I have a non-profit local sporting club who stage an annual event each year as their principal fund-raiser (which their Treepl website largely successfully markets and manages). We are currently using ‘TicketTailor’ as their ticketing app which they’re happy with but are looking for a less expensive method of issuing attendance tickets.
Does anyone have any experience with a third party service they might recommend, or better still, some way of using the Treepl eCommerce engine to issue ‘tickets’?
I’ve suggested using the invoice as the ticket (checking off invoice numbers) but they need some way of scanning this and or sending to phone rather than just email and invoice numbers. Any suggestions or recommendations are welcome. Thanks in advance.
Hey Craig, this is how I would approach this: You use Treepl’s event module to sell the tickets. On the email/invoice the user receives you put a QR code which holds a URL with a parameter leading to a page on the clients site. You can put any link as QR image in any email by using this API: QR code API
Now, the parameter in the link is the order id. The link itself goes to a page inside a secure zone created for the staff at the check-in of the venue. On that page the order id in the link is feeding into JS to access the order in the Treepl instance via Treepl’s API for orders and changes e.g. the payment status of the order from “paid” to “attended”. This way you can make sure that every QR code is only used once and also check if the ticket has been paid for in the first place (e.g. if users can pay by invoice).
The staff at the venue can now login with their browsers to that secure zone, scan the QR codes on the tickets, calling that page and hence setting the order’s payment status to “attended”.
On another page in that secure zone you could list orders filtered by event and payment status and count how many guests have checked in to that event and what their names are.
That’s brilliant Tim - thanks so much. Didn’t know we had access to that QR Code API, that’s one of the main stumbling blocks for the client. I’ll run this by them and see how we go - but from my viewpoint this is yet another reason to use the Treepl platform. Thanks again for your considered reply, expertise and kindness in taking the time to look at this - much appreciated.
@Craig Yeah, this API is the only one I found which provides the QR image with an URL endpoint. I found others but they need Javascript which you can’t use in an email layout. That’s the weak spot of the concept, you have to rely on this API provider with their free service they can cancel anytime. So if you want to use this in a production enviroment, I would get in touch with them and ask for a paid plan.
A workaround with an API based on Javascript would be to link to a website in the email, maybe even put the ticket in a user zone.