The Spotlight : Reports

Feature Preview: Gift Certificate/Voucher Report

Nicholai Burton — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 19:18:00 GMT

So I'm always talking about using multimedia to engage your audience online, whether it is telling your story through pictures, audio or video. I decided to walk the talk a little bit and created this brief screencast to give you an idea of what to expect in the next couple of weeks when the next patch drops for Patron Edge 3.34. Our big new features are reloadable gift cards (using Valutec as the processor), debit cards, and a new report called the Gift Certificate/Voucher Report. I'm new to screencasting and couldn't find a microphone while making this, so it's a little awkward as I try to show off the new report using only the screen. Let me know what you think and I can definitely do more of these in the future.

Click here to see the Voucher Report. I'm still experimenting and Youtube made the video too grainy, so use this direct link to view it full size until I find out what I'm doing wrong.

If you haven't talked to your account rep yet to plan your upgrade to 3.34, I recommend doing so to take advantage of all the new features in both PE and PEO. System requirements for these new versions have changed significantly though, so be sure to check out the latest requirements here.

Even More Potential

Nicholai Burton — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 21:24:00 GMT

I got some feedback on the Potential Revenue Report I put up last month and have made some improvements. Some folks told me that promoters who are used to working with Ticketsmasher (ack!) always ask for reports on free seats totaled by price level. One client told me she manually counts every unsold seat on the sales map for every price level in an event, does the math and then sends the information to the promoter in a spreadsheet. With that in mind and to make your lives easier, there are now two reports. The first breaks down by area within the event and the second breaks down by price level.

To install:

Download this set of files: Potential Revenue Report.zip
Add the stored procedure to your PE database
Add the report into Patron Edge per Knowledgebase solution BB142029

If you're using the report, leave a comment and let me know how it's working and if you have any feedback about it.

As with any stuff I give out on The Spotlight, this isn't a core piece of the product; it's custom so that means it is unsupported. My analysts cannot help with the report or take questions on it. If you have any problems with it, please leave a comment, hit the forums, or send me an email.

The Spotlight - Inauguration Edition

Nicholai Burton — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:06:00 GMT

Today was the big day. The new president's speech was inspiring. I was especially pleased with the references to exploiting the potential in newer, smarter energy and economic policies. With that in mind, and in what might be the worst segue ever on The Spotlight, I present to you a gift that allows you to see your sales potential in a newer, smarter way. The Potential Revenue Report was designed for reserved seating organizations who need to figure out how much their unsold seats are worth for a given group of events.

To install:

Download this set of files: Potential Revenue Report.zip
Add the stored procedure to your PE database
Add the report into Patron Edge per Knowledgebase solution BB142029

How is it smart? This report takes the price level for each unsold seat in an event, and uses that in combination with the base price type on the event's price list to find out the potential value of each seat. Then it just sums it up by area and event. It has filters that allow you to choose one or multiple shows and from/to event dates, so that you can see the potential of your entire show run on one report. You can also double-click an area in the report results to get a list of that area's unsold seats.

So what is the point? Well, the best way to use it is to find patterns in areas of each event and change your pricing accordingly. The orchestra only has a few seats left? Raise the ticket price on the precious few seats left. The balcony isn't doing well? Push it harder with the phone reps or in advertising, or consider a discounting scheme. There are no canned reports that give this data currently, so enjoy and leave a comment with how it's working for you.

How are you currently doing yield management at your organization? Do you have any advice for your fellow readers? Leave a note in the comments.

Choose Your Own Order Details

Nicholai Burton — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:49:00 GMT

Patron Edge contains a pretty nice feature that allows you to enter additional order information based on the price type chosen. While you will need to write your own reports for the captured data, you have a lot of flexibility with what it can do. Here are a few ideas for using special order details on price types:

If your organization participates in a reciprocal membership program, create a Member price type. Then use a drop-down to select from the available reciprocal membership programs you accept and a text field to capture the membership ID. Now you can get an accurate count of how often these people come in on a weekly or monthly basis.
If you give comp tickets to employees and staff, use a Staff price type. You can use a drop-down to record the department and have an idea of which group is coming most frequently. You could approach it a little differently and create a Comp price type, where the drop-down contains entries like Staff, Volunteer, Press, VIP, etc.
For classes, capture registration details, emergency contact information and status of a parental release form.
Some grants are given to arts and cultural organizations to bring in a wider range of ages or ethnicities. You can capture these fields in order to present before-and-after information to a grant provider to determine the effectiveness of the grant.
If your constituency is mostly local or in-state, you can create a field for County to see the geographic distribution of your patrons or visitors. This will help determine where your advertising dollars would be best spent.

Here is how to set up special order details based on price type:

Go to Administration, System Setup, Order Type Definitions and create a new order type
In the Code field, enter a value greater than 100
Enter a description, set Ticket Level Sale to Yes, and choose the appropriate options for the remaining fields. Click OK.
Go to Pricing, Price Types and edit the desired price type
In the Order Type Definition field, select the order type created above
Go to Administration, System Setup, Order Type Details and create new details as needed for the new order type. If you have never added order details before, see Knowledgebase solution BB213578 for a walkthrough.

For reporting, all of this information is stored in the TicketExtraInfo table of the database. Each entry here links to the Tickets table, so you can get to any other tables you need from there. If you are not familiar with writing Crystal reports, Blackbaud provides this service (of course, cash-filled envelopes sent to my home address also work!).

How does your organization make use of order type fields? Leave a note in the comments.