards, BPM

Hmmm, sounds like that would work as well, pretty much the same effect but with a different module. I'm in the opposite situation, though, having Events but not Ecom.

Christian Milneil · November 2010

+1.

This could easily done in Convio's back end with a simple while loop, right?

while ($tickettype1 + $tickettype2 <= $ticketlimit) {

takeregistrations();

}

Noah Cooper · November 2010

Christian Milneil:
+1.

This could easily done in Convio's back end with a simple while loop, right?

while ($tickettype1 + $tickettype2 <= $ticketlimit) {

takeregistrations();

}

Since there is an "Available" column on the front-end, you could use JavaScript to handle this client-side. For example, set the limit on both ticket types to the total number of tickets available (e.g. if your total number of tickets is 9, set each to 9), then onload sum up the values in the Available column. If the total is equal to the total number of tickets available, show a "sold out" message, otherwise show the page content.

One event, two ticket prices, finite seats available

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