Tickets and ticket bundles for recurring events

[Karoliina Valontaival]

Hi

I use event calendar pro and woocommerce on my website and I’m looking for a ticketing solution to bridge this gap.

However a large part of my sales is from recurring weekly events. I see you don’t support that yet (single tickets or a ticket bundle for a recurring event). When will you release this feature? Are we talking weeks, months or a year, or more?

Thanks

Karoliina

[Geoff B.]

Good evening Karoliina and welcome to the Events Calendar forum!

Thank you for your interest in our products.
We’ll be glad to answer your questions.

I see you don’t support that yet (single tickets or a ticket bundle for a recurring event). When will you release this feature? Are we talking weeks, months or a year, or more?

The short answer to that question is very soon.
We are currently testing this complex feature out and we would like to release it sooner than later.

If all goes well, we might be talking weeks. If not, there might be a slight delay on this complex and exciting feature.

To make a long story short, it’s at the top of our list.

Keep an eye out for our announcements!

Best regards,

Geoff B.

[Karoliina Valontaival]

Hi,

Thanks for your quick response. I am thrilled to hear that it’s coming so soon. If I buy the plugin now to get the other parts of my shop working, will it be easy enough to update to the version with this new feature later (without losing all the work i’ve done)?

Also, on the same vein… Does this plugin require the ability to code? Or is it also for non-techies like me? My site thus far has been done by a developer but I’m in the process of taking it wholly into my own hands with a responsive, woo commerce compatible theme (with visual composer)… So wondering if using this plugin is something I can do without hiring a coder to help me out.

Thanks.

[Geoff B.]

Good evening Karoliina,

Thank you for writing back.

If I buy the plugin now to get the other parts of my shop working, will it be easy enough to update to the version with this new feature later (without losing all the work i’ve done)?

Absolutely, the upgrade should not impact the work you have previously done.

That being said, as with any WordPress upgrade (plugin, themes, WordPress), it is highly recommended to do a backup of your Database before. That way, if anything unexpected happens, it’s easy to revert back.

Does this plugin require the ability to code? Or is it also for non-techies like me?

That’s a great question. The plugin is made to work out-of-the-box for everybody (coders and non-techie people).
So in short, you should totally be able to install and configure the plugin yourself.

We even have a pretty simple quick start guide for that here: https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/new-user-primer-event-tickets/

And, if you bump into any issues while setting things up, the support team will be there to help you out!

The only instance where coding would be required is if you want to tweak behaviours of the plugin (via a customization / override). But even at that, we have a large quantity of existing snippets that cover a lot of different needs.

Let me know if that helps.

Have a great day!

Geoff B.

 

[Jens Kirk]

Hi Geoff and Karoliina

What exactly is being developed, is it recurring events or event bundles ?

Cheers

[Geoff B.]

Good afternoon Jens,

Thank you for chiming in.

We are currently working on adding a functionality so that users could use tickets alongside recurring events.

You can already issue tickets in a recurring event series, however these tickets are the same for the whole series (as opposed to 1 instance of ticket for each event in the series).

Let me know if that helps.

Have a great day!

Geoff B.

[Karoliina Valontaival]

Hi,

I didn’t understand what you meant by: “You can already issue tickets in a recurring event series, however these tickets are the same for the whole series (as opposed to 1 instance of ticket for each event in the series).”

So, in my case, I have weekly classes. For these classes I offer “single tickets” at a normal and reduced rate. In addition, I offer “value cards”/”loyalty cards” (for 4 classes or 12 classes) at a normal and reduced rate. So is this something I could already use event tickets for, or not?

Another question regarding the reporting of tickets sold. I can download lists of people who’ve signed up/bought tickets. Can I choose what fields I wish to have in the report, eg. name, email, phone number, other details?

Thanks for your reply.

[Geoff B.]

Good afternoon Karoliina,

Thank you for writing back.

I am sorry I caused some confusion with my previous answer. Let’s try to clarify things.

So, in my case, I have weekly classes. For these classes I offer “single tickets” at a normal and reduced rate. In addition, I offer “value cards”/”loyalty cards” (for 4 classes or 12 classes) at a normal and reduced rate. So is this something I could already use event tickets for, or not?

