Event tickets are the key to event registrations. Without tickets, an event is simply a date & time on the calendar. For registration to take place, at least one ticket must be created, even if it's only to collect RSVPs.
Sections in this article:
Set Ticket Availability (When is this ticket available, and how many?)
Set Ticket Visibility (Who can see that this ticket exists?)
Ability to Purchase/Attend (Who can purchase and be registered for this ticket?)
Registration Fields (What information do you want to collect for each attendee?)
Create A New Ticket
Tickets are created directly on an event. To create a ticket, navigate to the event and do one of the following:
Click on the New button in the upper right & select Ticket
Navigate to the Tickets tab and press the "+" button
Creating Tickets in Novi (Video)
Here's a quick guide to adding new tickets in Novi! For written steps and additional details, continue reading below.
Ticket Details
General
Name: Name the ticket in a way that makes sense for your members as well as your staff since it will display on your website as well as in the admin.
Seats per Ticket: In most circumstances, this should be set to "1." When selling multi-seat tickets (like a golf tournament foursomes or a table of 8), then make sure to set this for the number of people who will be covered by this single ticket purchase.
Details: Ticket Details are displayed on the event registration page, and are a great way to describe who the ticket is for and/or what the attendee will receive if they purchase this ticket.
When writing Ticket Details, you can utilize basic HTML formatting options, including bold or italicized text, line breaks, and links. However, please note that the Ticket Details must be less than 500 characters including HTML formatting tags.
Important Note:
If your event features only one ticket type, attendees who click to register will see that their ticket has been automatically selected. The default is a quantity of one, but the purchaser can edit the quantity if desired. For logged-in members, their Attendee Info will pre-populate based on their member record.
Continuing Education Information
If you offer credits for a particular ticket, you'll need to have Continuing Education toggled ON. After doing so, you'll see the option to add the following information:
Credit Notes: Add a description of what credits will be earned (and under what conditions) if someone attends with this ticket.
Credit Amount & Credit Type: This is the place to note what credit type and how many credits a person will receive if he or she attends with this ticket.
Instructor(s): This field is optional. If a particular Instructor will be leading the event or session, you can identify them here.
Note: If a member has earned credits but the event is not set up in Novi, you can manually add credits to his or her record.
Ticket Pricing
There are various different pricing options for event tickets.
Paid
Most tickets will be set to Paid. This will require that a set Price is entered.
Disable Invoicing: This will disable a member's ability to request an invoice for this ticket type, so a credit card must be used for payment. To give your team flexibility, staff will still have the option to issue an invoice through the admin.
Taxable: Checking the Taxable box will ensure that your tax rate is added to transactions.
Free
Free tickets are just that. If you're just looking for people to RSVP, then set your tickets to free. Combined with some of the visibility settings described below, they can also be put to use for staff or speaker tickets.
*Note: If a ticket is free and open to all (members and guests), be sure to set the Attendee field as required so the registration can't be submitted with no information. Purchaser information will only be available on guest tickets if money is owed/paid, so the Attendee field is how you'll collect their contact information if they're not logged in.
Donation
Members can name their price when a Ticket is set to Donation pricing.
Suggested Donation: Admins can suggest a price point to give members a sense of what they might want to pay for a ticket, but this only serves as a starting point. During the registration process, members determine what price they will pay.
Disable Invoicing: This will disable a member's ability to request an invoice for this ticket type, so a credit card must be used for payment. To give your team flexibility, staff will still have the option to issue an invoice through the admin.
Tiered Pricing
When tiered pricing is toggled on, the admin can set a ticket's price based on the number of tickets being purchased in a single registration.
Set Min Qty and Max Qty to determine the range. Leave Max Qty empty if you want a range to count up to infinity.
Set a Price Per Ticket for each range
Make sure to press "+ Add" to save your work
AE Tip™: Tiered pricing is an excellent option when you want to offer quantity discounts for event registrations like: "Buy 6 or more to receive a discount."
More About Tiered Pricing
If a person selects a number of tickets and the value does not fall into a defined range, then the Price set in the Ticket Pricing section above will be used as a default value.
Pricing tiers are based on the number of tickets purchased in a single registration. Two registrations are not automatically combined. If your association would like to make the business decision to adjust a member's pricing based on two separate registrations, that price adjustment can be done in QuickBooks after the registrations are completed.
