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How to Process Group Sales: https://help.pm.leapevent.tech/a/990560
Do you have a group sale or school field trip that you need to process in PatronManager? Does your organization often need to modify a group sale's order contents even after the first payment or deposit has come in? You've come to the right place!
Let's say an employee from Rose Video calls your box office; they're planning an artistic and culturally enriching department outing, and they'd like to bring a group to one of your upcoming events. We'll cover the six fundamental steps of processing a group sale, listed below, for our friends at Rose Video:
- How to reserve a Group Sales Ticket Order
- How to create the Group Sale record to store payments
- How to invoice a Group Sale
- How to process a payment on a Group Sale
- How to print Group Sale Tickets before final payment
- How to close out a Group Sales Ticket Order
If you don't already see a "New Group Sale" action at the top of the Contact page, submit a case in the Client Community. We'll get the appropriate fields and Record Types set up in your account so that you can take advantage of this feature.
Please note that you must be fully switched over to Lightning for our team to set up the Group Sales system.
1. How to reserve a Group Sales Ticket Order
1.1. Navigate to the Contact
To save some time, we'll start from Rose Video's main Contact record - Moira Rose - since she's our main point of contact for the group sale. Much of Moira's Contact information will copy over to the Ticket Order this way.
1.2. On the Contact record, go to the Ticket Orders related list and click "Create Ticket Order"
If you don't see Ticket Orders in the Related List Quick Links panel, toggle to the Related tab to find all related lists.
1.3. Reserve the seats for the group, set the Price Level you'd like to use, and apply discounts if applicable. Click "Next"
If you're familiar with the ticket order creation process, this step will be familiar to you.
If you need to brush up on reserving seats, check out our How to Sell a Ticket in PatronManager Box Office.
Have a super large order? We recommend orders contain no more than 350 Ticket Order Items. If an order contains more than 350 tickets, it can take a very long time to load, and the tickets might not print reliably. So, if you have a group sale of gargantuan proportions (go you!), split the order into a couple, or a few, depending on how many tickets you've sold.
1.4. Set "Group Sales Payment" as the Payment Method
1.5. Save the Ticket Order as a Reservation
Here is where things get interesting! Instead of processing payment, we'll save Rose Video's Ticket Order as a Reservation. Saving the Ticket Order as a Reservation allows you to make changes to the Ticket Order while you wait for future payment to come in.
1.6. Note the Order Number at the top of the page
You'll paste it into a particular field on the next step, so take note of the Order Number now.
Your first step is to create a ticket order! Let's find out what you'll need to do.
2. How to create the Group Sale record to store payments
2.1. Navigate to the Group Sale Contact's record
2.2. Click "New Group Sale"
Once you hit the action, a Group Sale quick action page will pop up and auto-populate the Group Sale name.
2.3. Fill out the overall details
There are a few fields you should fill out before you hit save.
2.3.1. Choose the Stage
Use the Stage field to track the Group Sale's sales progress. We've set this up with a few values we believe are most commonly used, but the values here are completely customizable to your organization's particular Group Sales process. Note, however, that it is a required field, so you'll want to put something meaningful in there.
2.3.2. Paste the Ticket Order number you noted earlier into the Related Ticket Order field
Link the Ticket Order on the Group Sale to bring Ticket Order-level information onto the Group Sale record, like the Order Total and other details.
2.3.3. Fill in the Show Information
Fill in the Ticketable Event as well as the Show Date/Time so you can report on group sales by shows and instances.
2.3.4. Fill in the Invoicing Details
You won't process any actual payments on this record; rather, it will serve as the "house" or "umbrella" of all payments made on a Group Sale, since there's usually more than one payment (just like how you post multiple Pledge Payments to the same Pledge). Ignore the Amount Paid field--that will update automatically as we add payments to Rose Video's Group Sale.
You should, however, fill in a few date fields we've set up by default to track invoicing and payments. The Close Date should be whatever date you expect final payment to come in; don't worry, you'll be able to change it as time goes on and schedules change.
2.3.5. Once everything looks good, click "Save"
When the record saves, the Group Sale Total, Account Name, Donation Name, Type and Donor fields will auto-populate from the Contact and the Ticket Order. The Group Sale Total field will update automatically if you add or subtract tickets from the Ticket Order.
As previously mentioned, the Amount Paid field will automatically update as you process Group Sale Payments, and the Amount Due field will automatically calculate the difference between the Group Sale Total and the value in the Amount Paid field.
Usually, a partial payment for a Ticket Order locks the order from being adjusted - but we've got a way around that, specifically built to process Group Sales.
In this step, we'll create a record of Rose Video's Group Sale on the Opportunity (also known as Donations) and fill in all the pertinent details about the Group Sale. Recording the Group Sale on the Opportunity will allow you to process and track partial payments without locking the Ticket Order.
