Selling Tickets - Using Codes, Using Variants

[sniffadmin]

Hi all,

I'm new to e-junkie. So far I'm not having trouble getting stuff to work, though after experimenting with two possible ways to set up my products, I am confused about how to do what I need to do, and a bit skeptical that e-junkie can actually do what I need (though I'm hopeful it can).



I am selling movie tickets. For any given event, there are 3 ticket types, (adult/senior/child), 3 event dates, and 3 show times. I can only sell 3,000 tickets per show time/date - but it can be any mixture of types.



When I set this up using variants, there is no (apparent) way to issue stored codes - the codes are how we are tracking inventory, and asking people to bring them to the event as proof of purchase;



When I set this up using individual products, well, I would have to create 27 different products for just one event! (I think) Even then, there is no way to track the combined inventory so we don't oversell total seating capacity. And the codes are delivered to the purchaser in separate email messages per age, which is not great.



Is there any way to have the Variants option issue stored codes?



thanks,

Joe

[E-junkie_Chef]

You can use "variations" (instead of variants). Are the ticket prices for Adult/Senior/Child different?

[sniffadmin]

Yes, the ticket prices are different. I tried out the 'variations' feature also, but it also didn't seem to allow me to assign stored codes- perhaps because I had to use both it and 'variants' in order to assign different prices?

[E-junkie_Guru]

That is correct; "Send stored codes" will not work together with Variants.

[E-junkie_Chef]

sniffadminYes, the ticket prices are different. I tried out the 'variations' feature also, but it also didn't seem to allow me to assign stored codes- perhaps because I had to use both it and 'variants' in order to assign different prices?

Here's my dilemma, you have diff. prices for the 3 age groups, but they get the code from the same common pool of codes?

[sniffadmin]

Well, consider that the theater only holds, say, 600 people. We don't care what mixture of tickets we sell to fill those seats, but we only want to sell 600 total, and when people show up at the box office with codes ('tickets'), we'd like to be able to recognize that kids are holding 'child ticket codes', and adults, 'adult ticket codes', for example.



So I guess they don't all get their codes from the same pool, but the 'event inventory' applies to any mixture of codes, per event.

[E-junkie_Chef]

sniffadminSo I guess they don't all get their codes from the same pool, but the 'event inventory' applies to any mixture of codes, per event.

So basically, 600 child codes and 600 adult codes must be available in the system for sale but as soon as 600 of those 1200 codes are sold, product must be considered sold out.



The best way to do this will require some coding on your end. You can setup 3 products in E-junkie (adult/senior/child) with their set of codes. Then, you can setup similar "variations" for each of them for show date and time.



For each sale, we can notify a script on your website which can keep a track of "total" sales for each show date and show time. As soon as the script sees the total hit the threshold for a particular date/time, you can remove that date and time value from the respective variation dropdowns of all the buttons.

[sniffadmin]

Sounds promising. I'm willing to give it a try. Is the notification mechanism documented somewhere, or is this a customization? Please point me to the information and I'll try to get it to work. Thanks!

[E-junkie_Guru]

You'd use our Integration feature to notify your end about orders coming in after their payment is completed; this feature is documented here:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/help.integration.htm