There are two ways that you can issue complimentary tickets.
A) If you want to issue a normal ticket (eg: Adult) but make it complimentary, you can put an order through like normal but mark it as complementary as the payment method.
B) If you want your complimentary ticket to have a particular name (eg: Sponsor) you can create separate complimentary ticket types
We will explain how both methods work in this article.
A) Using existing tickets and marking as complimentary
When using this method, you can add a note/reason for complimentary ticket. This feature is beneficial when multiple users are issuing complimentary tickets, as all admins can see why a particular ticket was marked as complimentary.
1. Go to the orders tab and select 'Create Order'
2. Select your event, select the public release then select proceed
3. Select how many tickets you want to issue
4. Select where you want these people to sit
- You can either do this by selecting the zones and sections on the left hand side. This way the system will select the best available seats in your preferred section.
- Alternatively, you can select individual seats on a map
5. Fill in the customer's details and select 'next'
6. Select 'Complimentary' as the payment method then 'Issue Complimentary Tickets'
- Optional: Add in reason for complimentary ticket - the customers don't see this it will just appear as a note in the back end
- Leave 'send order confirmation to customer' ticked if you want the customer to receive an order confirmation email with their tickets. Otherwise, you can untick this and send their tickets separately or at a later date.
Because this method uses existing tickets, an important thing to note is that in the reporting, your comp tickets will appear alongside your paid tickets (displayed as 1 line item rather than separately)
Eg: Sales & Financials Report
B) Creating and issuing separate complimentary tickets
The second method is to create a separate complimentary ticket type. This is useful if you want the name of the comp ticket to be different to your paid tickets (eg: sponsor comp) or you want your comp tickets to appear as a different line item in your reports (rather than in the same line item as above). If you have a certain allocation of comp tickets, you may want to create a separate comp ticket type so you can keep track of this allocation.
1. Navigate to the events tab, select the three dots beside the event, then select edit event
2. Select the 'Ticks & Add-Ons' tab then select 'Add ticket type'
3. Add ticket details
- Ticket type name
- Type = comp - unnamed or comp - named
- Create ticket type
4. Navigate to the links tab, then select 'create new link'
5. Change the link type from listed to unlisted and add a link name
6. Add your new complimentary ticket to your zones
- Use the drop down to open up each zone
- Change the 'select pricing on' from zone level to section level
- Ensure the toggle is green to to make the zone live
- Select your complimentary ticket and the sections you want this ticket live for in each zone
7. Select submit to save your link
8. Go to the orders tab and select 'Create Order'
9. Select your event, the link you just created then select proceed
10. Select where you want these people to sit
- You can either do this by selecting the zones and sections on the left hand side. This way the system will select the best available seats in your preferred section.
- Alternatively, you can select individual seats on a map
11. Select the ticket type then 'buy tickets'
12. Fill in the customer's details and select 'next'
6. Select 'Complimentary' as the payment method then 'Issue Complimentary Tickets'
- Optional: Add in reason for complimentary ticket - the customers don't see this it will just appear as a note in the back end
- Leave 'send order confirmation to customer' ticked if you want the customer to receive an order confirmation email with their tickets. Otherwise, you can untick this and send their tickets separately or at a later date.
When you issue comp tickets this way, they will report as a separate line item in the sales and financials report.
Although there are a few more steps to issuing comps with this method, doing it this way will not affect the capacities of your other ticket types.