Theatre Manager: Responding to COVID 19

What reports can I use to see where money went?

What reports can I use to see where money went?

If you refunded all tickets to donations or gift certificates, you can get an accurate sense of what you exchanged things to using a report from one of three report categories:
  • Transaction Reports that show the sales/refunds and specifically what was done and to whom by date/time. Transactions are summarized into:
    • the Daily Sales Summary when they are created -and-
    • the G/L reports during end of day processing.

      Note:when end of day is done reports in the three categories match - until a subsequent transaction occurs.

  • Daily Sales Summary report for ticket refunds/exchanges and also sales of passes and donations in a date range
  • GL Summary reports for a range of dates or the end of day GL reports or exports
Any difference between ticket refunds and purchases of gift certificates/donations means that the patron received their refund by cash/card/or check.

 

Finding where your money is

How much ticket money was refunded? If you want to simply find the total value of tickets refunded and who you refunded them to refer to the transaction history report

If you want to see how much you refunded on a daily basis or by event, use

  • Daily Sales Summary report category - selected by event. These are based on the same transactions above and if your criteria is the same, they will match. One that might particularly help is the Sales/Exchanges/Refunds report which shows sales per day (likely none), the exchanges (likely none) and the refunds, as well as the net change in sales to the event.

    Note: Daily sales summaries show the general activity in the system and break it down by date of transaction into categories for ticket sales (or refunds), donation sales (or refunds) and Gift Certificate sales (or refunds). It should give you a view of where the money went (except those refunds returned in cash to the customer - see last item in this table)

  • Your end of day Journal Entries - You can look at either GL Summaries (which will show the decrease in ticket revenue for an event) or at the GL Detail (since there is a line for refunds to each event).
How much was returned to gift certificates? On the Gift Certificate patron tab you can see an accurate list of the patrons that have been given the gift certificate for their ticket return.

You can use this data to:

  • obtain the amount refunded - since it is simply the total sales value for the certificate for every patron in the list
  • emailing patrons - since you can use the gift certificate data file in conjunction with the gift certificate name to tell patrons that they have one and how to use it - especially if you allow the certificate to be redeemed online
  • building mail lists -and -
  • seeing if patrons are using their gift certificates.
What about some sample reports if I don't see the information on the screen?
  • You can have summary or detailed reports about pass/gift certificate usage - there are a number under this category
  • if you created a new liability GL account for your COVID gift certificate, you can look at that to see how much is currently waiting to be redeemed or you can use the Journal Entry Detail by Account to see the change to the Covid account and see when things went in or out of that account
How much was returned to donations? In the donation campaign donation tab, you can see a list of all donors whose tickets were returned for donations.

You can use this data to:

  • obtain the amount refunded to donations - since it is simply the total donation value for every patron in the list
  • emailing patrons - since you can use the donation data file in conjunction with the campaign name to tell patrons that they have one.
  • building mail lists -and -
  • you can thank patrons and batch print receipts or use in thank you form letters if you wish.
What about some sample reports if I don't see the information on the screen?
  • You can have summary or detailed reports about donations - there are a number under this category. Some that might be especially interesting might be the donation audit trail reports to see when things happened and if patrons have been thanked with a receipt.
  • if you created a new liability GL account for your COVID donation ticket return campaign, you can look at that to see how much is currently donated Journal Entry Detail by Account to see the change to that account.
How much was returned to cash or credit card? Very simply, the difference of the

Total Ticket Refunds - Total Donations to COVID campaign - Total purchases of COVID Gift Certificates = Total Refunds to Cash and Credit Card.

Ultimately accounting reports in your accounting system should tell you the net difference because the data comes changes to your accounts. These can be backed up with the GL reports, the daily sales summaries and the other reports mentioned above.

Finding the total value of tickets refunded

Finding the total value of tickets refunded

There are a number of ways to find out how much you have refunded to an event. One of the easiest report categories uses the ticket transaction category because it allows you to show details and totals to certain kinds of transactions that happened between a date range.

Some key ones are:

  • Transaction History By Event - as explained by the youtube video in this page (click to see in youtube) This one is quite relevant since it shows all the refund transactions with the detail who you refunded to
  • If you are only interested in totals for some events, some of the other transaction based reports might be better suited. Be sure to provide appropriate criteria for the report such as:
    • The date range after after which you want to consider transactions - eg all transactions after a certain date
    • Only look at the ticket refund transactions
Please read the steps of cancelling an event for more information
If you have refunded some of the tickets to a donation or a gift certificate and want to find out the amount returned to the patron, then:
  • Find the total refunds as per the transaction reports
  • Find the total exchanged to a specific donation campaign (for ticket returns in that same date range). You could also use a transaction report for that, but specify new donations to the campaign of choice.
  • Find the total exchanged to a specific gift certificate type (for ticket returns in that same date range). You could also use a transaction report for that, but specify new passes/gift certificates you used.
The total cash returned to patrons is:

Total tickets returned - total donations purchased (for ticket return) - total gift certificates purchased (for ticket return>

You can get all this from transaction reports.