Events and tickets

CaptiFi Events gives each venue its own public events page. You create an event, add ticket types (paid or free), publish it, and guests buy on that page by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay. Each buyer gets an email with one QR code per ticket, appears in your guest list, and is checked in at the door from a phone. A booking fee is charged on each paid ticket and nothing on a free one; the schedule is in Ticket payments, and the night itself is covered in Door check-in.

Events is included on the Growth plan and above.

Switching it on

Events is off by default. The account holder switches it on:

1. In the dashboard, go to Integrations
2. Find the Events and tickets card among the dashboard features and switch it on

An Events group then appears in your sidebar with Events, Door, Ticket orders, Ticket payments and Events settings; Ticket payments shows for the account holder only. A team member sees the switch locked; only the account holder can turn the feature on or off. Switching it off hides the pages and keeps your events and orders.

Before your first paid event

Free tickets and RSVPs need nothing beyond the steps on this page. To put a paid ticket on sale, the account holder must first:

1. Accept the booking fee terms once. One acceptance covers every venue on the account.
2. Connect a Stripe account for the venue and finish Stripe's onboarding, so the venue shows Active.

Both steps are in Ticket payments. Until they are done, Publish refuses an event that has a paid ticket type and says which step is missing.

Setting up your events page

Every venue has one public page at app.captifi.io/events/your-venue. Set it up under Events then Events settings. If you have more than one venue, pick the venue at the top of the page first.

1. Page address: the last part of the page's web address. It starts as your venue name; letters, numbers and dashes only.
2. Events page is live: publishing your first event turns this on for you.
3. Introduction and Header image address (https): shown above the list of events. The image must already be online at an address starting https://.
4. Buyer contact: Email address, or Email or mobile number. Tickets are sent by email, so a buyer who gives only a mobile number sees their tickets on the order page after checkout and gets no email.
5. Selling currency and Booking fee: who pays the fee and which currency you sell in. Only the account holder can change these; see Ticket payments.
6. Click Save events page.

Show the next event on the WiFi welcome screen puts your next event in front of guests as they get online. With the switch on and the events page live, the screen a guest sees after connecting carries a card for your soonest public event that is on sale and starts within the next seven days. The card is headed Tonight at [venue], Today at, Tomorrow at, Now on at for an event already under way, or the day and date; under that come the event name, Doors 19:00 (or Starts 19:30 when no doors time is set), the first line of the description and a See tickets button that opens the event page. A promotion you have set to show after connecting takes the card's place, as does a Rewards welcome message, and the card is not shown at venues on Cisco Meraki.

Reminder email (hours before doors) sets when the Before an event automation emails your buyers, 24 hours by default; 0 turns reminders off for the venue. The reminder itself is an automation you switch on; see Event messaging and automations.

The same page has an Embed on your website section, with a snippet that puts this events list on your own website. See Embed your events on your website.

Location for wallet passes, the last section on the page, takes the venue's latitude (from -90 to 90) and longitude (from -180 to 180). It is optional: with both set, a ticket the buyer has added to Apple Wallet comes up on their lock screen around the event's start time when they are at the venue. The location is stored on a Google Wallet pass too, but Google sends no nearby notice. Enter both numbers and click Save location; clear both to send passes without a location. See Tickets in Apple Wallet and Google Wallet.

Creating an event

1. Go to Events and click New event.

2. Venue: the venue that hosts the event. Under the picker you are told which timezone the times are read in. If the venue has no timezone set, a warning says times are taken as UK time. Set the venue's timezone under My Venues before you go on, so tickets show the right time.

3. Event name, Description and Image address (https): a link to an image already online. Web address is made from the name when left blank.
4. When: Starts is required. Ends, Doors open and Door check-in opens are optional. All four are in the venue's timezone. Leave Door check-in opens blank to let the door admit tickets at any time.
5. Sales: Visibility is Public (listed on your events page) or Unlisted (only people with the link can see it). Capacity caps the whole event; leave it blank for no limit beyond the ticket types. Sales open and Sales close set when buying is possible, and Terms shown at checkout are what buyers accept.

6. Click Save. The event is created as a Draft. Nothing is public yet.

The venue cannot be changed once the event exists. Capacity can be raised at any time; it cannot go below the tickets already sold or on hold. A draft with no orders can be deleted; an event that has orders cannot.

Ticket types

Open the event and add ticket types under Ticket types. An event can have up to 12.

