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S-360 already provides the possibility to buy financial vouchers and give them to some friend or family member. S-360 now manages experience vouchers that can be directly redeemed with a ticketing product (for the moment: only events and open passes) without any payment process, thus providing a user experience better suited to a gifting process. |
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Solution
Solution principle
Basically, the The experience vouchers involve following steps:
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- VAT perception at voucher sale: a directive in the European Union obliges to use this option if all information to perceive the VAT are already known at this stage (for example, same VAT rate for all the products that can be exchanged with the voucher)
- VAT perception at voucher redemption: in the European Union, this option can only be used if VAT cannot be perceived at the time of voucher sale
Set-up the open
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products
You have to create an open product that will be used automatically by S-360 during the redemption process in order to ensure accounting consistency. More precisely, you have to create one open product for each VAT code of experience voucher. This needs to be done only once per season. Provide following information during set-up:
- A meaningful name (for example: for experience voucher with 10% VAT) internal and external name in order to ease the later set-up of the experience voucher and to ensure a pretty looking order summary page
- The VAT code that you plan to use for your experience vouchers. If you perceive VAT at voucher sale, select a VAT code matching a non zero VAT rate. If you perceive the VAT at voucher redemption, select the VAT code matching a zero VAT rate.
- Create one item with a very large quota
- A dummy price for each tariff that will be used by the experience vouchers and the products that can be received by redeeming these vouchers. Only the tariff matters, not the price. In case of doubt, you can define prices for tariffs you aren't sure they will be used.The open product doesn't need to be added to the product profile (and shouldn't be added to prevent it from being displayed on the Ticket Shop catalog)
Set-up the experience voucher
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When creating a new season ticket, the operator will have to choose its type:
The types Calculated price and Predefined price already exist. The new type Fixed seat season ticket that matches this new season ticket is basically a Calculated price season ticket that includes the fixed seat logic described in this page.
The season ticket type of an existing season ticket is recalled at the top of the Parameters tab:
The fixed seat season ticket can only be defined as a season ticket without (fixed) seat category. This means that the operator will define a global quota for a given fixed seat season ticket and not a specific quota for each seat category. The reason for that is that a given seat (selected by an end customer for the whole season ticket) may have a different seat category for different performances if these performances use different logical configurations. The price paid by the end customer takes the actual seat category into account.
Sales at box office
The sales process is basically the same as for a calculated price season ticket. After having selected the product, the operator selects (as usually) the seat category, contingent, tariff and quantity. The only difference is that the seat category will apply on the first performance of the season ticket, as illustrated below.
In the second step, the operator selects, as usually, the performances to be purchased inside the season ticket.
The 3 first events use 3 different logical configurations belonging to the same physical configuration (and same space). The last event takes place in a different space, implying a different physical configuration.
S-360 displays a grouped map displaying the seats that are available for both 3 events sharing the same physical configuration. By clicking on the information icon, the operator can see for which performances he's selecting a seat and on which performance the displayed seat map is based. For instance, the seat map above is based on Mozart concert of 29.11.2025 and S-360 will automatically select a seat that is in the selected seat category (in this example, seat category 2) for the Mozart concert. The selected seat (seat 135 of row AA) could be in another seat category for one of the other performances (in this example, Bach concerts).
Finally, the operator selects a seat for the last performance taking place in another space.
The operator may override the behaviour above and select the seats separately for each performance by selecting the map by map option as illustrated below:
However, SecuTix doesn't recommend this option since it breaks the fixed seat logic. Indeed, the box office will automatically switch to this logic if no seat is available for all the performances sharing the same physical configuration.
The seat map will select by default:
- The preferred seat of the selected contact(s) if the information is available
- Otherwise, the best seat (i.e. the seat returned by the best seat selection feature)
Preferred seat
After the purchase process, the selected seats are stored as preferred seats. For a given contact, there may be one preferred seat per physical configuration. If a preferred seat already exists for the given contact and physical configuration, it will be overridden by the newly selected seat. Preferred seats may be viewed in the Contact module with the new menu entry Preferred seats. The operator may delete a preferred seat, this action having no impact on the purchased tickets. Preferred seats are only stored during a purchase process. They can't be defined directly from the screen below.