3. How to invoice a Group Sale
At this point, we need to send out an invoice to Rose Video so they know what they still owe for the Group Sale.
We've created a very basic email template for you (which you can find with all your other PatronManager email templates), but you may want to edit the language and add more fields as necessary. To learn more about how to edit email templates, head over to this article. To find out how to send the invoice, continue reading.
3.1. Navigate to the Group Sale Donation record
You can get to it from the Contact's Donations related list.
3.2. Click "Email" on the  Activity tab of the Group Sale record
3.3. Select the Group Sale Invoice Template
- We'll select Moira Rose, our Contact, who will receive the email in the "To" field
- Click the Template icon
Make sure to add your Contact in the "To" field first to make sure the invoice template merges properly!
3.4. Click "Insert a template..."
3.5. Select "Group Sales Invoice" in the PatronTicket Email Templates folder
- Templates: Choose "Classic Email Templates"
- Search: Use the search bar to find the Group Sales Invoice email template
- Click on Group Sales Invoice
This is the default invoice, but we recommend you modify it to your organization's specifications.
If you use merge fields to auto-populate information when modifying this invoice template, make sure you're merging information from fields from the Group Sale record.
3.6. Click "Send"
The email template pulls in information from the Contact and the Group Sale automatically!
4. How to process payment on a Group Sale
When payments come in on your Group Sale, you'll process them as "child" payments on the Group Sale record. To do so, navigate to your Group Sale record and click on the "New Group Sale Payment" action. We'll use a custom Donation Record Type--Group Sale Payment--for the payments to help you filter them out of standard development reporting.
4.1. On the Group Sale record click "New Group Sale Payment"
4.2. Fill in the relevant details
You'll notice some fields automatically copy over from the Group Sale record to the Group Sale Payment record - yay! But that's not all; we need to fill out a few more fields to complete Rose Video's Group Sale Payment record.
4.2.1. Payment Types
Depending on the Payment Type, the process is a little different.
For Cash or Check payment types, fill in the following information:
- Amount: How much you've received for this installment
- Stage: Set this to Posted
-
Payment Type: Cash or Check
- If it's a check, don't forget to transcribe the check number
- Click "Save" when you're done!
The process is a little different for credit card Group Sale payments. Fill in the information as above, with two exceptions:
- Stage: Set it to Not Posted
- Payment Type: Credit Card
- Click "Save"
Go to the Group Sale Payment record, either via the Payments related list or the link that appears immediately after you click "Save" on the Quick Action
Click the "Process Credit Card Transaction" action.
Fill in the credit card information and click "Process Transaction".
4.3. Click back to the Group Sale from the Group Sale Payment record
4.4. Change the Stage and take note of the Amount fields
Here, you will see that the Amount Paid has automatically updated to reflect the payment, and you can can change the Stage on the sale to be Deposit Received
Hover over the Payments link in the Related List Quick Links tab to see the payment. Continue to record payments with the "New Group Sale Payment" action at the top of the Group Sale record as they come in!
5. How to print Group Sale Tickets before final payment
In some cases, you may need to print Group Sale tickets before you've actually received the final payment and closed out the order. We've added a ticket printing feature to Reservation orders to account for this need.
5.1. Return to the Ticket Order from the Group Sale
5.2. Click the Print tab on the Ticket Order, and then click "Print All Tickets"
5.3. What if I add more tickets?
Not to worry! If you print all of the tickets on an order and then add more tickets to the order after the fact, you can select the unprinted tickets and click "Print Selected Tickets". Tickets that have already been printed will display a gray check mark under the "Printed" column.
6. How to close out a Group Sales Ticket Order
Once a group sale is closed out and there are no more payments to collect, you need to replicate those payments on the Ticket Order so the money will show up on your Box Office Reports.
6.1. Navigate back to the Ticket Order
First, decide whether you'd like to replicate the whole series of payments made on the Group Sale record, or if you would just like to close out the order with one payment (your finance department might have an opinion on this).
After making that decision:
- Double check to make sure the Payment Method is Group Sale Payment.
- Click "Next" until you get to the Payment page.
6.2. Process Payment
Choose whether you'd like to process the payment in one lump sum or replicate multiple payments.
On the Payment page, input the entire amount due in the Payment Amount field, and click "Process Payment"
Hooray, you're done!
6.1. Specify the payment amount in the "Payment Amount" field on the Payment page and click "Process Payment"
Repeat this for each payment.
6.2. Check out the Payment Transactions
The payments you process will end up as Payment Transaction records on the Ticket Order's Order Info Tab. You can view them when you click "Show Details".
They'll have a Payment Method of Group Sale Payment, and the Group Sale will also be linked in the details below in a Related List.
Each Payment Transaction will even show up when the order is still in Reservation Status, so you can check on the status of the sale as it goes along without having to click out of the order.
Congratulations!
You have successfully processed a Group Sale in PatronManager! Check out this help article for tips on Group Sales reporting.