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Best Practices: Timed Entry: https://help.pm.leapevent.tech/a/1745660
Some organizations, especially museums, need to create ticketing to allow patrons to enter at different time frames. This timed entry allows organizations to let patrons purchase tickets for a specific time period, and then grants entrance based on the period they purchased tickets to.
There are a few different ways to set this up in PatronManager, and in this article, we've got some recommendations and considerations for how to build timed entry events.
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Building Timed Entry Events
When building an event for timed entry, you have different options for how you'd like to divide out your time slots among Ticketable Events and Event Instances. There are pros and cons to the different options, which we'll cover below.
Creating One Event Instance per Day
With this option, you'll create one Ticketable Event for the entire month, and then one General Admission Event Instance per day.
Then, within each Event Instance, you'll have different Ticket Allocations for the different time slots for entry, which will contain your Price Levels for purchase.
Cleaner PTS Calendar View
If you use the Calendar View on your PTS, creating one Event Instance per day gives you the cleanest PTS calendar.
Easy Pinning in PMBO
In PatronManager Box Office, this setup will allow you to pin today's Event Instance for easy sales.
Simple to Clone for the Future
While this setup takes some time the first time, afterwards it's simple to clone the Ticketable Event for the month, and even clone all of the days' Event Instances with it.
Scanning Tickets won't Enforce the Timing
If you scan tickets with this setup, setting up one Event Instance for the entire day won't flag tickets for the wrong time as invalid.
For example, if someone with a ticket for the 12:00-2:00 PM time slot comes in at 3:00 PM, scanning their ticket won't bring up a message letting you know that it's technically invalid.
Instance Date will need to be End of Day
To continue to allow patrons on the PTS to purchase tickets for a day throughout the day with this setup, the Instance Date and Time on the Event Instance will need to be at the very end of the day, rather than at the beginning.
This also shows up on the Calendar View of the PTS.
Creating One Event Instance per Time Slot
With this option, you'll create one Ticketable Event for the day, and then one General Admission Event Instance per time slot for the day.
Then, within each Event Instance, you'll have only one Ticket Allocation with your Price Levels.
Scanning Tickets Enforces Timing
If you scan tickets with this setup, because each time slot is its own Event Instance with its own Instance Date and Time, tickets outside of the current time slot will be flagged as invalid.
This means that if someone with a ticket for the 12:00-2:00 PM time slot comes in at 3:00 PM, scanning their ticket will let you know that their ticket isn't for the current time.
Easy Pinning in PMBO
In PatronManager Box Office, this setup will allow you to pin the Event Instances for today for easy sales.
Messy PTS Calendar View
If you use the Calendar View on your PTS, creating one Event Instance per time slot means that you'll have several Event Instances each day, which can look messy.
More Cloning for the Future
While this setup takes a little less time the first time, afterwards you'll need to clone the Ticketable Event for the day, along with each time slot's Event Instance, for every single day that you sell entry tickets.
While you'll still be able to easily clone the events, it's a lot more cloning.