Setting up a box office counter to sell your custom designed physical (EventsPass) tickets

Setting up a box office counter to sell your custom designed physical (EventsPass) tickets

It is recommended that this process be completed at minimum 8 weeks prior to your event to allow for design work, revisions, printing, and delivery of tickets.

Introduction

This article steps you through how you can create a large batch of physical tickets in EventsPass, that can be used at your on-site box office area during your event.  This can be useful if you will be accepting physical cash sales from a ticket office or box office. The physical tickets can be exchanged for physical cash or an EFTPOS system that can accept payment.

Please consider whether your event would be better served with a virtual box office since this can reduce your overhead costs (design, printing, extra staffing, etc.).

Pre-requisites

To ensure you can follow this process and execute your on-site strategy:
  1. A digital designer with the ability to design a physical ticket template, and data merge large batches of EPS or PNG files and text strings (Ticket IDs) onto the template (creating hundreds or thousands of tickets, each with a unique QR code and ticket ID).
  2. A printing supplier with the ability to print the above ticket templates to your specification (once the designer has completed the design process).
  3. A physical box office space for your event (in particular, a space where the physical tickets are secure from theft from roaming attendees or the general public).
  4. Dedicated box office staff (e.g. volunteer staff or dedicated professionals designated for manning your box office).
  5. Signage to direct prospective attendees to your box office area.
Do not proceed in following this guide until you are certain you can satisfy all of the above pre-requisites.

Instructions

There are three parts to this process:
  1. Creating the box office ticket in EventsPass (digital)
  2. Recruiting the help of designers and print suppliers to create the physical tickets that will sit in your box office area
  3. Running your box office over the course of your event

1 (a). Creating the box office ticket in EventsPass (digital)

Click the 'Manage Tickets' button from your event dashboard.



Click to add a new 'Individual Ticket'.

The ticket creation window will load. First, make sure you enable the 'Only available for on-site purchase' setting.

Complete each of the fields to your requirements:
  1. Ticket Type Name. Given the ticket a logical name.
  2. Only available for on-site purchase. Must be enabled.
  3. Printed Ticket Name. If you wish for different text to appear on the physical ticket to your 'Ticket Type Name' you can specify it here.
  4. Limit Validity. Enable this if you wish to set rules about which days the ticket can be used for entry, and how many days overall the ticket is permitted to be scanned through an entry. In the example below, the ticket is restricted to 'Selected Days' (Friday 1st October, Saturday 2nd October and Sunday 3rd October) and the ticket would only be permitted for use on one of those days (since 'Number of visits' equals '1')


Click 'Save' once satisfied with your settings. Repeat this process for as many different types of box office tickets as required. 

'Activate' each of these new ticket types. 



1 (b). Bulk generate your ticket QR codes


Return to your event dashboard and click the 'Generate Ticket Codes' button.



The ticket generation window will load. This is where you specify how many of each on-site ticket type will be generated.

Click on the name of the ticket you wish to generate QR codes for. If you wish to generate QR codes for multiple tickets, hold CTRL and click on other tickets as needed, then click 'Add selected tickets to generator'. 



A table will appear with each of your selected tickets listed. Specify the number of tickets you need to generate for each ticket type. In the example below, we want 1,000 of the ticket type shown. Then click 'Generate Tickets'.



The EventsPass platform will now process your request. Depending on the number of tickets you have generated, this may take several minutes. Please contact the EventsPass team if you need to generate more than 10,000 tickets in one go. Once tickets have been successfully generated you will receive an email notification.



You can download the batch of QR codes from the link with this email.

Alternatively, return to your event dashboard, and click the 'Download Ticket Codes' button.



For each of the ticket types you have generated QR codes, you may now download the associated files by clicking 'Download' under the 'Action' column.


Save the ZIP file to your computer.

This ZIP file contains all the elements that your designer requires to create the physical tickets for your box office. 

2. Recruiting the help of designers and print suppliers to create the physical tickets that will be used in your box office area

Load the ZIP file. You will see one CSV file, and one EPS file for each of the ticket's you just generated.
Note: This is real ticket data, so treat this information as sensitive and valuable to your business. 



The EPS files are image file formats.  Each EPS file is a ticket QR code, and the filename represents the full ticket ID (the string of letters and numbers) for that same QR code. This is what your designer will use to create your final tickets.

The CSV file contains data about each of the tickets you have just generated, including the following column names:
  1. Ticket Code: The Ticket ID of that ticket.
  2. @qrcode: The EPS filename for each ticket.
  3. TicketTypeId: A identification number for the type of ticket.
  4. TicketTypeName: The ticket type name.
  5. QrCodeString: The underlying data contained within the QR code of each ticket.
At this stage, you can brief your designer on what you would like your tickets to look like while supplying the above ZIP file and the link to the instructions in this section.

