Box Office Xpress Junior - FAQ
As common questions arise, they are listed here.
Different Versions
Q: What is the difference between Box Office Xpress Junior and the regular version of Box Office Xpress?
A: It is important to note that these are two entirely different products.
Box Office Xpress Junior (BOX Jr) is an in-house ticketing system that is intended for smaller organizations that do reserved seating (typically under 1500 seats), as well as larger organizations (Universities, etc) that do primarily general admission. Although BOX Jr has no Internet ticketing capabilities, it does allow you to easily allocate seats that you may wish to sell on the Internet (such as through AdmiTix) and also creates a listing of those seats to send to your Internet service (such as AdmiTix).
Box Office Xpress, on the other hand, is both an in-house and a real-time Internet ticketing system, and is designed for any venue of any size, including stadiums.
Q: When is AdmiTix?
A: AdmiTix is an Internet Ticket Centre. It is a place where multiple organizations can sell their tickets on-line. It is also a good way to promote your venue by way of potential customers browsing the site looking for events that appeal to them.
Q: When is the next version expected and what would be the upgrade cost?
A: There may be minor updates from time to time and they are available
free if downloaded from our web site. The more significant types of upgrades are
announced and priced when available.
Q: What are the restrictions of the trial version?
A: The trial version can only be upgraded to a minor upgrade. If you download a moderate or major upgrade or a new trial version without ordering the program, you will loose all of your data each time. The trial will only work for a limited (but ample) time. Other than that, there are no restrictions on the functionality.
Tickets
Q: Can the program use thermal ticket printers?
A: Yes. The program is designed to also work with Boca and Practical Automation
thermal ticket printers as well as any other Boca-compatible (FGL) thermal printer. The program will also work with the Epson TM-T88x thermal
receipt printer as an optional method for day-of-event sales, or just for
printing receipts.
Q: Do we have to purchase ticket stock directly from you?
A: No. There are a variety of sources from which to purchase the stock. The sources can be found in our list of ticket stock suppliers.
Q: Does the program support Internet Ticketing?
A: Not directly. Refer to the first answer at the top of the page.
Q: How long does it take to print a ticket?
A: It depends entirely on your printer, as the actual time it takes for Box Office Xpress Junior to send data to a printer is usually less than a second. With thermal ticket printers, it takes about 1 second to print a ticket. Dot matrix printers, however, are slower. It takes anywhere from 10 to 20 seconds per ticket depending on the dot matrix configuration you selected within the program and the speed of your printer. It is strongly recommended that you get a thermal ticket printer, unless it just isn't in your budget.
Order Taking
Q: How hard is it to generate a new ticket sale over the phone?
A: It's a simple process as is shown in the demo for taking an order. An advantage is, you
don't have to print the ticket right away. You can book several Events for the
customer and not print the tickets until you have time or when they show up to get them.
There is also a button you can click on that will print *all* the tickets for a particular
customer, if you want.
Q: How hard is it to exchange tickets a) within the same show for different dates or seats, and b) between shows?
A: Same Event / different seats -> extremely easy ... a button click to change,
then select the new seats, and a button click to save. Different Event -> the
order has to be redone, so the original order has to be deleted (which essentially
involves a button click) and then place the new order (and you know how easy that is
... so it only takes about a minute).
Q: How do we do a full return on tickets, where someone just changes their mind and wants a refund, not an exchange?
A: To delete an order you click either the Cancel or Remove button (after you do a simple search for the
order). One button completely removes the order from the database (as if it never existed)
the other cancels the order so that you have a record of the initial transaction (where
you received payment) and the new transaction where you refunded payment (refunding is
also an option). In other words, the Cancel button provides an audit trail. Note, to
search for an order you can use either the customer's partial phone
number (such as the last four digits) or the actual order # (which is printed on the
ticket), so it is very fast.
Q: We want to be able to sell tickets the night of the Event but don't have access to the computer at the actual location (some venues sell tickets the night of an Event at a different location than the actual box office).
A: There are several alternatives that various venues use. These include connecting a
computer up by a network (which requires the network version of
Box Office Xpress), copying the database files to a laptop that also
has a copy of Box Office Xpress Junior on it*, pre-printing tickets for unsold
tickets in advance
(using the batch print function) and adjusting the sales in the program the next day,
using the printable seating plan to sell off remaining seats, and so on.
