There's a new field called "Member Usage Limit" on Discount Codes, where you can set the number of tickets a member is allowed to receive at a particular discount. Patrons can buy tickets directly from the box office, or online by logging in to PatronPortal. During the checkout process, the system will evaluate all of the possible automatic discounts for the items in the patron's cart, and apply the best discount(s) available. If the discount has one of these usage limits, PatronManager will record that the patron has used it.

These limited discounts are applied automatically as part of a patron's "Benefits" and cannot be added manually during checkout, so there's no need to worry about people getting their hands on a discount code they're not authorized to use.

To learn how to create a limited discount, click here.

In the museum example above, if a patron purchases four tickets for a special event program, two of those tickets will be discounted at 100% and the other two will receive the 20% discount. They will continue to receive unlimited free regular admission, excluding these special events.

To make it easier to set up and manage your various discounts, we've added a Clone button to the Discount Code page. You can choose to clone just the basic code information without the associated price levels (useful if you're making a bunch of similar discounts for different events), or clone the information and the associations along with it (useful if you're setting up several similar discounts for the same event)

There's a new object called Discount Code Usage (DCU) that tracks when these limited-use discounts are applied, keeping track of usage for each Contact who has an associated Benefit.

The counter on the DCU object increments automatically as items are added to a patron’s cart, so it works in real-time -- if patron's Benefit Level allows them to receive two tickets at 100% off and their remaining tickets at 20% off, that will work correctly no matter how many tickets they're buying at a time. 

Click here to how to add the Discount Code Usage related list to your Contact page layouts.

All your existing reporting about Discount Codes will continue to work seamlessly. We've also created a new Report called Limited Discount Code Usage, so you'll be able to easily track how many times a discount has been used, by a single patron or across all members at a particular level. You'll find a sample report located in the "PatronTicket Reports 3.0" folder in the Reports Tab. 

Once you start using this new feature, this report will be useful for viewing how many members have taken advantage of their limited discounts this season, or checking how many limited discounts a particular member has used, and thus how many they are still eligible for.

You can use the sample report as-is, or if you want to pull in additional custom fields, you can clone the report type to customize it for your organization. Please see our Help article "How to Modify an Existing Report Type" for more information on cloning reports.

The new release will be installed in your account during the weeks of August 7 or August 14 (as always, you'll get a notification from us before it happens). Once your account has been upgraded, you can get started! Here's how to proceed:

• To use this feature for online sales, you need to be using PatronPortal to allow patrons to log in and identify themselves. If you're not already set up for PatronPortal, you can learn about its functionality and pricing here.
• We recommend you start by writing out in words exactly how you want your organization's limited discount offering to work. Do you want members to receive a certain number of tickets/admissions per event, or across multiple events? For example, these are two similar scenarios that you'll set up quite differently:
  • "Members get two 50% off tickets to each of our four events this summer."
  • "Members get eight 50% off tickets total this summer, to be used in any combination across all four events."
• Then, click here for step-by-step instructions for how to build the appropriate discount codes (and possibly Benefit Levels) for each of those scenarios.
• When you're ready to start using this feature, you should add the Discount Code Usage related list to the page layouts for your Contact records. This will allow you to see how many times a specific patron has used each Discount Code when viewing their record.