In the event that your venue unexpectedly needs to close and you either need to cancel individual events or close on larger scale, you have a few options for handling this in ACME.
Step 1 - Stopping Online Sales
Remove links from your main website to the ACME hosted eCommerce page if you need to stop online sales. This will make it much harder for guests to get to the eCommerce page.
If you want, you can redirect these links to an ACME Donation landing page for eCommerce to drive donation activity during the closure.
In the event of an extended closure, modify the schedule(s) on affected templates to reflect the closure, using either option below.
In the event that you need to stop offering future event instances, update the end date on any active schedules to end tomorrow (ie if you are making this change on Monday the 1st, set the schedule(s) end date to Tuesday the 2nd), save and publish. This will remove any future (starting on the 3rd) event instances that did not have tickets booked, and suspend any events that did have tickets booked, including removing them from Web sales. If you have any schedules that start on future dates, edit the schedule and delete it, which will do the same as above. Keep in mind you may need to do some event instance clean up on the events list for tomorrow, as outlined below.
In the event you only need to stop Web sales but want to maintain the event instances and capacity on other channels, update the sales channels on any active schedules to turn Web off, save, and publish. This will prevent future sales on the eCommerce page for those events.
In the event of a small scale closure, like for a weather or other temporary event, go straight to step 2 below.
Step 2 - Cancel Events
After you have turned off Web sales you do not need to immediately cancel events, and you can wait until you are ready to do so. You may need to put together copy informing guests of the cancellation, determine what the next steps are or if and how guests should contact you, and coordinate with other staff and departments internally.
Follow the procedure for Canceling an Event in ACME Back Office for upcoming events that people have already purchased tickets to. This will cancel the event, prevent others from purchasing additional tickets (if you have not yet stopped online sales), as well as give you the option to email and notify people who had already purchased tickets to that event. Orders will not be automatically refunded, allowing you to rebook or refund as needed, on a case by case basis.
Once an event has been cancelled, it will no longer appear on the Events List under Active events. Use the status field on the top left of the Events List to switch the view to show Canceled events.
Step 3 - Rebook or Refund Orders as needed
Depending on your policies and the choices you give to your guests, you can convert their tickets to a donation, issue a refund for the tickets, or leave the orders alone. This does not necessarily need to happen immediately after cancelling an event, as you may need to wait for guests to notify you of a choice if they are given options, or need to coordinate the process with other staff and departments internally
Rebooking Orders to Convert Tickets to Donations
You may want to create a new event template to rebook orders into to handle cases where you are keeping the original ticket payment and "converting" it to a donation, in lieu of a rebook or a refund. By creating a separate "Donation" event template with a general admission schedule/single time slot, you can:
- configure an email confirmation that thanks guests for a making a donation and offing continued support despite the closure/cancellation
- configure the price list on the event to either be a new master price list that represents all your event ticket types and prices, or match the price list of the single event being cancelled, to make rebooking easier.
- set the tickets on the event to not print, which will exclude them from the email to avoid confusion, OR create a custom ticket layout that focuses on donation, with things like your Tax ID and donation specific language
- set the GL Code on the Donation event template so that ticket revenue is re-allocated to the fund of your choosing when the ticket is rebooked/converted
- set the Web and POS sales channels off, to control access to the "event" while facilitating Back Office rebooks
Once the event is created, you can then rebook tickets from cancelled events into that event as needed, where refunds are not offered or requested.
Refunding Orders
If you are offering refunds, you can Cancel or Refund an Order in Back Office for the eligible orders.
If you are on the Express platform to process payments, you may encounter an "Invalid Account" error when attempting a refund. This occurs when attempting to refund an order placed more than 45 days ago. If this occurs, please contact ACME as outlined here for assistance. Please batch refund requests and submit them in groups wherever possible, for the most efficient processing.
In general, if you are using EMV credit card readers, you are on Express; if you are using MagTek credit card readers, you are on Vantiv Litle. To confirm this, someone with Admin permissions can check in Back Office by going to Settings>Administration>Payment. If the processor is set to Express, you are using the Express platform.
Leave Orders As-is
In some cases, it may be easiest to leave orders with tickets to a cancelled event as-is. If the tickets were free, then there is no need to cancel the order to trigger a refund, as no payment was taken. There is also the case where the ticket were free, but the guest also purchased a membership or made a donation in the same order, in which case you would definitely want to leave those orders as-is, to retain the other payments made. You can also choose to leave paid tickets in this state, in the event that you are offering guests the opportunity to re-book to a different date, either now or in the future.
If they choose to re-book, or if they ask for a refund at a later time, then you will need to complete one of the above processes.