Urgent Help Needed: Ticket Sold Counts Not Correct and Can't Launch Site

[Chris]

Hi there,

We’ve been using WooTickets (now Event Tickets Plus) for years. When we first started, there was NO way to delete an order/ticket and we literally had to go into the database and manually delete things (with instructions provided by your company). It was extremely time consuming and painful.

In future updates, we were finally able to delete a ticket and order – we had to manually adjust the inventory count in WooCommerce since WooTickets wouldn’t do it, and then we could get the correct counts showing on the Attendee list screen.

Then the next iteration allowed us to delete the tickets on the attendee screen, and also delete the order and all the counts were correct. That was fantastic and how we ran everything last year. We knew EXACTLY how many tickets were sold to each event.

We just upgraded to Event Tickets Plus (latest version 4.2). We did several test orders that went fine – and we were ready to launch today for our big day…TODAY…6/21. So I went in to delete the tickets on the attendee screen, and also to delete the test orders. I assumed it would function logically like it had in the past…updating the inventory count, and then also updating the # of tickets Sold on the attendee screen. That way we would see a real count of current tickets sold and how many seats we have sold. It appears I was mistaken.

While the attendee screen does show a “Deleted” count for tickets – it is still counting ALL of the test orders (which exist NOWHERE – they are totally deleted in WooCommerce, too)….and it is saying we have Sold tickets when we do *not*. This a HUGE problem and bug for us since there’s no way we can keep an accurate count of tickets sold when we have to refund/exchange/cancel tickets. We run a theater and will sell 4,000 tickets to our next show – we have a finite amount of seats and usually sell out almost every performance….so if we can’t know exactly how many tickets are sold, this creates a *massive* box office issue.

We are supposed to turn on our ticket sales today. I’ve pushed it to the afternoon now in great hopes you can help us solve this in the morning. Is there a way we can force the system to display the correct number of SOLD tickets? (Especially after an order/tickets are deleted totally in both the attendee screen and in WooCommerce?) I have no idea where it is pulling the sold number from anymore since we deleted all traces of the test orders from inside WooCommerce.

Also, we are using Global Stock count for 2 of 3 ticket types on each performance night (the 3rd ticket type has a limited quantity too). It appears this glitch is affecting both the global stock tickets AND the one that is separate from that global stock.

PLEASE help us ASAP. How do we get the correct numbers to show? We’ve been loyal paying customers since day 1, and it’s very scary to see all the potential problems we could experience now this summer with this issue not reporting correct “tickets sold”. Begging you for quick help…

Thank you,
Chris

[Brook]

Howdy Chris,

Thanks for the backstory. It’s nice to get feedback from long time users. To be up front, as we add features sometimes it can change old ones in subtle ways and we are not always aware of it. I really appreciate the detail here.

What you have described is indeed the intentional way we have build the stock counts in our latest versions. There is no real “fix” for it available right now because it’s working as intended. However we are considering some refinements to our stock counts and would value some feedback here. For instance when you delete an order we are thinking we should move it to the trash of Woo, rather than delete it outright.

Based on what you’re saying I am guessing that once you empty an order from Woo you would also want it to disappear from the deleted counts. That’s interesting, so far that line of thinking has run counter to everything we’ve seen. But perhaps other users would like that too? Might be a worthy feature suggestion: UserVoice (feature suggestion page for The Events Calendar) What would you expect to happen with the stock count for such an order? Anything different than the current solution?

There are only three real fixes available “today”:

1. Manually adjust your stock counts and deleted counts. Since it’s typically pretty rare to make test orders, this might be the best option.
2. Downgrade back to the version you were happy with. Downgrading a plugin tutorial might be helpful here. But obviously that’s not a great longterm solution.
3.  Customize the calendar to do what you want. There are plenty of available actions to hook into. ‘wootickets_ticket_deleted’ for instance is a great hook, and runs right after Tribe__Tickets__Attendance::instance( $event_id )->increment_deleted_attendees_count(); so you can modify that as needed. This will certainly require someone with a goodly bit of PHP knowledge though.

Does that all make sense? Does that help clarify what’s going on and answer your questions?

Cheers!

– Brook

 

 

[Chris]

Hi Brook,

Thank you for response back. Unfortunately, what you said does not address the issue. It seems like I might not have been clear…

When we delete/cancel/refund an order (the glitch happens no matter which of those is chosen), it should *not* still be counted as a ticket that is sold. Because it is in fact NOT a sold ticket and is a ticket available to the public. Yes, I can still go manually update the inventory counts in WooCommerce as needed (I’ve done that before and always double-check when we make an order change anyway)…however there’s a bug in the system that isn’t counting the sold tickets correctly.

