Accounting for ticket sales

in this article, we're going to cover how ludus goes about accounting for tickets in ludus (which includes tickets tied to season and flex passes) introduction if you've spent time in different ticketing systems, you'll notice every system reports for things like tickets and passes in various ways, depending on the age of the ticketing system and how they view things like individual tickets versus season tickets and how flex passes are redeemed we have quickly learned that organizations account for these items in various ways, and there is no one size fits all, so we have built an accounting system around the principle of business accounting and recognizing revenue as it is collected in ludus, we consider all sales revenue immediately recognized for example, if you sell a $100 season package, we immediately recognize $100 as revenue earned and deposit $100 into your bank account (further info on this is in the "passes/subscriptions" section below ) terms below are the terms in ludus you'll find in the various financial reports, such as the summary, revenue, and itemized reports gross — this is the face value of the item (ticket, donation, pass) before any discounts, absorbed fees, and other deductions revenue — this is your total money earned (deposited) after all deductions discounts — any discounts given on a ticket or pass sale gift cards — if you have gift cards enabled on your account, patrons can apply their gift cards to their orders at checkout custom fees — if you have custom fees enabled, this will show you the revenue collected for those fees fees — these are the ludus fees and will show as a negative number if you absorb fees tax — if you have sales tax enabled on your account, this will be the total sales tax collected refund — when you refund tickets, passes, or donations, we'll show a negative number to account for the deduction in revenue sold — total # sold of everything before refunds this gives you an actual accurate number of the number of items you sold so this number will always match your gross (i e 5 $10 tickets is $50 gross with 5 tickets sold) upgrades — ticket upgrades, exchanging a ticket from a lower price to a higher price credit — any sales paid for via a credit/debit card online or in person at the box office cash — any sales marked as cash via the selling process in your admin panel (cash sales cannot be done on the self serve patron portal) comp — any sales that lead to a $0 ticket, whether that is an admin sale clicking the "complimentary" button or a discount taking 100% off the ticket's value other — any sales marked as an "other" payment option by an admin, which can be anything like "check" learn more about other payment options flex pass — any tickets redeemed using a flex pass; a flex pass is sold for a $ amount up front, typically for x number of tickets patrons redeem tickets throughout the season, and those tickets are essentially comped to the patron at checkout, as they paid up front for the tickets, of which that revenue was immediately recognized (they can add additional tickets to their cart and pay for those, for which that revenue would be recognized immediately upon that new sale ) season ticket — any tickets sold within a season ticket package for a flat $ amount or a percent off each ticket, for x number of tickets these are tickets selected/given up front for the entire season, and the full money paid at that time is immediately recognized as revenue in your account at the global level similar to flex passes, the gross value of the tickets will be reflected on your specific event reports, but the revenue is recognized globally global vs event reports in ludus, you can see all sales in your entire account for everything, and event specific reports that break down sales for that specific event global — to access global reports, go to reports in your top navigation this will load data for your entire account for all tickets, donations, passes, gift cards, etc it is most useful to see your account's total sales and revenue with everything added together and also broken down into categories event — to access an event specific report, go to your events page and click the reports button next to an event and this will load data just for that event this will not include things like donations as donations are not tied to an event's revenue (which you can see at the global level) tickets all single tickets have a gross value and then a revenue (total received) value for example, if you have a $10 ticket with a $2 discount, the gross value of the ticket is $10 and the revenue is $8 ($10 $2 discount) gross is always the value of the ticket before anything is added to or subtracted from the face value of the ticket comp tickets even complimentary tickets have a value, though they end with zero revenue a ticket that is comp'd will still list a gross value, which is its face value — we especially do this so you can see how much was given away in free tickets the revenue (how much your earned) for comp tickets will always be $0 passes/subscriptions the tickets within a pass are displayed as their gross value on reports but are not accounted for as revenue on a per ticket basis as to not double account for sales for example, if you sell a $100 pass, the $100 is immediately recognized as revenue and deposited to your account at the global level (under reports in your top navigation) any tickets within that pass will count toward the total tickets for an event and will add to the gross sales for the event, however the revenue on the event will not reflect the $100 as that is at the global level alternaive ways for a ccounting for pass/subscription tickets revenue on an event typically what most programs do is one of the below manually — every event comes with a report that will break it down by the payment type which includes flex pass and season tickets each ticket sold will list that ticket's gross value before any discounts you can choose to export the summary report > set the value of the single tickets for the flex pass and/or season ticket line items based on how your organization values those tickets > and calculate the total revenue discounted season tickets — instead of selling a season package as a flat $ amount, you can choose to sell it as a % discount some organizations will enter the exact discount given to each ticket in a package while others will create lower value ticket prices on their events only to be used in their season packages (such as "season ticket adult") and they assign those ticket prices to the pass