Hosting Options:

• Self-Hosted: your database and web services are on your own internal servers. You need to supply you own remote access tools.
• Artsman Cloud Hosted: your database is hosted by Artsman. Much simpler remote access, since all people in your company are, in effect, using remote access, no matter where they are located.

This technique can also be used to reduce venue size down to government mandated levels by adding enough mandatory holds.

Distance between Seats

Some clients may be continuing with events and implementing Social Distancing within the Theatre. One approach to this process is holding seats within the venue to not only limit the number of patrons who can attend but also offer more space between seats for those attending. Local officials will determine the recommended distance between patrons and seats.

Distance between patrons in a performance can be created by holding seats. Depending on where you are in the process the options below outline how to create holds:

• in the setup of a map to ensure the seats are held when building future event
• in the maps tab for a performance for an event
• through the Order window for individual performances

Changing Maps

An organization may decide to create a Social Distancing map. This map would contain held seats to meet the regulations outlined by officials for group gatherings. Upcoming events can be altered to use this map. When capacity regulations are lifted the map can be updates once more to return to the original configuration or holds can be released within the performances themselves. The process for implementing a Social Distancing map would be:

1. duplicate the existing map
2. hold seats on the map
3. change the map on an existing event
4. update the holds for the performance to use the default holds for the new map

Some organizations may choose to move from Reserved Seating to General Admission / Festival Seating to allow patrons the option to create distance between themselves and others attending a performance. Click the Changing a Performance from Reserved to General Admission Seating link for details steps.

If your organization has implemented steps for Social Distancing not listed above we would love to hear about them. Please contact the support team and let us know what you are doing to help limit risk.

An outline containing recommendations for managing event cancellations can be found in the help page Cancelling an Event. These recommendations include generating Revenue and House reports prior to refunding tickets and creating a Mail List of those patrons who have purchased for future reference.

You can refund tickets and create an offsetting payment, donation or add a gift certificate/pass in three ways:

• Individually, on a patron by patron basis
• Mass refund to a performance
• Mass refund across events

When cancelling an event there are many options for dealing with currently purchased tickets.

VERY IMPORTANT: BEFORE REFUNDING PAYMENTS TO CREDIT CARDS... Important: Please read the rules regarding refunds to credit cards, which are managed by your credit card provider. Theatre Manager does its best to determine which refund rule applies, based on how the card was authorized. If you cannot get refunds working, your merchant provider is the key to unlocking the door.

Refunding to an individual patron

When a patron calls in, you have several options for refunding tickets based on their needs. These include:

• exchanging tickets to events in the future
• refunding tickets to a donation to keep funds within the organization (YouTube video link, also below)
• refunding tickets to a pass or gift certificate for future use (YouTube video link, also below)
• refunding payments to a patron

Refunding an entire performance

If you intend to cancel an entire entire event, you can:

• refund all tickets to a performance at one time with (or without) creating payments (See video above) . You can select some people and refund to them (on the group basis) using one of the following methods:
  • credit cards, or
  • donations, or
  • gift certificates

    -or-

• Select a range of orders, patrons or ticket types from the attendance tab where you can:
  • work through the list of attendees from top to bottom
  • use the context menu to refund only those tickets manually.
  • This allows you to mark any future tickets in the order and also refund them if that might be important.
  • And you can decide on the refund payment method on a per-order basis (checks, cards, eft, to a donation, or to a gift certificate, etc)

Remember to generate all Reports or Mail Lists about those patrons who have purchased prior to following these steps should you wish to contact them in the future.

Refunding across performances and events

You can search for and create a custom list of tickets in the Batch Functions->Unprint or Refund batch of tickets. This option let you:

• select tickets that cross events, performances, patron, etc.
• refund the tickets en-masse like the refund process in the attendance tab of events and dates

If you don't know the future date of the postponed event, we suggest simply changing the name of the event and add '(postpoend)' to the title. But, if you are doing deferred revenue accounting, you must also change the date to be well in the future.

You will need to:

• Find the event and view the list of performances
• Edit the performance and simply change the date to a future date. Any tickets for that date are now for the future date and revenues will continue to be deferred until the performance date.

Notifying customers of the changes

Once you have changed the performance dates for the desired events to the future, you should do an email blast to all patrons for those performances listing when their new performance is. You might wish to:

• Send letters and e-mails to patrons notify them of their new event dates and seat locations
  • base your form letter on the Ticket data per performance
  • create a table within the letter with performance dates, times, event names and seat locations
  • indicate in the letter that upcoming performances and tickets are listed within the table
  • use the list of events you changed as criteria
  • merge the letters and emails, Consolidate Tickets per Patron
• Alternatively, ask patrons to find and print tickets online:
  • base your form letter on the Ticket data per performance
  • Suggest that people login to the web site to review their upcoming performances, see revised dates and to reprint any tickets as required (the example web page below is what a patron would see under their account)
  • use the list of events you changed as criteria
  • When merging, change the duplicates setting to one letter/email per patron so that each patron gets one email

We suggest adding the following link to your email or mail correspondence so that patrons can go online and see their future performances and tickets. The link will show the web page below (after the patron signs in) https://[tickets.yourvenue.org]/TheatreManager/1/online?futuretickets

Example of future tickets web page on web site

The example below shows that the future tickets web page looks like when a customer logs in online. They can see their events with the new dates, along with the ability to print tickets at home. If you change many tickets for many events, this might be the best thing to direct customers to, so that they can print their own.