1. Click Add ticket type
2. Name and Description
3. Price, in the venue's selling currency. Enter 0 for a free ticket (an RSVP). A paid ticket must be at least the lowest paid price for your currency; the form shows the figure, and a Booking fee line under the price shows the fee per ticket, card processing included.
4. Quantity: how many of this type can be sold. Leave it blank for unlimited within the event capacity.
5. Min per order and Max per order: 1 and 10 by default, up to 100.
6. Sales open and Sales close: the type's own sales window, if it differs from the event's.
7. On sale: only types with this on are sold. Hidden (link only) keeps the type off the public page.
8. Click Save

Drag the rows to reorder them; buyers see them in that order. A type that has sold cannot be deleted: switch On sale off instead. Its quantity cannot go below what is sold or on hold.

Publishing

1. Open the event and click Publish
2. Confirm

The status changes to On sale, the event appears on your events page (when it is Public), and the page itself goes live. Public page appears beside the event so you can check it.

Publish refuses, and says why, when:

Refusal	What to do
No active ticket type	Add at least one active ticket type
Booking fee terms not accepted	The account holder accepts them under Ticket payments
Payments not ready	Connect Stripe for the venue and finish onboarding, in the venue's selling currency
A lost card dispute at the venue is not yet covered	Settle the shortfall; see Card disputes. A free event still publishes

An event whose active ticket types are all free publishes without a Stripe account.

Event statuses are Draft, On sale, Sold out, Cancelled and Completed. The Events list shows each event's start time, status, tickets sold against capacity, how many are checked in and the gross taken. The account holder cancels an event with Cancel event on the event itself, which refunds every paid order in the background and emails every buyer; see Cancelling an event.

The public event page and checkout

Your events page lists upcoming public events with a From price, Free or Sold out on each. An event's own page shows when and where it is (your venue name and address), the description, and each ticket type with its price. When you pass the booking fee on, the price line reads "plus £1.13 booking fee each" in the venue's currency. When 20 or fewer of a type remain, the page says how many are left.

Buying works like this:

1. The buyer picks quantities within your per-order limits and clicks Continue.
2. The tickets are held for ten minutes. The page says "Your tickets are held until 20:14". If the buyer walks away, the hold lapses and the tickets go back on sale; nothing is charged.
3. The buyer gives their First name, Last name, Email address and Mobile number (which of the last two are required follows your What buyers must give setting). A marketing consent checkbox uses your venue's consent wording (the standard wording reads "Send me offers and news from" your venue "by email and text message"), shows the text message terms underneath, and is unticked to begin with; buyers must tick I accept the event terms and the venue's conditions of entry.
4. A free order finishes here with Get my tickets. A paid order goes to Continue to payment: the order summary lists the tickets, the Booking fee line when you pass it on, and the total, and the buyer pays by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay.

If the tickets sell out while a payment is still processing, or the event is cancelled before it completes, the payment is refunded straight away and the buyer is told why no tickets were issued. The public pages and emails follow the languages you have enabled for the venue.

What buyers receive

After checkout the buyer lands on their order page, headed Your tickets, with the order number (in the form CF-7F3K9Q), one QR code per ticket with its ticket number (in the form T-7F3K-9QPX), the line "Show this code at the door. Each ticket admits one person once.", an Add to calendar file and a Resend confirmation email button (three re-sends an hour). Once a wallet is live for your account, Add to Apple Wallet and Add to Google Wallet sit under each ticket as well; see Tickets in Apple Wallet and Google Wallet.

The confirmation email, Your tickets for [event], comes from your venue (see Who your guest emails come from) and carries the same QR codes, the order number, when and where, the doors time, the tickets, the booking fee when the buyer paid it, the total paid, a Manage your order link back to the order page and, once a wallet is live, the same two wallet buttons under each ticket.

Tickets in Apple Wallet and Google Wallet

A buyer can keep each ticket in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet. The wallets behind the passes are CaptiFi's, so there is nothing for you to set up: CaptiFi switches each wallet on for accounts, and both are off today. The Add to Apple Wallet and Add to Google Wallet buttons appear under a ticket on the ticket page, the order page and the confirmation email only while a tap would work: the wallet is live for your account, Events is switched on, and the ticket still admits (a paid or free order, on an event that is not cancelled). Tapping the Apple button on an iPhone downloads the pass and Wallet offers to add it; the Google button opens Google's save screen. The same wallets carry your Rewards passes; see Rewards wallet passes.