If multiple season tickets are purchased at the same time, the preferred seats will be stored for each cultural contact specified.
Preferred seats will be used during the purchase of another fixed seat season ticket using the same physical configuration(s) and during season ticket renewal.
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In this first version, the preferred seat isn't taken into account when buying single tickets that don't belong to a fixed seat season ticket . This feature will be implemented in a future release. |
Preferred seat information that isn't valid anymore (because of major changes brought to the physical configuration) are simply ignored.
Fixed seat season ticket renewal
Summary
The renewal batch selects the seat according to following decreasing priority:
- Reuse as is the seat used in the origin season ticket if both origin and target season ticket use the same physical configuration. Raise an error if the seat isn't available anymore or has another seat category
- In the new physical configuration, search for a seat with same area, row and seat number as in the origin season ticket
- If it doesn't exist or isn't available, define if a preferred seat has been defined for the new physical configuration
- If no preferred seat has been defined or if it isn't available, use the best seat allocation
Detail
The table below describes the behaviour in detail by listing all possible cases. Here are some explanations on the main columns of the table:
- Found seat in new physical configuration with same area, row, seat number: the batch searches for the seat (defined by its area, row and number) that is he most used in the origin season ticket and looks if this seat exists in the physical configuration of the target season ticket. It considers also the seat category of that seat.
- Identified seat based on preferred seat: for a given physical configuration used in the target season ticket, the batch checks if there exists a preferred seat
- Identified seat based on best seat allocation in same seat category: the batch uses the same seat selection logic as in the sales at box office described above. It uses the seat category of the origin season ticket as defined in the first bullet point above.
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Identified seat based on origin season ticket
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: basic data
The experience voucher is a new product family displayed in the other products section. The current voucher product family as been renamed as financial voucher to avoid any confusion.
Following parameters are specific to the experience voucher:
The section Experience voucher parameters allows you to define an expiry date for the voucher itself. You can define an absolute date or a number of days from the date of purchase. The experience voucher can't be redeemed anymore once the expiry date has been reached.
A redemption period can be defined in the section Redemption parameters. This period may depend on the selected performance date. For example,an experience voucher could be redeemed against a given performance between 30 days (start) and 2 days (end) before the performance takes place. The performance itself doesn't need to be on sale at that date on the concerned sales channel. Of course, in order to redeem the voucher, the expiry date must not have been reached.
The operator must select the open product that will be used automatically by S-360 during the redemption process. The drop-down only displays running products belonging to the same season and having the same VAT code. The open product must not match a gift aid or the cancellation insurance (these are discarded automatically from the drop down list).
Remember to set a VAT code in accordance with your VAT perception policy.
Set-up the experience voucher: list of events and performances linked to the voucher
The screen below allows to list all the events that can be obtained by redeeming the current voucher:
By clicking on the New button, one or more events may be added to the list:
The list may be filtered by name as in the example above. If you perceive VAT at voucher sale time, the product must have the same VAT code as the voucher. If you perceive VAT at voucher redemption time, the product may have any VAT code. The list is filtered accordingly. Note that you may add products belonging to another season.
After having clicked on Add, the event (with all its performances) is added to the list of products that can be acquired with the concerned voucher. If you want to limit the redemption possibility to a subset of performances, you have to double click on the line. The following screen is displayed:
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The list of performances will also be filtered according to the VAT code (if the performance has a VAT code different from the event it belongs to).
Set-up the experience voucher: quota and prices
The experience voucher will be bought for a given seat category and tariff. Seat categories are defined at item level, as illustrated below:
The number of vouchers available for each seat category is defined in the quota screen (similar to other product families)
The prices must be defined for each seat category (matching an item) and tariff:
The price of the experience voucher and of the performance that may be acquired with the voucher don't need to match (see the section about the redemption process for more detail). However, the tariff and seat category have to match.
As for any other product family, the experience voucher must be added to the product profile so that it can be bought on the corresponding sales channel (currently, online sales channels aren't supported).
Set-up of Scheck Abo (bundle of vouchers)
Scheck Abos are defined as standard packages. You can find below an illustration of a package containing two experience vouchers with a redefined price for the first one.