Design Stage:

There are two elements that must be included in your ticket design to ensure the tickets work correctly at your event. This includes: 
  1. The QR code itself (stored within each EPS file). This is unique for each ticket. EventsPass suggests a minimum printed QR code width of 30mm, and a minimum white border of 4mm. However, it is recommended that you do your own printed tests also.
  2. The first twelve characters of the TicketCode (excluding dashes). This is unique for each ticket and must match the QR code from eh CSV in the ZIP file. Anything other than the first twelve characters is insufficient. The text must legible to anyone who might be operating your box office area. It is recommended that you do not include the entire TicketCode.
The designer must not re-generate the QR codes from a third-party application.  Please use the supplied EPS QR codes only.

Designer Instruction:
  1. Create the ticket design with a placeholder space for the QR code and TicketCode
  2. Run a data merge operation, to pipe in the respective QR code and TicketCode for each ticket (for example using Adobe Illustrator).
  3. Spot check that the QR code used matches the TicketCode (scan the QR code with any smartphone QR scanner, and check the QRCodeString matches the TicketCode data).
  4. Share a sample with the event producer, to ensure the design is to their satisfaction.
  5. Export the batch of tickets in a format that is suitable for use by a printing supplier.
  6. Share the export with the event producer.
See below for one such example of an on-site physical ticket:



Note: this ticket only shows the first eight characters of the Ticket ID (below the QR code).  Since the above event occured, the EventsPass platform can now accommodate much larger events, and thus twelve characters is the recommended number to display on the ticket. 

Printing Stage:

At this point, you will have received the batch of designed tickets back from your designer. 

Please check that you are satisfied with the overall design.
Secondly, take any random ticket supplied by the designer, and scan it in 'Validation QR Code' mode, which is accessible from the 'Settings' menu once you have logged in to your event.

When you scan a ticket in this mode, the CheckIn app should tell you that the ticket is valid. You should also see the Ticket ID display in the blue bar at the bottom of the app screen. Please make sure that the first twelve characters shown on the app screen match the twelve characters printed on the ticket design of the ticket you have just scanned. It is recommended that you repeat this for a few randomly selected tickets.
If the characters do not match, please return them to the designer for correction as they have not met the required specification. 
If the characters match and you are satisfied with the design, please proceed in commissioning your printing supplier to produce and deliver the tickets to you.

3. Running your box office over the course of your event

At this point, you are on the home stretch to your event. Now is the time to prepare your physical box office or ticket booth.

There are seven key elements that you need to have in place to ensure a smoothly running box office:
  1. Your physical on-site tickets (which you have prepared by now following the prior instructions)
  2. *A method of accepting payment (e.g. cash handling/cash register system, and/or EFTPOS processing, and/or credit card processing). 
  3. *Dependable staff that can manage your box office booths and potentially handle cash (if you will accept cash payment).
  4. *A secure desk/booth/counter structure where your box office staff will operate from
  5. *Signage communicating to visitors where physical tickets can be purchased
  6. ^CheckIn scanning devices (see here for compatible devices) with the EventsPass CheckIn app (see here) installed, logged in to your event, and connected to the internet. These will be used to activate the physical tickets before your box office staff hand them to the customer (See here: Choose the right scanning mode on your CheckIn device). It is recommended that there is no fewer than one scanning device per two box office attendant staff (assuming the staff are sitting side by side and can share a device between them).
  7. *Internet connectivity to ensure your CheckIn devices are continually syncing to the EventsPass server. 
Any venue-based free Wi-Fi (i.e. the kind that anyone from the public can join) is inadequate. You must have your own reliable internet connection.

*Please note that EventsPass is unable to provide these services or hardware. Please contact the EventsPass team if you would like us to recommend some suppliers that can assist. ^Please note that EventsPass can connect with you our preferred partner for harware rental if needed.  Please contact the EventsPass team for more information.

Assuming you have arranged all seven of the key elements listed above, then the process of selling physical tickets to customers is as follows:
  1. Customers wait in queue
  2. The next available box office attendant invites the next customer in line to come to their booth
  3. Customer specifies which ticket(s) they wish to purchase 
  4. Box office attendant processes payment based on ticket(s) being purchases
  5. Box office attendant collects the appropriate number of ticket(s) that the customer has just paid for
  6. Box office attendant scans every ticket the customer has just purchased in Box Office (Activation Mode) on the CheckIn app (See here: Choose the right scanning mode on your CheckIn device). This step ensures the ticket is marked as sold in your event dashboard.
  7. Box office attendant hands ticket(s) to the customer, and the customer can now join the queue to enter the event
Congratulations, if you have made it this far, you have now successfully prepared your event box office to facilitate physical ticket sales.

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