Holding Seats

Seats can be held on a performance basis (or group of performances). We recommend using this feature as an alternative to selling the seats to a specified house account. This process puts the tickets on hold and avoids creating transactions. Your revenue reports and ticket analysis reports will also reflect a truer status of the sales picture.

Rules for Holding Tickets

  • There are privileges in the employee record for holding seats. An employee who has this privilege, can hold and release any seat at any time. For more information on Employee Settings, Click Here.
  • There is also a privilege that allows only releasing seats. If an employee has this privilege, they can release seats at any time from the Ticket Sales to Patron window or from the Plays Window.
  • There is also a default setting for auto release of tickets prior to a performance. For example if this is set to 15 minutes then 15 minutes before the play the held seats will be released for general sale.

    There are two ways to hold seats for shows:

    a) While Selling tickets:

    b)While in Show setup.

Holding Seats for a Specific Patron

Holding and Freeing seats allows the user to mark seats as unavailable without actually selling the seats. No revenue is journalized when a seat is held, the seat is just marked as unavailable. This feature can be offered to a patron who needs additional time to make a final decision. The hold allows for a time-limit to be set before the seat is auto-released. The auto-release feature works in conjunction with the Web Sales Listener. The Web Sale Listener must be active in order for the auto-hold to work properly.

Holding Seats While Selling Tickets

To hold seats for a specific patron, while you are selling tickets, you perform the following steps:

  1. Create a Buy List

    Click here to learn how to create a Buy List. Once the Buy List is complete click Seat Selection tab in the Orders window. 

     Click here for a detailed description of this window and it's functions.

  2. Select the Hold Option.

  3. Select the seats to be held.

  4. Press the Hold <image hold button> button and select "Hold Seat for Patron."

    This will open an additional window letting the user set the parameters of the hold.

  5. Step 1 - Enter information about the hold.

    A choice between a generic hold and a hold for a specfic patron can be entered.

  6. Step 2 - Choose a hold letter to use.

    Often the Box Office will have a predetermined hold letter used for all patron holds for users to be able to quickly reference the graphic map.

  7. Step 3 - Set the criteria in regards to the release of the hold.

    A date and time can be set to auto-release the hold.

  8. Step 4 - Assign any comments to the hold.

    Comments will appear in the tooltip when the mouse is hovered over the held seat.

Freeing Seats While Selling Tickets

  1. Create a Buy List.

    Click here to learn how to create a Buy List. Once the Buy List is complete click Seat Selection tab in the Orders window. 

    Click here for a detailed description of this window and it's functions.

  2. Select the held seats to free.

    To sell the held seats, hold <CTRL> (Windows) or <OPTION> (Mac) and select the seats to sell them directly.

  3. The seats will now appear in the shopping cart.

    The seats are now available to be sold. If the seats are released, the seats will not return to their previous hold status.

Festival Seating - Holding and Releasing Seats

Seats can be held on a performance basis (or group of performances). We recommend using this feature as an alternative to selling the seats to a specified house account.

To hald seats for festival seating, you perform the following steps:

  1. Open the Play Setup Window.
  2. Find the play you wish to release tickets for.
  3. Select the Performance Tab.

  4. Select the performance(s) you wish to hold tickets for and Open the setup window.
  5. On the right side, enter the number of seats that you wish to hold.
  6. Click the Save Button at the top of the window and then close the window.

Releasing Held Seats in a Festival Seating Performance

  1. Open the Play Setup Window.
  2. Find the play you wish to release tickets for.
  3. Select the Performance Tab.

  4. Select the performance(s) you wish to release tickets for and Open the setup window.
  5. On the right side, reduce the number of seats that are held by the amount that you wish to release.
  6. Click the Save Button at the top of the window and then close the window.

Reserved Seating - Holding and Releasing Seats

When creating the map for the venue, you can select the seats that you want to be considered held by default for the map. When you setup the performance, you can chose to use the default holds for the map, or choose to not use those holds.

To hold seats in a reserved seating Performance, you perform the following steps:

  1. Open the Maps window.
  2. Highlight the map that you wish to edit and press the Open button.
  3. Select the Graphic Map Tab near the top of the window.
  4. On the toolbar on the left hand side, you will see tools for defining holds on the map.

     

  5. Select the seat(s) that you would like to hold on the graphic map. Then click on the hold tool, and select a letter code to hold the seat(s) with.
  6. When you are done, choose the Save Button.

Releasing Held Tickets in a Reserved Seating Performance

  1. In the Buy Tickets Window, select the performance(s)for which you wish to release seats to a patron to.
  2. On the seat selection tab, hold down the <CTRL> key while clicking on the held seats with you mouse.
  3. The seats have now been released to a patron for sale. If you release or refund the tickets, the seats will return to their original hold status.