Adding or Changing Shows

To add productions and performances, and to change the dates and times of existing performances that contain no reservations, click on the Schedule link in the Management panel of the Dashboard. To change the date or time of a performance that does contain reservations, email us at support@seatyourself.biz.

If you are adding a production that has multiple casts, but in which every performance has the same seating and pricing, you can set it up as a single production and annotate individual performance with their cast names later. That approach will let you move reservations from cast to cast, something you cannot do if the two shows are part of fully separate productions. See this note for how add the cast names. If you didn’t know you could move existing reservations to different seats or different shows, see this note.

If you want to use a seating configuration or venue address you’ve used in the past and aren’t sure which one, click the +seats button in the Reports panel of the dashboard to see what you’ve used in the past year. If you want to use a configuration you haven’t used for over 24 months, email us at support@seatyourself.biz for help.

Basic pricing

We regard pricing as basic even when it includes:

  • different ticket types (e.g. Adult, Student, Senior)
  • different seat types (e.g. Balcony, Mezzanine, Accessible, Wheelchair)
  • different prices for specific performances (e.g. matinee, opening gala)

See this note for how to manage basic prices.

Basic+ pricing: Price codes

Codes can be attached to prices so that only shoppers who have the code can purchase tickets to specific performances or specific seating sections, or at preferential prices. See  this note for how to manage price codes. Please note that we are more than happy to set these up for you.

Advanced pricing

Advanced pricing can include discounts, online comps, and a variety of ways to limit the number of tickets of specific types that can be bought by each shopper. Limits are enforced via the shopper’s email address. The limits can be set per run, per event, or per order. See this page for some recipes for setting up an advanced price scheme. We recommend having us do this for you the first time; please email us at support@seatyourself.biz for help.

All rows must have single or double letter labels (A-Z, AA-ZZ) and all seats must have numbers.
Section names can be almost anything reasonable

To find the appropriate link to post, whether on a web page, facebook page, or printed poster, click the Webstore link for posting on your page entry in the Management panel of the Dashboard.

We assume that you are going to post a link on the page referred to in the Website field on the Webstore settings tab. That is the page shoppers are taken to when they click on the link at the top left of the shopping page. But we encourage you to post the link in as many other places as make sense to you.

To enable online sales, click the Per-show settings link in the Management panel of the dashboard. Check the Allow sales box and submit the update.

See this note for how to enable sales for just some of the performances in a production.

We can’t help you find errors in dates, times, production name, or venue address. And many people miss those the first few times they check. This test will let you see what your shoppers will see, and may make highlight errors missed in previous reviews.

Note: If you are worried shoppers may buy while you are in the middle of testing, you can set an access code (e.g. TESTNEWPROD). See the last section on this page for how to do that.

Do what one of your shoppers will have to do
  1. Start from your own page. That’s the page whose address shows in the Website field on the Webstore settings  tab.
  2. Click on the purchase tickets (or equivalent) link that you have placed on that page.
  3. Go through the purchase process, but after getting to the checkout page, do not enter any credit card information.
  4. Instead, verify the pricing, fees, address, dates and times.
  5. Then click the Cancel purchase link near the top of the page.
If that didn’t work …

If you can’t purchase tickets, here are the 2 most likely causes:

  1. You have not enabled online sales for a new production.
  2. You have no prices.
And to do a quick scan for other problems

The dashboard will list potential problems for all your future events at a glance. Put the mouse over most of the notes to get tooltips with more details.

Multiple casts for a single production

You can set up a single production with a single name, seat chart, and price structure, and then add extra information to specific performances afterward. The most common example is to add a suffix to the production name (e.g., Wicked – GREEN CAST). You can set the extra text as a prefix instead of a suffix, or have it replace the production name entirely. Here’s how to customize the name of a single event:

  1. Find the dashboard’s line for the event.
  2. Click on the blue config button near the right end of that line.
  3. Open the Name and visibility section if it’s not already open.
  4. Make a choice from the dropdown How the event on [event date and time] should be named. 
  5. Type the additional text in the field directly below.
  6. Submit the change.

Many events on a single day, or a small number of events, but spanning many months

The system shows events to shoppers in a calendar when the shopper is using a laptop or desktop computer, and as a list if they are shopping on a phone or tablet. In some situations, e.g., when there are many events on one day, or when a small number of events span different months, a calendar is an awkward presentation. You can set your account to always present performances in a list, always in a calendar, or to use the default convention of calendars for laptops/desktops and lists for smaller screens. Here’s how to configure the account:

  1. Find the  Starting view for shoppers dropdown in the Management panel of the Seat Yourself dashboard.
  2. Choose the setting you want from the dropdown.

Shoppers always have the option of switching from one presentation to the other while shopping, regardless of your setting and their device.

Banquets

The Aisle preferred checkbox on the shopping page for reserved seating events typically makes no sense for layouts the include only tables. Some layouts specially set up to support socially distanced pods may also have no well defined aisles. You can now remove that option from the sales page for any specific event. Here is how:

  1. Find the dashboard’s line for the event.
  2. Click on the blue config button near the right end of that line.
  3. Open the Name and visibility section if it’s not already open.
  4. Find the Shopping options dropdown and set it to the Hide aisle-preferred option.
  5. Submit the change.

If you’ve found a problem and don’t know how to fix it, email us at support@seatyourself.biz.