How best to deal with concession tickets

[Mina Nielsen]

I’d like to sell tickets which have two price bands:

• Full
• Discount

There will be a stock of tickets overall (let’s say 100 for an example event). But people can buy those tickets at either price. It won’t matter if 80 full tickets and 20 discounts are sold, or 40 full and 60 discount. It’s only important that no more than 100 tickets of all types are sold.

Discounted tickets (concessions) are available to Senior Citizens, students, unemployed, etc. but there is no quota on the number of people from those groups who can attend. That would be social engineering 😉

I’ve looked at the intro videos and through the documentation, but it’s not quite clear to me if this use-case is supported by Event Tickets Plus.

Thanks for any help 🙂 x

[George]

Hey Mina,

Thanks for reaching out!

This use-case is actually not specifically supported by our tickets. I’m sorry about this!

At this time, there is no “shared stock” feature like you describe. You have to set a quantity/stock for each ticket option. We’re not fans of social engineering! 🙂 The problem is just that, at this time, the “shared stock” aspect of this feature is something we are still ironing out within our code because each eCommerce platform that we want to support (e.g. WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, etc.) handles “stock” management in slightly different ways.

It’s a trickier problem to solve than it might sound, but this “shared stock” / “global stock” feature is:

• literally one of the most-requested features of all time for our plugins

• something we’re about 90% done with implementing! 😀

We’re hoping to have this released in the plugins before summer is upon us, though this is a rough estimate and one that we’d only be able to meet if all goes to plan.

Sorry for the disappointing news here; but I wanted to make it clear that we share your (and many other customers’) desires for this feature to be realized and are working on it.

Please let me know if there’s anything else I can help with!

— George

[Mina Nielsen]

Ah, poop 🙁

So, let’s assume I still manage to sell The Events Calendar to the arts centre I’m developing for. What kind of workarounds could we try, until you’ve got this sorted?

Is it possible to adjust stock levels of each ticket type over time, after tickets sales are open and some have been sold?

[Mina Nielsen]

Or, I wonder if applying a discount code/coupon at checkout might be an option? I don’t know WooCommerce that well… can a coupon be set up that only discounts The Events Calendar events?

[George]

Hey Mina,

Sorry for the delayed response here!

There are a few different things to touch on here. To address your questions in reverse order, you ask if a coupon can be set up that only discounts The Events Calendar events–this is unfortunately not possible with WooCommerce at this time 🙁 I’m sorry to bear news of yet another limitation here.

The only workaround for now is actually something you suggested yourself:

Is it possible to adjust stock levels of each ticket type over time, after tickets sales are open and some have been sold?

YES, it is possible to adjust stock levels on-the-fly and this would be the best option that I can think of at this time.

I’m sorry about these limitations, Mina! Please let me know if this information is helpful.

Sincerely,
George

[Mina Nielsen]

Hi George,

Thanks for your further clarification and insight. Really appreciated.

I’m happy to say that the client was not at all surprised by this inability to have shared stock. He’s an experienced arts centre manager, and said that this is the same behaviour as all the dedicated arts centre systems he’s used in the past.

Based on that, I’m less worried and will go ahead with Events Tickets Plus and TEC as solutions for this project. I’ve made the client aware that you’re aiming to add shared stock in the future, and he feels that feature alone could make you very rich 🙂

Thanks again,
Best wishes,
Mina.

[Mina Nielsen]

[ps][/ps] I particularly appreciate you answering that cheeky WooCommerce question I snuck in, given that WooCommerce is not your plugin to support. You’re a star 🙂

[George]

Hey Mina,

Thanks so much for the kind words here, and for going ahead with our plugins despite their not being 100% perfect. Our shared stock features are indeed on the horizon, and while I don’t have a specific ETA for their actual arrival, if you keep an eye on our blog at http://theeventscalendar.com/blog every once in a while (or on twitter, @TheEventsCal), we will definitely be making a clear announcement when these features have arrived.

Thanks for the nice exchange, Mina–I wish you the best of luck with your site, and while I’ll be closing this thread up, feel free to open a new thread on our premium forums any time if there’s anything we can help with.

Thanks,
George

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