Set Up Your First Event With Basic Settings

 

Congratulations! You have created your TicketsCandy account and are now ready to set up your first event. We have created a step-by-step guide for a basic event setup to help you get familiar with our different tools and options.

 

Step 1: Create an Event

On the left-hand side of your dashboard, there is a menu. Under “Organizer,” select “My Events.”

 

In the top right-hand corner of the “My Events” page, click “Create Event.”

A pop-up will appear asking you to enter the event name.

Where it says, “Do you need to use booking dates and time slots?” make sure you select the correct option because it cannot be changed after event creation.

Select “Yes” if your event has specific days and time slots people need to buy tickets for.

Select “No” if they can use their tickets at any time or if your event is a one-day event that people do not need to buy specific time slots for.

Learn more about Timed-Entry vs Open-Entry events.

For the sake of this article, we are going to select “Yes.”

“Event Start Date” is the day that the appointment calendar will be available from. All dates before the “Event Start Date” will be hidden.

“Event End Date” is the last available day in the appointments calendar. All dates after the “Event End Date” will be hidden. If you do not select an end date, the calendar will continuously repeat the daily time slots without an end.

Learn more about Start and End dates.

Be sure to select the appropriate Time Zone and enter the correct Address Details for the event.

If you need to charge taxes for your event, select the check box next to “Do you want to charge taxes?” Then enter the tax rate you would like to charge your customers in the “Tax Rate” box that appears.

Once you have filled out all the fields, select “Create Event” in the bottom right-hand corner of the page.

 

Step 2: Create Tickets

Once your event is created, go to Your First Event > Tickets.

 

To create tickets for your event, select “Create Ticket” in the top left-hand corner of your “Event Tickets” tab. A pop-up will appear where you will be able to enter the name of your ticket.

We will create a “General Admission” ticket for this example, but you can create any ticket you need.

Where it says, “Ticket Type,” choose either “Ticket” or “Addon Item.” The ticket type cannot be changed after the ticket is created, so be sure to select the right one.

A ticket admits someone into your event. An add-on item allows you to add additional items besides tickets to your customer’s experience. For the sake of this example, we will create just tickets.

“Ticket Price” is how much customers will pay for the ticket, we will set it to $25. If you are offering a discount, place the discount price under “Discount Price,” otherwise leave it blank.

If you have a limited number of tickets, place the number of tickets you have available under “Quantity Available.” If you have an unlimited number of tickets that can be sold, leave this field blank. For the sake of this example, we will leave this field blank since we are planning to use recurring time slots.

To limit the number of tickets customers can buy per order, select the min and max amount under “Tickets Per Order (Min-Max).” We will leave it at default 1 – 30 tickets per order.

“Ticket Icon” is the icon customers will see next to the ticket name on your widget. In our example, for the “General Admission Ticket,” we will select the “General” icon.

“Ticket Description” is what appears under your ticket on your widget to describe the ticket. For “General Admission” you can say something like, “Admits one adult 18 and over.”

“Start Sale On” and “End Sale On” are when you want to start selling tickets and end selling tickets.

“Start Sale On” is when the ticket will become available for sale. If a future date is selected, the ticket will be hidden until that date. To activate the ticket right away, we will leave “Start Sale On” blank.

“End Sale On” is the day you want to stop having tickets available for sale. If a date is selected, the ticket will be hidden after that date. If no date is selected, the tickets will be available for sale indefinitely, this is what we will do in this example.

“Calendar” is where you will select the calendar to attach the tickets to. The calendar will control available time slots and time slot capacity. For your first event, you can use the “Default Calendar.”

If your tickets need to be bought with other tickets, select “Cannot Be Sold Individually.” This is most commonly used for kid’s tickets that need to be bought with adult tickets. We will leave this unchecked.

If you are not ready for the ticket to appear on your widget for customers to buy, you can select “Hide This Ticket.” This will stay unchecked in our example as well.

 

Once you have all ticket setting fields filled out, select “Create Ticket” in the bottom right-hand corner.

Your ticket will appear under your Tickets tab. You can change the order of the tickets by dragging and dropping them how you like. The order they appear on your dashboard is the order they will appear on your widget that customers see.

 

Step 3: Create Time Slots

Time slots are available hours for your customers to book the appointment. You can set an individual number of spaces available per time slot to control capacity and reduce long lines and overcrowding.

