TABLE OF CONTENTS


Announcements & Reminders

  • Effective 06/15/2022, all versions of ACME Sales and ACME AC prior to 11.15.1 will no longer be supported. Do you still have a few inactive devices that are running an unsupported version? Click here for a refresher on how to update your ACME applications.
  • Have questions about ACME versions or current system status? Take a look at the Current System Versions and Status page, plus you can now subscribe to get ACME status updates on our Status Page.
  • Receipt printers are hard to find lately! ACME's point of sale application now supports the Epson TM-T88VII model, in addition to the TM-T88VI and TM-T88V. Regardless of which one you choose, just be sure to order the ethernet, Bluetooth or WiFi connectivity option. Serial and USB are not supported.
  • Sand10 and Sand 15 got new data as scheduled on March 8th. The next data refresh for Sand10 is scheduled for May 3rd, 2022, and the next data refresh for Sand15 is scheduled for June 28th, 2022.
  • Welcome new ACME customers! It's been a busy 2022 so far, and we're excited to have some new customers who recently launched (or will soon be launching) with ACME! 
    • The Children's Museum of the Upstate (Greenville, SC)
    • Wisconsin Historical Society (Madison, WI)
    • Grace Cathedral (San Francisco, CA)
    • Chinese Historical Society of America Museum (San Francisco, CA)
    • Magazzino Italian Art (Cold Spring, NY)
    • Yerkes Observatory (Williams Bay, WI)
    • Santa Barbara Botanic Garden (Santa Barbara, CA)

ACME Product Release Information

11.19 Release - Coming soon on 4/26/2022!

This release will support a new credit card reader for WorldPay processing to replace the Ingenico iPP350. Contact us if you are interested in purchasing the Lane/3000.


11.18 Release - 3/22/2022

As a continuation of the SendGrid integration in the 11.17 release, we published new documentation for various email templates. For anyone looking to customize with small changes to the existing layouts, you now have a starting point. Check out our SendGrid Integration Setup Guide for more details!


11.17 Release - 2/22/2022

Highlights 

  • SendGrid Integration

    Replace the standard ACME emails with your own version! Connect your SendGrid account with ACME, build your own dynamic template and ACME can send your version of the order confirmation, order refund, order rebook, digital membership card, event reschedule and event cancelation emails. You can choose to customize just a single email type, or make custom versions for each!

  • Membership Coupons in Backoffice
    You can now apply that coupon code to a new membership sale made in ACME Backoffice! This was a follow up from our 11.16 release which included the ability to sell a new membership in Backoffice.

Other recent releases 

11.16.Release - 1/25/2022

11.15 Release - 11/3/2021 


Tips & Tricks

Sit, stay, and learn some "tricks" from the ACME pets!

Hiring new visitor services staff? 

With steady increases in visitation, you probably have some new employees who need to get up to speed on ACME point of sale. Here are some resources to prepare for success:

  1. Create new users. Your front of house staff can be setup as username-only if their use of ACME will be limited to POS sales. This is optimal for temporary staff as well.
  2. Selling Tickets in ACME Sales (including video!) this includes how to build an order, checkout and complete a sale in the ACME Sales application on your iPad.
  3. Member Transactions. Many (if not most!) of your repeat visitors are your members. A member verified transaction will handle automatic discounts, ticket limits and track member engagement,
  4. Selling Memberships in ACME SalesYour spring acquisitions are in full swing - make sure everyone knows how to convert a ticket to membership before the guest goes home!
  5. Order Management is where you handle will-call check-ins, edits to an order, re-printing receipts and tickets, and refunds.

Feel free to post any open positions on our Forum


Online Membership Verification 

A member is prompted to verify their membership online to obtain discounted tickets, access to members-only events, and the option to renew, rejoin or upgrade their membership. There are a few ways to do this:

  1. Membership ID + Last Name. This is the recommended option as it requires two pieces of information to verify and reduces risk if a member mistypes their ID. If your Membership IDs are short and sequential, you should add Last Name to the verification. In Settings, Administration, set the "Require last name for login" to YesRecommended setting
  2. Membership ID. The member enters their membership ID, which is printed on their physical card, displayed on a digital card or in an email confirmation received upon purchase. This option is ok if your membership IDs are long and complex.
  3. Email only.If you always want the member to enter their email address to receive an email to click through to verify, then you can select this option. Note: this does require the member to check their email before proceeding. If the email address entered matches the email for the Primary Cardholder in ACME, then a email is sent to the member allowing them to click through to access the eCommerce site as a verified member. 
    • This setting is controlled by the Theme Text Variable: "membership-verification-email-only": "true",

Customer information collection at POS


Whether you’re compiling geographic visitation information or ensuring a first-time guest receives their email confirmation, customer contact data is a valuable tool for organizations. In ACME Sales, if a user is already transacting as a member (or a known customer), these fields will be auto-populated, but our customer contact feature also makes it easy to collect customer information from walk-up non-member guests. 


