What is a Fixed Series?
A Fixed Series subscription allows customers to book the same seats across a number of different Instances, usually for a discounted price. That booking becomes a subscription which can be renewed (usually in the following year or season), giving that customer the right to keep their seats or choose other seats available to them when setting up their subscription for the following season.
The important thing here is that the customer retains the right to the same seats for each Instance – and this right can be rolled over for the next season or series of performances.
There are two main examples of how these subscriptions are used:
- You allow subscribers to book for a specific series of shows, commonly all on the same day of the week. They can then renew their subscription and keep (or change) their seats for next season.
- You have a series of one-off shows (for example a season of classical concerts) to which customers can subscribe. Once the season has finished customers can renew their subscription for next year's season, ensuring they get the same seat.
Components of a Fixed Series
A Fixed Series is comprised of a number of different components:
- A Fixed Series Subscription - the name of your series.
- The Events that are eligible for inclusion.
- One or more Subscription Groups - combinations of Instances that you want to package together. For example, this could be all the Instances of a classical series, every final Instance of every play in a theatre season, or most commonly, groups of performances which all occur on specific days of the week (first Fridays, second Sunday Afternoons, etc)
- One or more Pricing Sets - pricing structures, made up of one or more Price Lists per Event included in the Fixed Series.
- These can be used to dictate your pricing per Subscription Group. This is the tool to use if for instance your Friday night Subscription Groups should cost more than your Tuesday afternoon Subscription Groups.
- One or more Fixed Series Price Lists - specific Price Lists for use with Fixed Series.
- Multiple Fixed Series Price Lists can be used to tailor your Fixed Series pricing per Instance. For example, if you wanted the tickets to one Event in your season to be more expensive than others, you could set this Event to have its own Fixed Series Price List.
- This feature also comes in handy when wanting to offer certain pricing based on the number of performances the customer has selected. For example, if you wanted to grant a greater discount to those who selected all of the Events in your Fixed Series then to those who have selected only some, you can configure a Fixed Series price for exactly this purpose.
- A composite seating plan showing available seats for all Instances in the selected Subscription Group.
- If your Fixed Series contains Events with different seating plans, it will show both.
How does a Fixed Series work?
Because we are talking about booking specific seats for customers, Fixed Series can only be set up on Events with reserved seating plans. Should you want to encourage your customers to book multiple shows in unreserved plans, we’d encourage you to make use of Multibuy offers.
Here’s a simple graphic which demonstrates the logic of a Fixed Series:
To clarify, the flow is as below. See the Selling a Fixed Series Subscription article for more details on the sales process.
- The Fixed Series Subscription is the container for all of the components, and the thing that allows for the subscription to be rolled over.
- Each Fixed Series Subscription must contain one or more Subscription Group and Pricing Set.
- Each Subscription Group is a combination of Instances available for sale.
- Each Pricing Set is the specific prices customers will pay for each ticket.
- You can apply a Pricing Set to multiple Subscription Groups, but each Subscription Group can only have a single Pricing Set.
Holding a Fixed Series Subscription
There are two ways in which Fixed Series Subscriptions can be sold - customers can either purchase the subscription straight away, or you can hold a subscription for a customer, who can then purchase it at a later date. By holding a subscription for a customer you are giving them the rights to their seats. The customer can then purchase those same seats or opt to select different ones within their Fixed Series.
Rolling over Fixed Series Subscriptions
Along with the ability to purchase the same seat across multiple Events, one of the key benefits of a Fixed Series is the ability to roll a subscription over - in other words to allow a customer to retain the same seats in subsequent seasons/series. For more information see our article on Rolling Over a Fixed Series.
Setting up a Fixed Series
There are a few things you will want to think about before you start setting up a Fixed Series:
- Which Events/Instances you want to include in your Fixed Series. Make sure these are set up first.
- Do all of the Events use the same seating plan?
- Are you planning on offering a discount? If so, make sure you know what the original prices are and what you want the discounted prices to be.
- Do you want to allow customers to buy any ticket type, or just specific ones?
- Do you want the Fixed Series to be available online, or just via the box office?
- When do you want all holds to expire? Some organizations call this their “renewal deadline”. Think about whether this is before the Instances go on sale individually.
- Do you want to roll other subscriptions over to this? See article.
Fixed Series Price Lists
When a customer books a Fixed Series, Spektrix uses a specific Fixed Series Price List instead of the standard Price List. This is because you may want to offer a discount for the Fixed Series and therefore need to price your tickets differently.
Each Event/Instance in the subscription can be priced differently if you wish, or you can use one Price List for everything.
Let’s look at an example for this:
- Let’s say you have two events - Macbeth and Hamlet. The standard Price List for these shows is:
- Let’s assume you want to offer a Fixed Series package for anyone wanting to come to the first Monday performance of each show, with Adult prices discounted to a total of £30.00 for Band A and £20.00 for Band B. We’ll assume that Child tickets are not available in this setup.
- For this to work you could set your Fixed Series Price List to be as follows:
- This would mean that both Events would cost £15 per ticket in Band A (totaling £30 for the 2 events) or £10 per ticket in Band B.