The pass shows the event name, the date and the doors time in the venue's own time zone, the venue's name and address, the ticket type, the holder's name when the order carries one, the order number, and the same QR code the door scans, with the ticket number under it, so a scanned pass admits exactly like the ticket page. Its colours and logo come from your Rewards programme when you have one, and the wallet's default look otherwise. On an iPhone the pass comes up on the lock screen around the start time. With the venue's location set under Events settings, it comes up around the start time only when the buyer is at the venue as well. Google Wallet stores the location on the pass but sends no nearby notice. See Setting up your events page.

A pass keeps itself current, with nothing needed from the buyer or from you:

• Rename the event, move its date or time, or change its venue, and every pass for it updates. An iPhone is told through Apple's push service and fetches the new version; a Google pass is updated in the buyer's Google account.
• Admitting the ticket at the door marks the pass used on the buyer's phone, with the time; an undo within five minutes brings it back.
• A refunded or cancelled ticket, a cancelled event, or a buyer erased under a data request voids the pass: it stops admitting and is marked void in the wallet.

Venues see which passes a buyer holds. The order page lists each ticket's passes under Wallet passes, with the platform and when each was issued, updated and voided. The dashboard does not carry the Add to Wallet links: they reach the buyer only on their ticket page, their order page and the confirmation email. The Wallet passes page under Rewards counts ticket passes on a Ticket passes row for each wallet; see Ticket passes.

Where buyers appear

• Guests: every buyer is added to your guest list, tagged as a ticket buyer, with marketing consent recorded only when they ticked the box. Buyers count for campaigns and segments as imported contacts do, and never count as a WiFi visit until they connect at the venue.
• Segments: the segment builder has Bought a ticket under How they joined, and two conditions of its own, Bought tickets (for any event, one event, or within the last N days) and Attended a booking, so you can message ticket buyers on their own. See Ticket buyers in segments.
• Automations and merge tags: an email or text can send itself when a guest buys a ticket, before the event, after it ends and when a ticket holder is admitted at the door, and eight merge tags put the event name, times, venue, ticket link and order number into any message. Webhooks carry each paid order, admit, refund and attendance to your own systems. See Event messaging and automations.
• Reservations: each order also creates a reservation for the event (provider Ticket order, party size equal to the ticket count), so attendance and follow-ups work as they do for table bookings. Checking a ticket in at the door marks it attended.

Ticket orders

Events then Ticket orders lists every order across your events: order number, event, buyer, status, tickets (with how many are checked in), total, source and when it was placed. Filter by status, event or venue, or search by order number or buyer.

Open an order to see its face value, the booking fee and who paid it, what the buyer paid, every refund under Refunds, the buyer's details and consent, each line, and each ticket with its status, its check-in time and, under Wallet passes, the passes the buyer holds for it (see Tickets in Apple Wallet and Google Wallet). The account holder can refund whole tickets or an amount from the order with Refund; see Refunding an order. An order a buyer's bank has questioned shows Disputed; see Card disputes. An order's Source says where it came from: the public page, or staff for a complimentary ticket or one paid at the door.

To send the ticket email again, open the order and click Resend confirmation. It works on any paid or free order that has an email address.

Order statuses: Pending and Awaiting card while a checkout is in progress, Paid, Free, Expired when a hold lapsed, Cancelled, Refunded, Partly refunded and Disputed.

Reports

Events then Reports shows your ticket sales for a period. Pick the period at the top right: today, the last 7, 30 or 90 days, or your own dates. Each counts whole UK calendar days ending today. The page opens on the last 90 days. Days are UK calendar days wherever you open the page from, and the period is kept in the page address, so a link you share opens on the same dates.

The report covers the venue picked in the header, or every venue you can see when none is picked. If your plan shows one venue at a time, the page says so.

• Totals by currency: one row per currency with orders, tickets, face value, booking fees, refunds and the booking fee returned with them, what card disputes took and how many chargebacks, inquiries, and net to venue. Net to venue is what the venue keeps after refunds and disputes; below zero it shows in red. Sales in different currencies are never added together.
• By event: each event with its date, status, orders, tickets, face value, booking fees and refunds. Click an event to open it.
• By day: orders and face value for each day and currency.

Checkouts still in progress are not counted.

Who can do what

The account holder can do everything on this page. For team members (set up under Team members):

• Manage events and tickets lets a member create, edit and publish events and ticket types, change the events page settings and resend tickets.
• View guest data is needed to open orders and attendees, because they carry buyer details.
• The selling currency, the booking fee mode, Stripe and the fee terms stay with the account holder, and so do refunds, cancelling an event, card disputes and the booking fee statements.

Every team member who can open Events can see Reports; it needs no extra permission.