Selling tickets and merchandise

Sell tickets for your events, and things like cookbooks or tea towels, from your PTA's own online shop. The money goes straight into your PTA's bank account through Stripe. Upfayre never holds it and takes no commission.

Selling is part of the full plan. On the free plan you can sell tickets for one event, so you can try it for real. Only your committee can set it up.

1. Connect Stripe

Stripe is the payment company that takes the card payments and pays them into your PTA's bank account. You set it up once.

Open Manage PTA in the menu, click Payments, then Start setup.

You'll go to Stripe's own pages. They'll ask about your PTA, the bank account the money should be paid into, and the committee member setting it up: Stripe has to check who's responsible for the account.

It takes about five minutes, and if you stop halfway, Continue setup picks up where you left off. When it's done, the Payments page says Payments are ready. You'll need to have confirmed your email address before you start.

Stripe charges its usual card fee on each sale. You can ask buyers to cover it: tick the option on an event's settings, or on your shop for merchandise.

A new treasurer, or a different Stripe account

Whoever takes over the payments needs to be on the committee in Upfayre first. Click People in the menu, open the menu beside their name and choose Promote to committee. Then it depends on how far the Stripe setup has got.

• The setup isn't finished, perhaps because the wrong person started it: on the Payments page, click Start over, and the new treasurer clicks Start setup to begin again with their own details. The unfinished Stripe account is no longer used, and whoever started it can close it from their own Stripe dashboard.
• Payments are already working and you just have a new treasurer: you don't need to change anything in Upfayre. The Stripe account belongs to your PTA, so click Open Stripe dashboard on the Payments page and add the new treasurer in Stripe's settings, as a team member and as the person responsible for the account. Your sales and bank details carry on as before.
• You want to move to a different Stripe account, such as one set up in the PTA's name rather than a parent's: click Disconnect Stripe on the Payments page, then Start setup to connect the new one. Card payments pause until the new account is ready. Keep the old account open, because refunds for anything it has already taken still go through it.

Please don't delete your Stripe account from Stripe's own site while it's connected to Upfayre: card payments stop straight away. If it happens, your committee gets an email, and Start setup on the Payments page connects a new one.

2. Put an event's tickets on sale

Open the event. On its Overview, click Charging for entry?, then Set up ticket sales.

Give the ticket a name, such as "Adult" or "Family ticket", a price, and how many are available. Leave Put on sale as Yes — sell now and click Create tickets. A free event can have £0 tickets: people just leave a name and email address, and you still know who's coming.

For a second kind of ticket, such as a child's, click Tickets on the event's Overview to open it, then Add ticket type.

• Seats shared between ticket types: if adults and children fill the same 100 places, click Seat pool and set the total.
• A family ticket: set People per ticket, so one ticket admits several people.
• Early-bird prices and a sales window (when sales open and close) are optional extras on the same form.
• Time slots, like grotto visits every 15 minutes: click Add time slot tickets in the same panel. Give the first slot, the last and how often, and how many places each slot has. Add a price, or several ticket types such as Child and Under 2, which share each slot's places. Upfayre makes them all. Buyers pick a time, or several, and Manage slots shows how full each one is. For an early-bird price, tick Early-bird price until a date: it applies to every time until the date you choose.

To change time slots, click Edit beside them in the same panel. It's the form you set them up with, so you can change anything, including the times and the ticket types. A time someone has booked stays put, and so does a ticket type someone has booked: if a change would take one out, Upfayre says which instead of saving. Manage slots lists each time with its own places. A time nobody has booked has Delete beside it, and one that's been booked has Archive. To start again, click Delete all time slots at the bottom of Manage slots, then Add time slot tickets again.

To change a ticket, such as its price or how many are available, click Edit beside it in the same panel. A ticket nobody has bought yet, such as a test one, has Delete there instead, and goes for good. To stop selling one that has sold, click Archive: it comes off sale straight away, and anything already sold stays in your orders and reports.

Hiding how many are left

Buyers see how many of each ticket are left. If you'd rather not show the numbers (to pitch a busy event in your own words), open the event's Settings tab and untick Show buyers how many are left. They'll still see Sold out when tickets have all gone, and you still see the real numbers.

Asking buyers a question

Need a meal choice, a child's class or dietary needs for each ticket? Click Shop in the menu, open the ticket, click Edit, and click Add a question under Questions for buyers. (If another ticket or item already asks questions, choose Ask its own questions first, or The same questions as another ticket or item to share that one's.) Questions can be short answers or a choice from a list, and a choice can add to the price. You can also tick Require a name for each ticket. Buyers answer before they pay, and you'll find every answer under Ticket sale responses on the event.

An event over more than one day

If your event runs over several days and a ticket is only for one of them, like a visit on the Saturday of a two-day fair, choose the day under Which day? when you add or edit the ticket. Buyers see the day on the ticket and in their email, and the door only lets it in on that day. Leave it as Any day of the event for a ticket that's good for the whole event. If a ticket is for any one day of the buyer's choosing, add one ticket for each day.

3. Sell merchandise

Click Shop in the menu, then New product. Choose Merchandise, give it a name, price and photo, and set Status to Active. New products start as Draft, so nothing goes on sale by accident. Click Create product.

Merchandise that isn't linked to an event is sold from your PTA's shop page. Things sold at an event, like raffle tickets, can be linked to it under Linked event, and they're then sold next to its tickets.

4. Share the link

Each event with tickets has its own page for buyers. Under Tickets on the event's Overview, Copy copies its link, Public page shows it to you as a parent sees it, and QR code gives you a code to download for posters and newsletters.

Your whole shop, with every event and product on sale, has a link too. It's shown under Your public shop on the Shop page. The Short and Pretty buttons switch between a short link and one with your PTA's name in it. Both work.

Parents don't need an account to buy. What they see is in Buying tickets.

Messaging everyone who bought tickets

Before the day, click Message ticket holders under Tickets on the event's Overview to email everyone who bought tickets: a reminder, the running order, where to park. Write your message, preview it, send yourself a test if you like, then send it. Each email ends with that buyer's own tickets and a button that shows their QR codes, so nobody has to dig out their confirmation email at the door. Replies come to the address you choose.

Orders and refunds

Click Orders under Tickets on the event's Overview for that event's orders, or on the Shop page for everything. Open an order to see who bought what and when.

To refund a whole order, click Refund on the order. The money goes back to the buyer's card and the tickets stop working. To refund only some of the tickets, tick them under Cancel some tickets. Refunds can't be undone.

Please refund from Upfayre rather than from the Stripe dashboard, so that the tickets are cancelled and the places go back on sale.