- Another option would be to have two Price Lists, one for Hamlet and one for Macbeth:
- In this case, the total price is still £30 or £20 but all of the discount is coming off the ticket price for Macbeth.
To set up Fixed Series Price Lists go to Admin > Pricing > Price Lists and click New under the Fixed Subscription area. If you need help with setting up Price Lists please see this article.
Creating a Fixed Series
You create a Fixed Series by going to Admin > Subscriptions > Fixed Series > Create new series.
The first thing you will see is a prompt as to whether you want to roll subscriptions over into your new Fixed Series. Unless you know that you want to roll a subscription over into this, click Next.
Basic Details
The next screen is where you fill in the Basic Details of the Fixed Series - the name and description as well as a range of options determining how your Fixed Series will work. Fields with a red line on the left are required fields and must be filled in before proceeding.
- Name - make sure the name is relevant to what the Fixed Series is offering, such as Season Subscription - 5 Events or 3 Concert Package.
- Description - this is for internal use, so make sure you describe what the Fixed Series is intended to do.
- Active - make the Fixed Series active on one or both sales channels - this doesn’t put it on sale, just makes it visible in each sales channel.
- Image - you can add an image to appear online and in the box office.
- Wikitext - you can add online text in the same way as you would for an Event - this can be used to show instructions and information about the Fixed Series to your customers.
- Web ID - this is used by your web developers to link to certain subscriptions with an ID set by you. They can also query Fixed Series via our API - please contact support for more information about this
- On Sale options - make the Fixed Series on sale on the appropriate sales channel(s). Make sure you have set it to be active on the same channel(s) as well.
- Max seats - set the maximum number of subscriptions that can be purchased in one order.
- Ticket Types - choose the Ticket Types that are available in this Fixed Series. You must have set a price for these tickets in your Fixed Subscription Price List.
- Price Bands - select whether customers must choose their price band at the start of the booking process.
- You should only tick this option if you have consistent price bands across all the events in the package (for example if all of your events use Stalls, Side Stalls and Balcony price bands then you may want to give your customers the option of picking a price band before they book so that the system can tell them the exact price.
- If you have different banding across all the Events in your Fixed Series then you should leave this option unticked as the customer may pick a band that doesn't exist in some of the events and therefore would not be able to book a seat across all of them.
- Default Ticket Type - this is the type of ticket that will be automatically added to the basket when customers book - they can then change it to a concession if any are available.
- Number of events - specify the number of events that a customer must purchase to qualify for the Fixed Series.
- For example you may have ten Events included in a Fixed Series Subscription but a customer only needs to purchase 3 or more Events to qualify for the subscription.
- You can either set a single number, or a range (for example 3-10).
- Set a single number when customers must book a set number of Events.
- Set a range when you want to set the minimum and maximum number of Events.
- Hold Timeout - this acts like a reservation timeout, setting the date and time after which any held subscriptions will be released.
WARNING: If the Hold Timeout is retrospectively edited to a historic date/time, this causes the reservation timeout service to run which means the holds are released.
Once you have filled all of these details in, click Next to choose the Events for your Fixed Series.
Choose Events
The next screen allows you to choose which Events you want to include in the Fixed Series Subscription.
- Select the Events you want to include and move them to the right hand column.
- Don't worry about which Instances to include at this stage - you just need to tell the system which Events are to be included..
- Once you have chosen all of the Events, click next to create your Subscription Groups.
Choose Subscription Groups
This page shows you a list of all Instances for the Events included in your Fixed Series Subscription, based on the Events you selected on the previous page. You can now set up the different combinations of Instances that you want to make available to your customers - each combination should be a separate Subscription Group.
- Create a subscription group by clicking the Add subscription group button on the right panel.
- Give the Subscription Group a name - this is what customers will see, so make sure it’s clear.
- Move the relevant Instances across from the left hand list.
- Click on one or more Instances to select them, then click on the appropriate Subscription Group.
- Click the > arrow to add the Instances into the selected Subscription Group.
- Click Next once you’ve created all of the Subscription Groups you need.
Pricing Sets
From this page you can configure the prices of your Subscription Groups - please note that you need to have set up your Fixed Subscription Price Lists before this point.
- Create a new Price Set by clicking Add pricing set and giving it a name.
- The Default column shows which Price List will be used for each Event in the Subscription Group.
- You can use different Price Lists depending on how many Events customers book for by adding in new columns using the + button.
- When adding a new column you will see a text field at the top of the screen, into which you enter the number of Events a customer must book in order to get the prices you assign in the column. You can do this in one of two ways:
- Enter single numbers if customers need to book a specific number of Events to get those prices.
- Enter a range if customers need to book within a certain number of Events to get those prices (such as 1-3 or 1,3,5), using either a hyphen or a comma to separate the values.
- Once you have entered the number or range, click on the green tick to add that as a new Pricing Set.
- For each Event, choose a Price List from the drop-down list.
- You can add as many columns as you like.
