E-tickets (also known as Print at Home tickets) are a ticket delivery method which lets you deliver tickets by email. The customer can then print the tickets at home, save them in their phone wallet or show them from their mobile device. E-tickets are sent as a PDF or link to the PDF in an email separate from Order Confirmation emails.
TIP: Spektrix offers Digital Passes, which lets customers add their Tickets to their Apple Wallet or Google Wallet. The E-ticket email includes both the PDFs and Digital Passes, where Digital Passes are available. For more information on how to set up Digital Passes, read Digital Passes: How to deliver Tickets to Apple and Google Wallets.
Using E-tickets you can keep selling tickets online up to the start time of an Event, and reduce the amount of ticket stock required for your Box Office.
You can also consider Ticket Scanning at your organisation if you are interested in venue access control.
REMINDER: The E-ticket delivery method should be enabled on your system by default. If you've followed the steps in this article and E-ticket is not appearing as a delivery method, please contact Spektrix Support.
How to set up E-tickets
To set up an E-ticket, you will need to set up the PDF document first. Then, you can edit the email that will be sent to customers.
TIP: E-tickets are not readable by assistive technology. We recommend that you include all of the appropriate information in confirmation emails as well, which are accessible for users relying upon assistive technology.
Setting up your PDF
If the E-ticket delivery method is chosen by your customer, they will receive an A4- or letter-size page per ticket via email. This will consist of an image of your normal ticket design within the PDF.
In the PDF, you can place advertising and other messaging. To make a PDF template, you'll need a program that can create PDF documents. Microsoft Office 2007 onward is able to save a document in PDF format, but other free PDF conversion tools are available online.
The PDF file should be 4MB or smaller.
TIP: The email attachment should be less than 20MB in size total. This includes all attached E-tickets. If the size is any larger, the mailing will fail.
- Design your A4 document but leave a blank space the size of your ticket design
- Measure the distance in millimetres (mm) from the left edge of the page to the left edge of the area in which you want your ticket design to appear – this is the X offset
- Measure the distance in mm from the top edge of the page to the top edge of the area you want your ticket design to appear – this is the Y offset
- In Spektrix, go to Admin > Document designs > E-ticket
- In the PDF Templates section, give your template a name and description
- Click Browse and upload the saved PDF template
- Enter the X and Y offsets in the fields provided
- Click the Add button to save the details and template to the system
TIP: You can create a new ticket design to use as part of your E-ticket design, or use an existing one – however, any ticket design used as part of a E-ticket design can only use standard web fonts.
How to make a PDF Template inactive
It is not possible to delete a PDF template, however, you can make a template inactive.
To make a PDF template inactive, click the edit button alongside the PDF template and then uncheck the active box.
You can filter out inactive PDF templates by unchecking the View inactive checkbox.
Setting up the E-ticket email
The default E-ticket email has a simple design but you can choose to edit the email’s subject and add more content to the body text. You can also use simple HTML in the body of the email to add basic formatting.
There are two options for how tickets are attached. The PDF can be attached to the email or a link to view them in their Account.
WARNING: If you select Email tickets as a Link, you will need to add the full URL to the MyAccount page on your site in the body of the email. This URL will not be automatically generated. Patrons will be required to log in to view and download their tickets.
To change this email address that Order Confirmation/E-tickets and Gift Voucher emails are sent from, contact Support. You can learn more about system emails here.
TIP: If you use Digital Passes, you'll also need to add the {DigitalPassButtons} merge field into the Email Body Text. For more information, read Digital Passes: How to deliver Tickets to Apple and Google Wallets.
Making E-ticket delivery available
You can set up E-ticket delivery to be available at a Ticket Type level in the Admin Interface > Pricing > Ticket Types.
To make E-ticket delivery available:
- Go to Admin > Pricing > Ticket Types
- In the Web Types section edit the ticket types for which E-ticket should be possible and tick the E-ticket checkbox
TIP: If you want to encourage E-tickets and suppress COBO/Will Call and Postal delivery types online, read How to Suppress Ticket Delivery Methods Online. All delivery types will still be available in the Sales Interface.
Making E-tickets available for an Instance
The option to allow E-ticket delivery is set at the Instance level, so it can be enabled for as many (or as few) of your Events as needed. When it's enabled for an Instance, any Ticket Types that have E-ticket delivery enabled can be delivered in this way.