Tiers do not affect the number of tickets that a user can purchase. They simply set the price that will be charged for the particular quantity that the user is buying.
Availability
For larger or more nuanced events, the "Availability" features baked into tickets can help to eliminate manual work. The goal is to set up your tickets once and let the technology run the event.
Limited Quantity
Is there a limited quantity of this particular ticket type available? This setting shouldn't be confused with the event capacity listed on the event's settings tab.
Tickets Available: Set the number of tickets available for this ticket type.
If you are adding availability after registrations have been processed, Novi will show you how many tickets have already been sold.
Set Date & Time
When Set Date & Time is enabled, admins have the ability to limit the registration window for a particular ticket. If the intention is to establish rules for all ticket types, then we suggest that you use the event settings.
Registration Starts: This sets the start date for the ticket. Members will not be able to register for that ticket type before the date set. If the intention is to make the ticket available immediately, then this field should be left blank.
Registration Ends: Adding a date and time to this field will create a cut-off date and time for registrations. This is most often used for situations like "early bird" pricing. There is no need to add a Registration Ends date and time if the intention is to close registration when the event itself is complete.
Visible only within registration window: Enabling this will hide this particular ticket type from members (but not from association staff within the admin) outside of the registration dates.
Requires Purchase of Another Ticket Type
We also allow conditional event tickets. This is great for setting up scenarios for both large and small events. For example, for a conference, perhaps attendees need to register for the full conference ticket before they can register for a separate ticket for a session or mixer.
To set this up, navigate to your dependent event ticket(s) and specify which ticket(s) must be selected before that ticket can be purchased. Note that adding more than one means that the attendee can select ANY one of those tickets to unlock the dependent ticket, they don't need to select ALL.
On the frontend, Attendees will simply need to select the appropriate ticket(s) to unlock the dependent ticket(s). If they attempt to select a dependent ticket without first selecting the main ticket, they will see the lock icon with the following message:
Otherwise, once they select the appropriate main ticket, the lock will turn into the quantity selection box.
Important Notes:
Admins can override this dependency when registering people on the backend.
The selection of the main ticket is only recognized during initial registration. The attendee can't buy the first ticket, then come back later and purchase the dependent ticket. They would need to contact you to update their registration.
You can set up a hierarchy of tickets: i.e. You must select Ticket A before you can select Ticket B, but you must select Ticket B before you can select Ticket C.
Currently, there is no quantity-match limit. Selecting 1 of the main ticket does not restrict them to only select 1 of the dependent ticket.
Other ticket restrictions still apply. Dependent tickets can still be locked down to members, certain groups, have capacity limits, etc. The message shown to the attendee if any of the criteria are not met will update accordingly.
Visibility
Customize a particular event ticket's visibility on your website. The ability to purchase the ticket is handled separately and described in a section below.
Open: Anyone with an internet browser can see the event ticket
Logged-In Members: Only logged-in Members are able to see the ticket.
Specific Group: Admins can limit the visibility of tickets to a specific group or groups. The group must have already been created in order to be added. Members must be logged in since Novi has no way of knowing that an anonymous website visitor is actually a member who is a part of the specified group.
Member Type: Admins can limit the visibility of tickets to a specific member type or member types. The member type must have already been created in order to be added. Members must be logged in since Novi has no way of knowing that an anonymous website visitor is actually a member who is a part of the specified member type. This is limited to current/grace/inheriting members within the member type, not expired members or prospects.
Admin Only: This setting removes a ticket from an association's website entirely, making it only available for registration by association admins.
AE Tip™: Many associations use the "Admin Only" visibility to hide staff or speaker tickets. These are registrations that need to be accounted for but shouldn't be visible on the website.
Ability to Purchase/Attend
The ability to purchase an event ticket can be locked down to any one of these groups.
If the intention is to only allow admins to purchase a ticket, simply set the visibility (see above) to Admin Only.
Open: Anyone can purchase the event ticket.
Logged-In Members: Only logged-in Members are able to purchase the ticket.
Specific Group: Admins can limit the ability to purchase tickets to a specific group or groups. The group must have already been created in order to be added. Members must be logged in since Novi has no way of knowing that an anonymous website visitor is a part of the specified group.