Users can tap on the “person and pencil” icon on the Checkout screen to open this modal and populate an order with guest information. If the information entered matches an existing ACME customer, ACME will use the same customer record on this new order. Training staff to regularly utilize this POS feature will result in better data, and an improved guest experience.



More information about Adding a Customer Contact to an Order (POS) can be found in our guide. ACME allows you to control whether or not this data can be collected for $0 transactions. Depending on your needs, you can automatically skip this screen or automatically pause on this screen based on your configuration in Settings>Administration>POS and in the settings menu for the particular POS Configuration as set in Backoffice.


Preparing for Summer Programs

Many venues are bringing back in person programming like camps or classes for the first time in a while. If you are running upcoming programs that use an existing ACME form to collect additional participant data, or setting up a new form, check your form configuration to ensure it's set up to collect the needed data.

  • Review and modify any questions that need to be updated.
  • Make sure that your key questions have Custom Fields associated so that you can report on all the responses instead of viewing each one individually.
  • For any questions marked required, ensure that no placeholder text is configured on the form to ensure that guests must enter their own response.


To make reporting on the responses easier, especially when tickets have been rebooked to other dates or times, we have developed a process to make this less manual. Reporting on Forms for Rebooked Tickets outlines the two reports that will allow you to retrieve the form responses for the current list of attendees, regardless of any changes to their reservation that may have occurred.


Feature Spotlight: Membership Card Scanning at Access Control

What is this feature?

If you do not require members to have a ticket for their visit and you allow them to present their membership card to gain entry, you can leverage ACME's Membership Card Scanning feature using ACME Access Control to expedite the member arrival experience.


When should it be used?

The purpose of member card scanning is to expedite member entry to your venue. Consider this solution if: 

  1. You do not have strict capacity limitations to manage.
  2. There are no upsell or transaction processing needs for the member.
  3. Members can visit anytime with their card, without a reservation. 
  4. You have a members-only event and do not require members to RSVP.


How to implement

Prerequisites

  1. The barcode on the membership card is scannable.
  2. The translation of the barcode matches the barcode value on the cardholder record.
  3. You must have the ACME Access Control application installed on an Apple iPod Touch or iPhone device.
  4. Reliable WiFi connectivity at the scanning location.

Detailed Membership Scanning

 

When this setting in Settings, Administration > Access Control tab is set to Yes, you will be prompted with the option to indicate the quantity of visitors entering with the scanned membership. Toggle this to No if you don't need to track this level of detail and just want to admit the cardholder into your venue.


Once you have everything in place, all you need to do is login to the ACME Access Control app, and scan the membership card that is presented - either from the main screen or for a specific event. Report on these scans in a Ticket Analytics report (see this article for more info).


Partner Spotlight: Red Level Group

Leveraging the capabilities of ACME's API is exciting but can also be overwhelming. Some organizations have in-house staff to explore custom-developed applications, automations, and integrations. But without these resources, what are some other options? As the ACME API developer community is growing, so are the solutions! Detroit-based Red Level has been working with several ACME customers to develop API-based solutions to meet complex and specific business needs, such as:


  • Customizations to the online checkout experience - e.g. custom styling of the event calendar, custom filtering of events
  • Seamless integration with WordPress CMS
  • Customizations to the online checkout experience
  • Order lookup and bulk refund
  • Invite only events online
  • Zip code verification during purchase
  • Leverage the power of Microsoft 365 solutions (Outlook, Power Platform, SharePoint, etc.)

Interested in learning more? Contact Red Level experts today! https://redlevelgroup.com/acmeticketing/


New and Updated Knowledge Articles

We are continuously updating and adding new articles to our Knowledge-base in the ACME Support Portal. Below are some recently added or updated articles:


Past Community Newsletter Issues

ACME Community Newsletter | Fall 2021 | Issue 5

ACME Community Newsletter | Summer 2021 | Issue 4

ACME Community Newsletter | Spring 2021 | Issue 3

ACME Community Newsletter | Winter 2021 | Issue 2

ACME Community Newsletter | Fall 2020 | Issue 1


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