Purchase and gifting process
The purchase process is similar to other product families. The buyer has to select the seat category and tariff since, for pricing reasons, the voucher will only be valid for the selected seat category and tariff.
The buyer (in this example: Daniela Schmidt) can give the voucher to somebody else in two ways:
- At purchase time, define already the cultural contact to which the voucher has to be assigned (in our example: Alexandra Martin)
- Provide the voucher code to the voucher beneficiary
Redemption process
Voucher selection
The beneficiary of a voucher (either because a voucher has been assigned to him/her or because he/she knows the code) can login to his/her user account and select the new menu option Experience vouchers:
The page lists all the vouchers owned by the logged in internet user. When entering a voucher code, the corresponding voucher will be displayed at the top of the list. The page can also display the expired and used vouchers.
Events and performance selection
After having selected one of the vouchers available, the list of available events and performances is displayed:
By default, the performances belonging to events having less than three (redeemable) performances can be selected directly (in the example above: performance Cinderella of 18th of June 2024). If the event contains 3 performances or more, it's displayed in a compact way (in the example above: Swan lake). The internet user may expand the event to see all the available performances by clicking on the arrow:
At any moment, the internet user may dismiss the detailed list of performances by clicking on the up arrow.
The number of performances per event under which events are expanded automatically may be configured. For example, if you want this page to display directly all the performances without the need to expand the events (not recommended because you may end up with a very long list), you would set a very high value. See the Getting started section for more detail.
Finishing the redemption process
Once the internet user has selected a performance and clicked on Redeem, the redemption detail is displayed:
Note that the section title Voucher redemption matches the external name of the open product. It's therefore important to provide it a meaningful name during the set-up.
From this point, the remaining steps of the process are similar to the "purchase" of a free product.
Handling of price differences
The voucher holder will neither be refunded, nor will have to pay in case of a price difference (for the considered seat category and tariff) between the voucher and the performance obtained with the voucher. There is no check neither during the set-up nor during the redemption process.
After redemption, all operations performed on the acquired performance ticket (refund, exchange, upgrade,...) will take only the performance price into account (and not the price of the initial voucher). As a result, you could suffer from a financial loss if you simultaneously:
- Accept the redemption of a voucher with a performance of a higher price
- Accept the refund of the performance
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The batch will proceed in two different steps:
- It will first renew all season tickets that can reuse the same seat (same physical configuration or other configuration containing a seat with the same area, row and seat number).
- In a second step, all renewals requiring a seat change will be performed
The goal is to avoid following scenario:
- A first season ticket uses seat A that has been marked as invalid. The batch allocates seat B
- A second season ticket uses seat B that has been allocated in the mean time for the first season ticket. As a result, seat C is allocated to this season ticket
- A third season ticket uses seat C...
By default, the batch will perform both steps mentioned above. You may change this behavior by adding the custom parameter renewStrategy. This parameter may have 3 values:
- BOTH: performs steps 1 and 2
- NOT_PROCESSED_SSTK: the batch performs only step 1 and stores the season ticket requiring a different seat in a temporary table
- PROCESSED_ERROR_SSTK: the batch performs only step 2 based on the content of this temporary table
However, SecuTix recommends to keep the default behaviour unless you need to handle very specific cases.
This parameter only impacts the renewal of fixed seat season ticket.
Other new parameters
The renewal batch may be run in reservation only mode. More precisely, the Create reservation field proposes following values:
- Always: a reservation is systematically created (no sales order)
- Never: a reservation is never created. In other words, the batch tries systematically to create a sales order and, in case of payment failure or shipment information missing, no order is created at all
- If payment fails: the batch tries to create a sales order and creates a reservation if payment fails or shipment information is missing
Current restrictions
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| title | Current restrictions |
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Getting started
You don't have anything to do to benefit from the fixed seat season ticket. It's directly availablethe experience vouchers. However, you may want to configure the display of the page listing the events/performances.available for a given voucher.
The configuration key config.gravity.RedemptionProducts.groupTriggerQuantity defines the number of performances per event from which the two level display is enabled (expand the event to select a performance). For instance, if config.gravity.RedemptionProducts.groupTriggerQuantity is set to 3, the events having 3 or more performances will be displayed in a compact way.