To find your time slots and calendar, go to Your First Event > Time Slots.

 

The “Default Calendar” will automatically be selected since this is your first calendar.

There are two types of time slots you can create: Time Slots (recurring) and Custom Time Slots (custom).

“Time Slots” are recurring events. Creating a time slot for Monday will make those time slots available every Monday. Learn more about Time Slots.

To create time slots, start by picking the day of the week to create time slots for. Each day of the week has the options “Clear” and “Add Timeslots.”

To create time slots, you will select “Add Timeslots.”

A drop-down menu will appear with the option for either “Single” or “Bulk” at the top.

“Single” time slots are used if you want to add a single time slot to the day, or multiple time slots one by one.

“Bulk” time slots allow you to enter multiple time slots for the day at once.

For our example, we are going to use “Bulk.”

Then select the start time of the first time slot of the day. Select the end time of the last time slot of the day. If you want time in between your time slots, select the amount of time (some businesses need time in between time slots to prepare for the next group, if you want 5 minutes or an hour between slots, here is where you can add it). If you don’t want time between, leave the “Time between slots” field empty. Then select the interval the time slots will be generated with and type in the number of spaces. Be sure to click “Add Time Slots” when you are done.

For example, If you want 1-hour time slots from 11 am – 3 pm with no time in between slots and 50 spaces available for each time slot, here is what you should select:

 

Repeat this for the days of the week you are going to be open.

Then lets create a custom schedule just for one specific day. Learn more about Custom Time Slots.

For example, if you need to change your recurring schedule on Dec 24 only, you would need to go to “Custom Time Slots“, select Dec 24 from the calendar and create a custom slot under it. This will override your regular slots you set up earlier.

 

Step 4: Check Event Settings

Each event has its own set of settings attached to it. This is where you can control things like event visibility, taxes, website widget, ticket scanner API, and more. You can get to “Event Settings” by going to Your First Event > Event Settings.

 

The key information you need to look for here is that under the general tab, “Event Visibility” is set to “Make Event Visible To The Public,” so that people can buy tickets.

You also need to make sure the “Event Start Date” is set to the correct day. “Event Start Date” is the day that the appointment calendar will be available from. All dates before the “Event Start Date” will be hidden.

So, if you want to start selling tickets today, you need to set the “Event Start Date” to today.

Next, check the “Taxes and Fees” tab. If you would need to charge taxes to your customers, select the box “Do you want to charge taxes?” A tax field will appear asking you the tax rate you need to charge. Enter the tax rate into the box.

The “Fees” section lets you change the default “Pass fees on” settings. “Pass fees on” is a standard settings where merchant fees are added on top of the ticket price you set, and are passed on to your attendees, so you would not have to pay them. However, we also give you an ability to change it to “Absorb fees“, where merchant fees will be deducted from your sales at the time of your payout.

 

Step 5: Add Ticketing Widget To Your Website

You will need to install the ticketing widget into your website for the customers to buy tickets from. You can find your widget code under the Your First Event > Event Settings > Website Widget tab.

 

Just copy the code and paste it into the section of your website where you’d like the widget to appear. Please make sure you paste the whole piece of the code. If you are using a website builder, add the widget code with a custom code or HTML code module.

Learn more about adding the ticketing widget to different website builders.

 

Step 6: Activate The Ticket Scanner App

All customers receive an automatic email after they purchase tickets containing their ticket QR codes. This QR code is what you can use to easily check them into the event. To scan the QR code, you will need to download our iOS app and activate it with the API key you find in Your First Event > Event Settings > Ticket Scanner.

 

Step 7: Connect Merchant Account

The last step is to connect your merchant account, so people could start purchasing tickets live.

On your Organizer dashboard, go to Payments and click the blue button that says, “Connect Square.”’

 

This will bring you to a sign-in page. If you have an account with Square, input your email and password. If you are new to Square, click “sign up” and fill out the form.

Once signed in, you will be brought to a page that says, “TicketsCandy wants to access your Square account.” Click the “Allow” button in the bottom right corner.

Finally, select your location from the dropdown menu and click “Save.”

Learn more about payment processing.

Once your account is connected to Square and the widget is installed on your website, you will be able to start selling tickets right away.