For reference - Managing event ticket bookings and payments (e.g Christmas play)

Gwyn Mabo

December 22, 2023 16:16

We have new School Shop functionality to help you manage payments for items

You can see how to get started by taking a look here: School Shop - Setting up and managing shop or uniform payments and purchases

Until you're ready to switch, this article details what we previously advised.

This guidance is for when you want parents to book a place. If you just want to add an event to guardian's calendars that they don't need to book, follow these instructions instead: Creating and managing events. You'd need to use your Payments Report to see payments has been made, as you won't get a notification.

Trips are best if each student is allocated a set number of tickets e.g. 2
Customer Account Types are best if you don't have a limit for the number of guardians that can attend

Method	Positives	Negatives
Using Trips	Parents can purchase tickets through the Parent Portal or Parent App Choose specific groups of students to sell to Set a limit for the number of students who can have their guardians attend	Parent's can't choose how many tickets to purchase You'll need to let guardians know that only x number of people can attend per child Payments are paid out to the bank account linked with Trips
Using a Customer Account Type	Parents top up their child's account through the Parent Portal or Parent App, so if the cost of a ticket is £3, a £6 payment would equate to 2 tickets The balance can be amended by your school when tickets are purchased Payments are paid to a bank account of your choosing	An invoice must be created each time tickets are purchased to deduct the amount from the balance Can't set up the accounts only for certain students You can't set a limit for the number of students who can have their guardians attend - you would need to refund extra payments made

Permissions

Extra Curricular: Administer - Set up the ticket booking as a Trip
Finance: Administer - Manage payments for Trips or other Customer Account Types

If you don't have this permission, ask your admin team to assign it to you.

Setting it up as a Trip

Step 1 - Add your trip

Go to School > Activities > Trips. This will bring you to the Trips overview page. Click +Add to create a new trip. Select whether the trip is paid or free.

You can then choose the name and select the students the trip is available for. You can also specify a maximum number of participants. As the trip is booked for students, not guardians, you may need to calculate the maximum. For example, if you can fit 80 guardians in the hall, and each student can have a maximum of 2 guardians attend, you would need to set this number as 40.

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If you allow parents to sign up for this trip through the Parent Portal, parents will be able to book through the Parent Portal and Parent App.

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Step 2 (for paid trips) - Add prices

You will then add in the payment amount for your students by selecting '+Add' within Trip Prices.

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Here you can add the price for the tickets (must be at least £1) and whether parents can choose the amount to pay (they will be able to sign up without paying at all). You can also choose whether the price can be paid in instalments, and if so, set an auto-confirmation threshold that, once paid, will confirm the booking.

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Finally, in Trip Participants your selected eligible pupils will sit within the Eligible tab. Students who have been provisionally added to the trip will appear in the Reserved tab. Part-paid and fully paid students will appear in the Confirmed tab.

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Using the trip

To book tickets for a student, you can record payments or just sign the student up for the payment to be added later. You can see how to do this here: Manually signing students up to a trip

If you use the Parent Portal and Parent App at your school and have allowed parents to sign up through there, they can sign their children up using these instructions: Signing my child up for a Trip on the Parent Portal or the Parent App

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You can track how many places are left by looking at the participants. Double (or triple etc) this number to see how many chairs you'll need to set out.

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Need to issue a refund? Take a look at this article.

Setting it up as a new Customer Account Type

Setting up the account

Follow the instructions in this article to set up your account: Setting up a new Customer Account Type

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Using the account

Guardians can top up the account in the same way as topping up the Meals account through the parent Portal and Parent App.

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You can top up or add invoices for a particular student from the Payments section of their profile. You can also add invoices in bulk for students from School > Payments > Accounts > Invoices.
You can see all balances (to help you find the number of bookings) from School > Payments > Accounts > Balances.

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