If you're an organization that sells tickets to events, you'd probably deem that a box office operation that includes online effect sales, bar-coded tickets for admission control and expeditiously price printing with a thermal heed printer is well outside your budget and really objective for the huge guys. But not so. These days, the cost of ticketing software that lets you choose and sell tickets directly off an interactive seating chart, records all customer details and transactions in a dedicated database, prints tickets via a gross cost thermal printer and enables you to easily place up online mark sales, is extremely affordable.
Firstly, the software. Typically, most software ticketing companies licence the employ of the software, so you won't have any major up front steal cost - fair a nominal usage fee either state at a fixed amount per effect or a percentage of the stamp effect, which can be as grievous as a couple of percent of the heed brand. Some companies may charge for creating a seating chart if you sell reserved seating, or others may apply an initial charge for setting up your system, so it pays to shop around a bit.
As for hardware, since most box office software suppliers host the software on their occupy servers, you shouldn't need any high powered computers, or any other treasure hardware - impartial a regular PC with a high run internet connection will normally suffice.
For label printing, you've probably discovered that specialist thermal mark printers can cost well over $1000 - probably well beyond your budget if you only sell a few thousand tickets per year. But again, you don't need to exercise this sort of money to acquire a perfectly acceptable thermal heed printer which will print tickets at a surprisingly snappily race. Some ticketing software systems, such as HandyTix can print tickets with fair a commonly available Dymo LabelWriter 450 which you can typically win up for around $100 or so. For brand stock, there are specialist suppliers who can supply stock for these Dymo printers either blank or printed to your specific requirements. Alternatively, many of the ticketing software systems will let you print tickets using honest a standard laser or inkjet printer. Again there are a number of sources of pre-perforated paper or designate blanks that you can consume to print multiple tickets per page with such printers. Perhaps not so convenient as a single label thermal stamp printer, but quite acceptable if you are on a tight budget.
And if you want the extra security of bar-coded tickets, that's no pickle either. These days you can select up a handheld laser scanner for well under $100. objective beget certain your selected ticketing software supplier can print bar codes on tickets. You'll also need to have a computer and internet connection at your venue to access your live database, although in some cases you may be able to sever off tag sales and download the barcode data before your event for offline validation.
And if your box office takes walk-up credit card sales, think investing in a card swipe reader which can do processing credit card transactions so worthy easier. Such devices can cost as runt as $60 and will automatically enter customer names into your database and process the transaction at the same time. But check again that your selected ticketing software can encourage this type of equipment.
So there you have it. For tiny more than $200 you can have your bear sophisticated box office place up with thermal designate printer, scanner and online ticketing, saving you a stack of time, inconvenience and money.
