Getting started with time slots
Once the time slots feature has been activated, head to Events and you will find a new button: Create Time Slot Event.
First, you will be asked to fill in the details for your event. When you create a time slot event, remember that you are creating a kind of "macro" event which will be replicated to form all the individual daily events.
Enter the title, ingress field, add an image and input a description, remembering that this will be applied to all the daily events. The Entity Path will populate automatically based on the event title.
Enter your events location and street address, as well as the category of the event. You can also input some text in the Restrictions, Waiver and Post Purchase Message field if you like. These fields work in the same way as for regular events, so for further help with this head this way. You can always go back and edit these fields once the event is published. Hit Please continue when you're ready.
Capacities
Next, you will be taken to the Capacities sections. Click +Create new capacity and you will see a screen like this:
Name the capacity, bearing in mind this will be visible to your customers. If you are selling entrance to a venue, you could for example call your capacity "Access" or "Select your time".
Add in the total number of tickets for the capacity - note that this is the maximum number of tickets you will sell per time slot. If you enter 50 in this box, this means that if you have time slots at hour intervals, there will be 50 tickets on sale per one hour interval.
Working with multiple capacities
If you have different activities or courses which you will be allowing customers to purchase tickets to, then you may need multiple capacities. A good example is if you are selling tickets to mini golf courses, and you have 3 different course customers can choose from. In this case you would create three separate capacities for your 3 different mini golf courses. This is important because it allows you to sell a separate number of tickets per course per time slot.
The Description field can be useful particularly if you have multiple capacities. The text in this field is displayed when customers hover over the "i" symbol next to the capacity name, so it is a good place to explain your different mini golf courses.
Once you have finished creating your capacities, click Please continue.
Item types
Here is where you will create your selection of tickets which you will be selling. Click +Create New Ticket Type to get started. The pop up you see here is very similar to how you set up ticket types for regular events, so head this way if you would like a thorough explanation of each of the fields here.
Name your ticket type under Title. This could be "Student" or "Adult" for example. You can add an image, and also a description of the item, or explain terms of use under How to use the item e.g. "Student ID must be presented together with this ticket". Assign a price to your ticket under End price customer. You can also stipulate a fee and assign a VAT level for your tickets. The TicketCo Fee will be automatically calculated based on your price plan. Available tickets of this type refers to the number of tickets available for sale per capacity.* Applied from is a field specifically for time slot events. This controls which date you wish to apply your ticket type from ie. when you will launch your ticket type. You might simply want to leave this as today's date, and keep the event hidden until you wish to publish. Sales channels control where your ticket type will be available for sale. You might want to remove "web" and "TicketCo wallet" if you are setting up a VIP ticket type, which should only be sold via admin sales or on the door. You can also assign departments and/or legal terms if you have these features activated. Click Save when you're ready. |
*The total number of available tickets per capacity (set up in the Capacities stage previously) will be the max number of tickets sold per capacity and time slot. That means that you could have 3 ticket types, each with 50 tickets available, but if your capacity is set at 50, no more than 50 tickets will be sold. |
Once you have added all of your ticket types, click Please continue.
Schedules
Here is where you will set up your time slot schedule, meaning you will program how long your time slot events will be active, which days you will sell tickets on, and you will enter in those all important time intervals.
Date range
Under From enter when you would like your time slot events to start. Input the end date of your time slot events under To. Some organisers prefer entering a time period of a couple of months to begin with, and then extending the end date as they go. This allows for easy adaption of the schedule if you know it is likely to change in a couple of months time. Click Save.
Day schedule
A repeating pattern of time slots is what we refer to as a "Schedule". If your time slots vary on a couple of days, then you may need a couple of different schedules.
Let's say you are open on weekdays from 12pm to 4pm; but on weekends, you are open 11am to 5pm, and you have slightly different ticket types on offer. You would then need to set up two separate schedules, one for your weekday slots, and one for your weekend slots.
Click +Add schedule to start creating your time slot plan. Under Schedule name add a label for your schedule. This is only visible for you, not your customers, so you could call it "Weekday" for example.
Tick the days of the week that this schedule applies to e.g. Monday to Friday. You can now start entering your time slots under Time From and Time To. Click Add time slot to add it to your schedule. Once each time slot is added, you will be able to activate your different capacities and ticket types on each of the slots:
In the example here, you can see that on every weekday, there are a series of 1 hour slots from 12pm to 4pm. The "Professional course" is open for three of the slots, and the "Crazy course" closes at 3pm. "Adult" tickets are available for sale on all time slots, but "Student" tickets are only available from 2pm to 4pm.
Save your schedule when you are happy. You can then add another schedule by either using the +Add schedule button, or Copying your current schedule.
Here you can see we have set up more time slots for the weekend:
Once you have set up all your schedules, click Please continue. You will be asked to confirm that you want to generate this set up, and you can click OK. You should then see a progress bar in the top right hand corner indicating when the time slot set up has been processed.
Preview
The final stage of the set up is the Preview section. Here is where you will see roughly how your time slot event will appear for your customers, with your event image and description, and with a calendar on the right. Click on Save if you are not quite ready to publish your event and want to keep editing, or click Publish if you are ready to start selling!
Once you Save or Publish your time slot event, you will see that the view of the page changes a little. You will now be able to click through the different modules at the top of the page to access different features and edit settings on your time slot event.
Daily events
When you publish your time slot event, this will create a series of copied events matching your macro event. We call these "Daily events", and you will see each day displayed on your organiser dashboard. You can also navigate to a specific day by selecting your time slot event under Events, and then selecting the Daily Events module. You will then see a clickable calendar as well as a list of your daily events and the number of tickets remaining.
Next steps
Congratulations, you have set up your first time slot event! We now suggest that you check out our other articles in this section so that you know how to make edits to daily events, and how to validate time slot tickets in our app.