- Once you have created one or more Pricing Sets, add each Subscription Group into one Pricing Set.
- Follow the same instructions for this as for adding Instances into Subscription Groups.
- Each Subscription Group must be assigned to one Pricing Set.
- You can add multiple Subscription Groups into a single Pricing Set.
- Continue until all Subscription Groups are assigned, then click Next.
Choose Base Layout Overlays
When a customer books a Fixed Series Subscription, Spektrix will merge all identical seating plans together so that the customer can pick a seat which is available across all of the Instances they are booking for.
It's possible that the Events in your Fixed Series may have different Layout Overlays. The final section of setting up a Fixed Series allows you to specify which Layout Overlay should be used when a customer selects a seat from the merged version of the plans.
If the Events you have selected all use the same seating plan, you only need to choose a single Layout Overlay. If there are two or more seating plans across the Events, you can select a suitable Layout Overlay for each seating plan.
Select the best Layout Overlay for your mix of Events from the drop-down list.
- Select a suitable Info Overlay from the second drop-down list.
- Click OK to complete the setup of your Fixed Series.
Fixed Subscription Details
A five-Event subscription for your season where customers can book either four or five Events, and can choose to book all of their Events on the same day of the week, for example to book for each Event on a Monday, or on a Saturday.
Pricing
Different prices for weekday or weekend performances, and for the number of Events purchased for.
- Weekday Option:
- Book 4 shows for £120 (£30 per ticket).
- Book 5 shows for £125 (£25 per ticket).
- Weekend Option:
- Book 4 shows for £160 (£40 per ticket).
- Book 5 shows for £150 (£30 per ticket).
Here are the stages you would need to go through to create this Fixed Series.
- Create a Fixed Series Price List called something like £40 tickets, with the prices set to £40.
- Do that twice more, creating a £30 tickets and a £25 tickets Fixed Series Price List.
- Create a Fixed Series called 5 Event Package with the number of Events a customer must book set to four.
- Add all of the Events into your season.
- Create a Subscription Group called Monday and add all of the Monday Instances for each event.
- Create a second Subscription Group called Tuesday and add all of the Tuesday Instances for each event.
- And so on, for each day of the week.
- Create a Pricing Set called Weekday Pricing.
- Add a new column for 4-show prices and set the £30 tickets Price List against each Event.
- Add a new column for 5-show prices and set the £25 tickets Price List against each Event.
- Create a second Pricing Set called Weekend Pricing.
- Add a new column for 4-show prices and set the £40 tickets Price List against each Event.
- Add a new column for 5-show prices and set the £30 tickets Price List against each Event.
- Choose which Layout Overlay(s) you want to use.
- When booking this Fixed Series, customers would need to choose the 5 Event Package Fixed Series Subscription and then choose a Subscription Group based on which day of the week they wanted to attend.
Making a Fixed Series available for sale
Once you have created one or more Fixed Series, you then just need to do a couple of things to make sure customers can purchase a Fixed Series.
- Go to Admin > Subscriptions > Fixed Series and make sure the Show series tab in sales interface tick box has been selected.
- Once this has been selected you will be able to see the Fixed Series tab in the Sales Interface under Subscriptions - as long as you have at least one Fixed Series built on your system.
- If this hasn’t been selected, the Fixed Series tab won’t be visible.
- For online sales you need to have the Fixed Series iframe integrated into your website.
- If you are setting up your first Fixed Series then you will need to speak to your web designer to do this.
- If you need any advice on this, please get in touch with the Support team.
Once this is all done you will be able to sell a Fixed Series Subscription from the Sales Interface, and customers will be able to select a Fixed Series Subscription from one of your web pages.
Offers on Fixed Series
As well as applying to standalone Events, you can build Offers which apply to Fixed Series. For more information on how to set up Offers, see this article.
Setting up Fixed Series Offers
It’s really easy to set up Offers to apply to Fixed Series tickets. You just build your Offer as you would normally, then as long as you have at least one Fixed Series already built, you will see an extra section in the Offer screen called Fixed series rule. This section allows you to choose one of three options for each Offer.
- Not fixed series tickets - tick this option if you want to exclude any Fixed Series from an Offer.
- Only fixed series tickets - tick this option if you want an Offer to only apply to Fixed Series.
- Either - tick this option if you’re happy for an Offer to apply to both standard Events and Fixed Series.
This is the only section that you need to fill in differently for an Offer to apply to Fixed Series - everything else works exactly the same as building any other Offer.
Applying Fixed Series Offers
Applying an Offer to a Fixed Series works in exactly the same way as any other Offer in the Sales Interface. The system will automatically apply the Offer which gives the best discount across the basket as a whole, based on the criteria you set in the Offer.
You can break down the details of what the Offer is applying per ticket in the same way as normal Offers.
Summary
Hopefully you should now understand how Fixed Series work, and be able to set up a Fixed Series on your system. For more information please see one of these articles:
Selling a Fixed Series
Rolling Over a Fixed Series
Fixed Series FAQs
If you have any further questions about setting up Fixed Series, please get in touch with the Support team.