(Last updated on: November 25, 2015)
One of our customers reported the following situation: They sell seats, and some patrons return the tickets, but the venue doesn’t refund the money. When someone gives tickets back, they go into that sale and return the seats so they can sell them again.
They want the money for both sales to show up on their reports, but when they return the seats to re-sell them, it takes the money off the books.
This is a common practice for symphonies. Symphonies usually let their patrons know that when they return their seats, the monies not refunded are treated as donations. Patrons receive a letter from the symphony acknowledging their donation and as a tax deduction.
The way to go about recording this transaction is to edit the sale and release the seats but leave the dollar amount in. Of course, this will create an “out of balance” because the seats were returned, but the money was not refunded.
When you click back to the General information tab, notice the sale will no longer be out of balance.
The way to solve this is to create a season package called “Donation.”
Click here for instructions on how to set this up.
After that is done:
- Go to Sales | Sales records and find your sale.
- Click on the Other Information tab.
- Click on the Change Performance tab.
- Choose event called Donation.
- You will be asked if you really want to exchange for a different performance. Click Yes.
- If asked if you want to change the date sold to today’s date, click Yes.
- Click on the General Information tab and you will notice the number of tickets is the amount of the original sale. The Total sold will equal zero and the Total paid will be the correct amount originally paid.
- Click on the Tickets tab and change the amount of tickets.
- Click on the Payment tab and input the amount of money originally paid into the donation field.