*You can have as many copies of the program as you want running on different computers for
your organization with only having to pay for one copy of the stand alone (single
user) license. However,
only one computer can be the active box office computer at a time (in order to preserve
data integrity). You can't access the database across multiple computers at the same time
unless they are on a network and you have purchased the network (site) license of
Box
Office Xpress Junior. This means, if
you want to switch computers, you need to manually copy all the program's databases (all
the files ending in ".mdb") from one computer to another. If you have the
network license and the venue location is connected to the network, then transferring
files is obviously not necessary.
Seating
Q: Our venue often changes some of the seating from one Event to the next. Can we create different seat maps to accommodate this?
A: Yes, you can create as many as you want. You can even clone an
existing map and make whatever changes are necessary.
Q: Is it possible to generate a seat map larger than 35 seats wide and 25 rows deep?
A: No, not in Box Office Xpress Junior. The larger
Box Office
Xpress program, on the other hand, has no realistic limits. However, all you need
to do with Box Office Xpress Junior is create additional seating
sections (which is what most
venues do anyway). For example, if you have a center aisle, create one section for each side
of the aisle.
Q: Does the program have a feature to automatically choose the "best seats"?
A: No, not in Box Office Xpress Junior (the larger
Box Office
Xpress program has a feature to choose the next available seats). Keep in mind that the
Box Office
Xpress Junior order process and seat selection are so fast, it is still quicker to do it manually
than with other programs on the market that have best seat functions.
Q: We get a lot of tour groups and they keep changing the quantity of seats that they want. How can the program handle that?
A: Perhaps the most appropriate solution would be to use the
allocation function. You can allocate a block of seats (not sell - just block
from sale) specifically for a tour group. You can easily add and remove seats
from this allocation. When the final number of seats is known, you can then sell
the order using the Allocate payment method, and select the allocated seats.
Refer to Help for more information on allocated seats.
Q: Can I sell tickets for more than one venue or organization?
A: The program requires one specific organization name on the ticket. This is the organization that bought the program. If you run multiple venues, you can reference the specific venues using the additional lines of text that you can include on the tickets. To sell for different organizations, however, requires multiple program licenses and can't be all done from the same copy of the program. The larger Box Office Xpress program, on the other hand, allows you to sell to do what you want without the need for additional licenses or costs.
Q: Can I set up my seating for a dinner theatre?
A: Yes. Click here for an explanation.
Other
Q: Do you have a version for the Mac?
A: Regrettably, the programming language that Box Office Xpress
Junior was written in only
supports PC's at this time. However, other organizations (who have Mac's) have opted for an
alternate solution. Since one computer is usually restricted to the box office, these
organizations purchase a basic PC to handle that job exclusively, using Box Office Xpress
Junior. They
then use their Mac for other jobs. Also, Box Office Xpress Junior stores all of it's information in Microsoft Access databases, which the Mac can read if it has
an appropriate version of MS Access installed.
Q: How do I do mailings to certain groups of customers?
A: Mailing labels can be printed based on a variety of criteria.
Q: How many Series (productions), Events (performances), pricing schemes, seats, etc. can we have?
A: One word … UNLIMITED!
Terminology Note: Box Office Xpress Junior considers an Event to be a single showing of a Seires. For example, "The King and I" is a Series, and the showing of "The King and I" this Tuesday night at 8:00 PM is the Event.
Q: Can Box Office Xpress Junior help me calculate royalties?
A: Box Office Xpress Junior isn't meant to take over bookkeeping functions, but it does provide
sales reports that can assist with your bookkeeping functions. One of those report
types are
called "Distributed Value" reports which, among other things, takes the
total cost of a customer's subscription and spreads the derived value out equally over
each of the Events that the customer has booked.
Q: Box Office Xpress Junior seems to be geared towards just stage theatre. Is this correct?
A: No. Original ... 15 years ago ... Yes. But the program has evolved
to handle just about any type of situation requiring admission. Have a look at
our
customer list to get an idea.
Q: The Box Office Xpress Junior trial doesn't appear to have certain features that I require. Will more features be added or is there a more advanced version?
A: Box Office Xpress Junior will continue to have features added. But if your needs are urgent, have a look at the larger Box Office Xpress program, which is designed for any venue of any size and also handles real-time Internet ticketing.
If you would like to submit a question you can't find an answer to, please Contact Us.