- Create a new Event or edit an existing one
- Set the E-ticket Design to the ticket design that you wish to appear on your PDF template and set the E-ticket PDF Template to the template you wish to use for this Event
- Save the Instance and E-ticket will now be available for eligible Ticket Types
Using E-ticket delivery in the Sales Interface
To sell tickets from the Sales Interface using E-ticket delivery, select your tickets and check out as usual. When choosing the delivery method:
- E-ticket will be available as long as all the selected Instances have a valid ticket/template attached and all Ticket Types are eligible
- Ensure that a customer is selected in the basket
- Under Ticket Delivery, select E-ticket and a pop-up will appear to confirm the email address the tickets should be delivered to. This will default to the email held against the customer’s record, but if you wish to update the email address that the tickets are sent to, you can do so here:
WARNING: Entering a new/different email address here will update the email address on the customer record making the transaction.
- Complete the order and you’ll receive a message confirming that a customer has been emailed a confirmation
- When the tickets have been generated, the customer will receive an email directing them to their My Account page where they can download tickets, or with the tickets attached, depending on your setup
- You can also access the tickets by navigating to the Sales Interface > Orders > E-ticket items tab of a customer’s record
One PDF is created for every ticket in a customer’s order.
If you return or edit tickets that are set to E-ticket, the customer will be informed that the PDF is processing and they will not be able to download the ticket until this is complete. If they have already downloaded the PDF, any returned tickets will now be invalid.
The new PDF will be available to download from their My Account page once it is ready.
Regenerating and resending E-tickets
Once E-tickets have been generated, it is possible to regenerate and resend them. This is a useful solution if your customer doesn't receive their tickets, or has misplaced or deleted the email they're attached to. You can also use this feature if you've had to reschedule an Instance. If the Instance has been rescheduled and you regenerate an E-ticket from the Customer Record, the E-ticket will not have the new Instance date.
TIP: Customers can access their E-tickets at any time by logging into their account online. A link to download their tickets can be found under the E-tickets section of the My Account page. From here they can also add Digital Passes to their wallet if available.
Regenerating and resending for a single customer
- In the Sales Interface, search for the customer and go to the Orders section of their customer record
- Click on E-ticket items and you'll see the list of E-tickets they have purchased:
From here you can do two things:
- Download tickets for a specific Instance by selecting the Download option, then attach them to an email which you manually send to the customer
- Click the Send PDF Documents button which will email the customer all of their E-tickets to the email address on their account
Alternatively, customers can log into their online account on your website and download their E-tickets themselves.
Regenerating and resending multiple E-tickets
If you've had to rearrange an Instance to take place at a later date, or simply want to regenerate all E-tickets, you can regenerate E-ticket emails for everyone who requested this delivery method. Regenerated emails will replace existing ones and reflect the new date of the Instance.
REMINDER: If a customer has multiple orders containing tickets for the same Instance, and they return tickets from just one of these orders, they'll receive a new email with all their current E-tickets for that Instance. The new email will contain all the active tickets for this Instance across all orders. This ensures that the customer has the most up-to-date ticket information for that Instance.
- In the Admin Interface, select the Event in question, then head to Basic Details for the Instance you've edited
- At the bottom of the page, you'll see the option to Regenerate E-tickets:
REMINDER: This option will only be available if the Instance is Live, set to take place in the future, and isn't currently being edited by another member of your team.
- When you click this button, you'll see a pop-up to confirm you want to regenerate and resend these tickets
- Click Confirm. This will resend the newly regenerated E-tickets to everyone who selected this delivery option
When you reschedule an Instance that was due to happen more than six months ago, all tickets will be automatically regenerated and resent. For example, if you rearrange an Instance that was due to happen before the 24th of April 2020 on the 24th of October 2020, these tickets will automatically regenerate and resend.
TIP: You might want to temporarily switch your E-ticket PDF template to one that mentions the ticket is 'regenerated/rescheduled' before regenerating and resending tickets. This helps customers know which ticket they should bring, and help your front of house team spot any duplicates.
Renaming E-tickets to Print at Home online
You have the ability to change the option displayed online from E-tickets to Print at Home.
If you switch on the Print at Home option, customers will be able to choose this when selecting their delivery method during checkout:
To change the option displayed online from E-tickets to Print at Home, go to Settings > Configuration > System Setup > Website. Here you can select your preferred wording:
REMINDER: In both the Admin Interface and the Sales Interface, this delivery method will still be referred to as E-ticket.
If you want to change the wording used in your Order Confirmation email to reflect this change, please get in touch with the Support.
Further reading
Hopefully, this article has given you everything you need in order to set up E-tickets. We'd recommend you also check out these other articles:
- Ticket Design Tool: a guide to using the Spektrix Ticket Design Tool, to create tickets for both your standard and E-tickets
For more information about Delivery Methods and Event Set Up, see the Set up Events, Offers and Merchandise section of the Support Centre.