Member Type: Admins can limit the ability to purchase tickets to a specific member type or multiple member types. The member type must have already been created in order to be added. Members must be logged in since Novi has no way of knowing that an anonymous website visitor is a part of the specified type. This is limited to current members within the member type, not expired members or prospects.
A ticket can be further locked down with limitations on the ability to attend. When you select to restrict the purchasability, a second Restriction Level becomes available:
Restrict Purchaser Only: The ability to purchase the ticket is locked to specific users as selected above, but they will still be able to add any attendee as the name on the registration ticket.
Restrict Attendee Only: Any logged-in individual may choose attendees only from the drop-down list of colleagues who meet the restriction qualifications.
Restrict Purchaser and Attendee: Not only is the ability to purchase restricted, but only those who are also a member of the specified group can be added as an attendee on the registration ticket.
When the ability to attend is restricted, ineligible attendees will be indicated as Not Eligible and names cannot be manually added. If the missing attendee name is just a case of needing to update the company staff listing, a member with management access will see a link to add staff as needed:
Those who are completing a registration and do not have management access will be prompted to reach out regarding attendees:
AE Tip™: The limitations on the ability to purchase or attend as discussed above apply only to the website. Association admins are able to manually register any member record for any ticket, so it's important that your team members understand your association's business practices. Note: Novi Guest cannot be used for restricted tickets as they wouldn't be included in an eligible group.
Confirmation Email Information
When members are registered for an event, a standard event confirmation will be emailed to them.
If a specific ticket should have a custom message, that message can be entered here. If multiple tickets have the same message, the confirmation email will only display the message once.
The Confirmation Email Information area includes the ability to stylize text with headers, buttons, images, and videos. We also allow admins to create links that will take the user to a page on the association's website or to some external destination.
Accounting
When a member is registered for an event, Novi uses the event ticket(s) to create the accounting transaction. Each ticket type purchased will have its own line item on the invoice or sales receipt.
Item
If an event is Inactive and its tickets have not yet been assigned prices, admins are not required to link the tickets to QuickBooks Items.
However, once an event is Active, each ticket must map to a single QuickBooks Item. The item should have already been created in QuickBooks Online (in the Products and Services list) and synced to Novi.
Class
Each event ticket can be linked to a QuickBooks Class. This could be a requirement based on your Association Settings. Learn more about using Classes in QuickBooks & Novi AMS.
Registration Fields
The registration form that a user sees (i.e. the "Attendee Form") can be customized based on the ticket type(s) chosen. In order to collect attendee information, it's important to drag & drop the custom fields you want to collect to create the registration form.
Attendee Form (right column)
The built-in Attendee fields (Name, Phone, Email, and Company) will be automatically set as Required.
Please note the following when deciding if the Name field should be required or not:
If required - Does not allow TBD
If not required - Allows TBD
When "TBD" is allowed for the Attendee Name field, the following will apply:
A checkbox for "I'm not sure who is coming yet" will show up as an option on the frontend and backend.
If none of the attendee fields are filled out, the system will automatically treat it as a "TBD" attendee (even if the checkbox is not checked).
If at least one of the fields is filled out (i.e. Email), but the checkbox is not checked, then the system will leave the name blank (instead of TBD).
Any attendee records with this box checked will show in the Attendee list, checkout page, and confirmation emails with "TBD" as their first name (and their last name will be blank).
When selected, all other fields on that attendee record will be disabled, and any required fields can be bypassed.
If a multi-seat ticket is purchased with unfilled seats, they will be treated as "TBD" attendees.
Each "TBD" attendee record will be counted as a unique attendee.
Available Fields (left column)
Note that some of the custom field options in the "Available Fields" list show a handshake icon, while others show a calendar icon to the left of their name. These icons are based on the visibility settings of the fields.
The handshake icon symbolizes a custom field that is shown on both the member record and event registration. If a purchaser selects someone's existing record during event registration, the values in these fields from their member record will populate into their event registration. The values are editable for the event registration, but they do not update the member record. Changes to the member record field need to be made directly in the member profile.
The calendar icon symbolizes events-only fields. These custom fields are set to show only on event registration forms and do not appear on member records, so this information would not populate from anywhere during event registration.
Custom Field Missing From the List?
If you don't see a custom field in the available list, double-check that the custom field is set to show for Events.
AE Tip™: When you're setting up custom fields for event registration, consider checking the box for Attendee List as well. This will show the field on an event's attendee list view.