This is NOT counter to how a live event plugin should work. In fact, I spent an hour combing through the forums last night and found other multiple people reporting this same issue over several months with promises of fixes in future versions. I’m in the future version and it’s still not working correctly.

If you sell tickets to a live event, you have a finite amount of space or seats. You need a way to have an accurate count of how many tickets sold and how many people are coming at any given point in time. Event Ticket Plus 4.2 currently does not do that (assuming ANY changes need to be made to an order or tickets).

Right now if we get an order, then delete *OR* just cancel/refund it…the Event Attendee listing page (which shows the counts for each ticket type)…STILL counts a canceled/refunded ticket as SOLD. It even counts a DELETED ticket as a sold ticket.

And if I go back and manually update the inventory – it STILL doesn’t change the sold counts. In other words, there are “phantom” sold tickets somewhere in the latest version of the plugin…which means it is currently impossible for us to easily see how many tickets are REALLY sold (“sold” as in the patron actually have the ticket, and money actually exchanged hands). It defeats the purposes of an automated solution when this bug requires us to still have to come in count/add/subtract manually and double-check everything. Especially when selling tickets into the thousands.

Does that explain this bug better? We need the system to have the correct count of how many tickets are actually sold. It has done that for years, but in this latest version appears to not do that correctly. Where is it pulling this phantom data from? How do we get it to show the correct CURRENT amount of tickets sold? This is a basic need of any live event organizer – as is evidenced by the other tickets I found in here with people having similar concerns/issues with the counts not being correct.

Hope that sheds so more light so you can help us get this fixed.

Thanks,
Chris

[Brook]

Howdy Chris,

That does certainly shed light things and I appreciate the elaboration.

Basically though, this is not a bug. The behavior you’re seeing is the intended behavior of our program. Your argument is a good example of why it might not be the most useful behavior in common circumstance. And that is something we’d like to consider further. One thing that can really help that happen as fast as possible is if you add this as a feature request: UserVoice (feature suggestion page for The Events Calendar)

But for now our application is designed for folks who would expect deleted orders, which completed all the way through and thus truly were sold, to be listed in the sold counts. This behavior is probably most useful for folks who don’t do test orders on their own events, which is by far going to be the majority of our customers. A lot of folks delete orders or attendees from the list simply to hide them for one reason or another, but they are still going to to be attending the event. But even still I would not be surprised if a good chunk of event managers would prefer your suggested way of going about this. Hence why I think this would make a great feature/enhancement suggestion.

Please let me know if you have any followup questions. Cheers!

– Brook

[jolaurin]

I think Chris is completely right. My clients look at this number and expect to see the the number of people expected to come to the event. Not the total number of ticket sold including the ones refunded and/or canceled.

I believe this is basic user experience and that should be adressed asap.

[Brook]

I appreciate your input jolaurin. If one of you guys would like to move this forward as a feature we would possibly consider please do add it to UserVoice. And if you would like to jumpstart it share the link here so that it will get a couple votes right off the bat.

To be forthright, we typically get close to 100 folks each week requesting features. The only way for us to track them all is UserVoice. I would love it if our community was small enough we could still track demand in forums comments like this, but we can’t. Hence why I am pushing y’all to UserVoice.

Cheers!

– Brook

[jolaurin]

I just did even though I think that’s more of a bug than a feature. If it’s the expected behavior, it’s shown at the wrong place as it should not be displayed in the participants list. The name talks for itself: “Participant list” …

I’ll try to advertise it so it can be quickly implemented as it (in my opinion) does not show the right information to admin users.

https://tribe.uservoice.com/forums/195723-feature-ideas/suggestions/15012864-do-not-include-deleted-tickets-or-cancelled-orders

[Brook]

Thank you for posting that! It was perfect timing, I shared the idea to our team on our weekly review of new requests.

We are by no means trying to say that the current way is the best one, or that we would not consider revising it. On the contrary this is certainly something I’m interested in championing to see if it might get change. What I was saying is simply that the current behavior is our intended behavior, and intended behavior is inherently not a bug. That’s why it will make the most sense as a feature request.

Thanks again. If anybody else comes across this topic please vote on the above feature request.

Chris, if you need anything else let me know. Cheers!

– Brook

[Support Droid]

This topic has not been active for quite some time and will now be closed.

If you still need assistance please simply open a new topic (linking to this one if necessary)
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