Use the box office to create in-person bookings and registrations for an event. You can sell reserved seats from a seating chart or select quantities from custom ticket types, then complete the sale with only the details you need.
Book from a seating chart
For an event that uses a seating chart, click a seat or region to select it for the booking. A seat-information pop-up opens. Click Select to confirm the selection. If the item is already selected, the pop-up also shows Release, which removes it from the selection.
The pop-up can show:
- The view from the seat or region, if it is configured in the seating chart
- The sector
- For a seat:
- Row number or name
- Seat number or name
- For a region:
- Region name
- Available seats
- Number of seats to book in that region
Seats and regions
A seat is an individual, reserved place for one attendee. A region has a capacity but does not assign reserved seating. Customers who buy tickets for a region do not have a specific seat within that region.
Apply price-policy discounts
If the event has a price policy that discounts tickets for particular customer groups, such as students or people with disabilities, the seat-information pop-up includes an additional ticket-type dropdown. Select the applicable type:
- Standard
- Kids
- Students
- Retired
- People with disabilities
Customers receiving a status-based discount may need to provide proof at check-in.
Set a Pay What You Want price
For Pay What You Want (PWYW) events, the seat price appears as an input. You can increase the price; the input initially shows that seat's minimum price.
Book custom ticket types
If an event does not use a seating chart and instead has custom price categories, the box office shows a simplified list of all visible ticket types. Select the number of tickets to book for each type.
Where a price policy applies, you may also see a ticket-type dropdown for a person's status, such as Kids or Students, so you can select the relevant discount. For PWYW events, the price is an input that you can increase.
Complete the sale
Your selected seats or ticket types appear in the right panel. Click Sale below the list to open the booking-information pop-up.
The pop-up contains these optional sections:
- Coupon
- Selected seats
- Cash change
- Online payment
- Segment
- Customer
- Tickets — choose a separate ticket for each seat or common tickets
Complete any sections you need, then click Sell. You can also click Sell without completing any of the optional inputs.
A booking-confirmation window opens. The booking is configured and the seats are taken at this point. Depending on the event configuration and order details, the window can offer these next steps:
- Print ticket — print the ticket or tickets on the local printer.
- Print receipt — print the receipt on the attached fiscal device. Availability varies by country.
- Open link — open the booking's action link when the event uses action links instead of tickets.
- Send by email — send the order confirmation, including tickets or an action link, when the order includes a customer email address.
- Send payment link — send a payment link when the order includes a customer email address.
- Copy payment link — copy the payment link to send manually.
After completing any follow-up actions, close the window to create another booking. You can also perform these actions later from the booking details page.
Apply a coupon
Use coupons for custom discounts. A coupon can be configured for the box office channel, the online channel, or both. For a coupon intended only for box-office use, restrict it to the box office channel only. For how discounts can combine, see discount stacking.
To apply a coupon, enter its code and click Apply. To remove it, click Clear.
Review selected seats
The Selected seats section is your cart. It lists the selected seats, their prices, any discounts, and the total amount.
Calculate cash change
Use Cash change to calculate the amount to return to a customer paying in cash. Enter the total amount received and the module shows the change to give back.
If you have a multicurrency account and receive cash in another currency, select the receiving currency from the dropdown. Entase calculates the exact change in the event's currency.
The currencies available in Cash change depend on your account settings. Currency rates are sourced daily from the European Central Bank.
Request online payment
You can create a booking through the box office and request payment online. Turn on Request online payment and, optionally, enter a due date.
After you place the order, the seats are locked and the booking remains Unconfirmed until payment is received.
- Without a due date, the order remains active for payment until it is paid or manually canceled.
- With a due date, the order expires on that date if payment has not been received.
When an order expires, its seats are unlocked.
Add a segment
Attach a segment to analyze sales in more detail later. Open the dropdown and select a segment from the list.
The Segment section appears only when segments have been configured.
Add customer information
Customer information and internal notes are optional. To attach a customer to the current booking:
- Search by the customer's name, email address, or telephone number.
- Select the customer from the results. If there is no matching customer, use the + option followed by your search term to add one.
- Review the detailed form for name, email address, and telephone number. You can complete, delete, or change any field.
- Optionally, add an internal note to the booking.
When you add a customer who does not already exist, Entase analyzes the search term and automatically fills the related field where possible. For example, if you search forJohn Doe, find no result, and add a new customer, Entase recognizes it as a name and fills the first- and last-name fields. You can then add an email address and telephone number. The same applies when you search using an email address or telephone number.
You can add complete, partial, or no customer details. Box-office sales can create anonymous bookings and tickets, whereas online checkout requires all basic customer details.
Why add customer details?
Adding customer information—at least an email address when possible—helps you use Entase's automatic features and resolve ticket, payment, and refund issues.
Better support
- Identify people with missing tickets by their details at the check-in gate.
- Find orders that need a refund or further processing more easily.
- Give AI agents better visibility, so attendees can receive appropriate AI support even when they booked in person.
Better communication - Notifications and mass messages are sent only to bookings with valid email addresses.
- Some system features use email or SMS as part of the verification process.
Box offices can be busy, and many customers return. After you have added a customer's details once, you can find and select them more quickly on future bookings. Telephone-number lookup can be the fastest option for cashiers.
Separate tickets vs common tickets
With separate tickets, every seat in the selection is issued on its own individual ticket. With common tickets, seats are grouped: for seating-chart events, up to 10 reserved seats are included on one ticket and grouped by row and sector. For custom ticket-type events, seats are grouped by ticket type with no upper limit.
Separate tickets are the default for in-person box-office sales. Online checkout always issues common tickets, and does not offer a choice.
Advantages of common tickets
For larger groups, common tickets enable significantly faster check-in at the gate. The usher scans one ticket instead of many, saving several seconds per booking. Since the average booking contains around two tickets, common tickets can at least halve check-in time.
Common tickets are often assumed to require the whole group to enter together. With Entase, each member of the group can enter individually, so common tickets provide the speed advantage without inconvenience to attendees.
Seating chart shortcuts
Use these shortcuts on a PC or laptop to select seats faster.
Zoom in and out
Use the mouse wheel or the chart's zoom-in and zoom-out buttons to adjust the view while selecting seats.
Move around the chart
When zoomed in, hold the left mouse button and drag to move around the chart.
Skip the seat-information pop-up
Right-click a seat to add a Standard ticket directly to your selection.
Select multiple seats
Hold the right mouse button and drag to create a selection rectangle. All available seats within the rectangle are selected.
Multi-select works only when the seating chart is at 100% zoom.
Clear the selection
To empty the selected-seats cart, click Clear in the right panel below the seats list.