Online ticketing and box office that stay in one report

The fastest way to lose money at a live event is to sell online in one system and sell at the door in another. You oversell the last twenty general-admission tickets. You cannot tell the treasurer why cash and cards do not match the scanner counts. You argue with a parent who bought online while a volunteer sold their seat in cash. Online ticketing and box office have to share one inventory, one payment story, and one settlement.

This is not a luxury feature for arenas. A school musical with 240 seats and a will-call line needs it. A rec tournament with a Saturday gate needs it. A theatre that sells 70% online and 30% walk-up needs it. If your “box office” is a Square standalone app plus a printed list, you do not have a box office—you have two businesses that happen to share a building.

One remaining-capacity number

When someone buys two adult tickets on their phone at 5:40 p.m., the door tablet must show two fewer seats at 5:41. When the door sells a student ticket at 6:10, the public page must stop offering that seat. That is the entire product requirement. Everything else—receipts, QR codes, staff PINs—exists to keep that number honest. Tixoola’s box office is built to sell the same ticket types you published online.

Staff should log in with a PIN so you know who voided an order. They should take card present payments with a reader (Stripe Terminal or the processor you already use) and still offer a texted or printed ticket. Cash can be a ticket type or a tender if your policy allows it; record it in the same order stream. Do not keep a side notebook.

Will-call and walk-up are different jobs

Will-call is “I already paid online, I need you to find me.” Walk-up is “I did not buy yet.” Mixing those lines is how you get a forty-minute door. Put will-call on phones with name search. Put walk-up on a tablet with the remaining ticket types. Both should scan into the same check-in list. Read QR code ticket scanning for the entry side.

Transfers belong in the order, not in a Facebook comment. If a buyer cannot attend, they transfer to a friend; the QR changes; the old code dies. That protects you from screenshot forwarding. It also keeps capacity correct when someone “gives their tickets away” and then shows up anyway.

The Monday report

After the show you should see online vs door, card vs cash, comps, refunds, and scanned vs unsold. If those numbers come from three exports, the stack failed. Settlement should be boring enough to paste into a board packet. That is the same standard we use for school events and festivals.

• Shared inventory between the public page and the door tablet.
• Staff PINs and card-present readers for walk-up sales.
• Name lookup for will-call; QR scan for everyone else.
• Transfers that invalidate the previous ticket.
• One settlement that includes door and online.

Hardware that does not become a project

A door tablet can be an iPad you already own. A card reader should be the one your processor already supports. Phones for scanning can be personal devices with a staff login. You do not need a rack of company hardware for a 300-seat play. You do need a charged battery, a short staff PIN, and a written rule: walk-up sales happen in box office, not in a personal Venmo. The payments page covers processors; the rest is discipline.

Print a backup. Not a second inventory—a one-page list of remaining ticket types and prices so a new volunteer can sell if the tablet dies. Then fix the tablet. Paper that becomes a second source of truth is how you oversell. Paper that is a script is fine. That distinction is the difference between a calm door and a Monday apology email.

If you run multiple nights of the same show, reuse the event or clone the setup. Capacity and ticket types stay familiar. Online buyers from Tuesday should not be able to eat Wednesday’s seats unless you designed it that way. Festival and multi-day hosts should read the festivals playbook; schools can stay on a single-night event until they outgrow it.

If you are still choosing a platform, use the software checklist. For fees without a monthly seat, see pricing and the fee comparison.

A last test before you commit: run a 30-person dress rehearsal with mixed tenders. Sell ten tickets online, five at the simulated door, issue two comps, refund one, transfer one. Then ask for the settlement. If those six facts are not on one page, you will rebuild them by hand after opening night. Box office is not a gadget. It is the proof that online ticketing is real.

Venues that already have a physical window can still use the same tablet in the booth. The buyer experience should match: same ticket types, same QR, same refund policy. Staff should not learn a “window mode” that writes to a different database. If your current booth software cannot share inventory with the website, you are running two companies. Tixoola is one site for both.

Put the door and the website on the same inventory. Create your Tixoola site or review current pricing.