At the moment of writing, you can offer multiple types of tickets (e.g.:normal rate, reduced rate) via our plugins.

The value card / loyalty card discount would have to be handled via a third-party WooCommerce plugin such as Bulk Discount.
The reason for this is that our plugin literally hands-off the transactional aspect of things to WooCommerce.

However, my earlier point remains: we currently don’t offer full support for recurring tickets.

In your case, it means that if you create a recurring event (e.g.: a weekly class) and add a ticket with our plugin, the ticket created will be the same for all classes.

Here’s the breakdown of what that means:

1. You create a weekly class that starts on Monday September 12th which repeats every week for a month.
2. You create a normal price ticket for that recurring event, ask $50 per ticket and define the max quantity at 30 tickets

The result is that there will be 30 tickets available for the whole month.
Furthermore, there will be no way for you to tell for which of the 4 Mondays the ticket is for.

So in short, unless you have a class where it’s the same people every week and they only need to pay once for the whole session, it looks like you will have to wait for the release of this feature.

Another question regarding the reporting of tickets sold. I can download lists of people who’ve signed up/bought tickets. Can I choose what fields I wish to have in the report, eg. name, email, phone number, other details?

The short answer is yes, you can do that, but this will require some customization.
You might want to read our Themer’s guide to get a sense of how that works.

Another way to go about it would be to download the CSV report and run it through a Macro if you don’t want all of the fields to appear in the report.

Let me know if that helps.

Have a great day!

Geoff B.

[Karoliina Valontaival]

Thanks, I understand now.

About the report thingy, I don’t think i would necessarily need to customise it to exclude certain fields… but the fields i mentioned are the essential ones i need (if there’s other ones thats fine). the reporting system i have now does not for example give me my customer’s phone numbers (though they enter them when they enroll and pay).. so that’s why i was curious to hear what fields/details i get to see in the report.

Thanks so much for all your help.

Karoliina

[Geoff B.]

Good afternoon Karoliina,

I am glad my explanation helped you gain a better understanding of what we currently offer.

As a workaround, you could temporarily set up these events as non-recurring. I realize that it’s less than ideal, but it would buy you some time.

In regards to the reports, using our built-in Export attendee data option will provide you with: “Order #”,”Order Status”,”Customer Name”,”Customer Email Address”,”Ticket type”,”Ticket #”,”Security Code”,”Check in”

It also provides you with any custom attendee additional information you might have asked for in a ticket.

However, it does not include other WooCommerce fields such as phone number and address. For this, you will need to either:

1. Do a bit of template customization for the reports
2. Use an advanced WooCommerce export / reporting plugin

Let me know if that helps.

Have a great day!

Geoff B.

[Karoliina Valontaival]

Thanks so much for your reply. Very helpful!

How easy or difficult is this template customization..? Are there any instructions available for how to do it?

Also – if it’s at all possible for you guys to let me know when you’ll release the recurring event feature, I’d be first in line to buy the plugin 😀

Thanks once again!

Karoliina

[Geoff B.]

Good afternoon Karoliina,

How easy or difficult is this template customization..? Are there any instructions available for how to do it?

Template customizations are not overly complicated if you have decent PHP coding skills. Here are a couple of resources to get you started:

1. Our Themer’s guide gives you an overview of how that works.
2. https://theeventscalendar.com/customizations/

I would still recommend exploring the alternate WooCommerce reporting plugins out there.

If this is still a tad outside of your comfort zone, you might consider hiring one of our recommended customizers to do the customization for you.

Also – if it’s at all possible for you guys to let me know when you’ll release the recurring event feature, I’d be first in line to buy the plugin ?

Absolutely. I am adding you to the ticket so that you are informed when it’s out.

Best regards,
Geoff B.

[Support Droid]

Hey there! This thread has been pretty quiet for the last three weeks, so we’re going to go ahead and close it to avoid confusion with other topics. If you’re still looking for help with this, please do open a new thread, reference this one and we’d be more than happy to continue the conversation over there.

Thanks so much!
The Events Calendar Support Team

[Author]

Posts