Beacon makes it easy to collect event registrations and sell tickets online. There's no code to write, plus we take care of a lot of the things you probably don't want to worry about, like:
Data entry - so the data ends up in the right place
Email acknowledgements - so event attendees get automated receipts
By default, Beacon's event registration forms conveniently handle your supporter's entire ticket purchasing process; from choosing the tickets they want to purchase, through to their payment and automated receipts. However, what might you do if you don't want that supporter to pay for their ticket at the point of sign-up? Perhaps you need to approve attendees before you request a payment from them, or maybe the price of your tickets is significantly higher than most payment providers will process in a single transaction. Event registration forms give you the option to invoice people for their tickets, whilst still handling all the other important aspects of that registration process.
Contents:
Setting up an example event registration form
Unlike other event registration forms, there's no need to connect payment providers first, since you won't be collecting payments directly via the form.
Create your first form
Go to Forms in your sidebar
Click Create form. Give your new form a Name (this will NOT be public) and a Title (the form's public facing name). Set the type to Event registration.
Choose the event for people to register for. Start typing in the field and it will show a list of matching events to link to.
Click Create
By default, your event registration form will be set to collect payments. Go ahead and switch this toggle off so it displays grey.
Set the ticket allocation for your event. This is the total number of individual people who can attend. If you're trying to fill a 50 seat theatre, set this to 50.
Create some ticket options for your form. Click + ADD TICKET OPTION in the bottom left of the Ticket options section. Add some information about this new ticket like the example here.
Note: setting the ticket 'amount' lets people know how much the ticket will cost them when invoiced - this does not require them to make a payment via the form.
Save your form by clicking 💾 SAVE CHANGES at the bottom of the page.
Click ↗ VIEW FORM in the top right corner of the page. You'll see that a new form is created, and good to go!
That's it! Try running a test registration through the form. Instead of a payment section, you should see a summary of the total the supporter will be invoiced for, as in the image below:
After the form is submitted, you'll see that the following happens automatically:
New Event attendee records have been created
A new Ticket record has been created
The person paying for the ticket (the payer) has been created as a Person record (or updated if they already existed)
The people named as the ticket holders have been created as a Person record (or updated if they already existed)
The payer is acknowledged immediately via email
You've been notified via email that the registration and donation happened
For additional information on setting up event registration forms, such as paid tickets, making additional donations and discount codes, take a look at our guide article here!
Created records in Beacon
The Payment record:
Like all other Payments created on form submission, invoiced ticket Payments are created with a 'Type' (in this case 'Ticket') and 'Payment method' ('Invoice').
Unlike all other Payment records however, we assume some slightly different things about the 'status' of that Payment:
⇒The 'Paid?' checkbox is unchecked
Since the payment has not been processed via a connected payment provider, Beacon doesn't have any information about whether the invoice has been paid. The Payment record is created at the point of form submission, so it is assumed that the invoice has not yet been sent, and therefore not paid.
⇒ Payment date > is blank
Likewise, since there is no information about whether the Payment has been paid, neither are any assumptions made about when it was, or might be paid.
FAQs
Can I still collect additional donations via my form if people are being invoiced for their tickets?
No - Turning off the "collect payments through this form" toggle will disable “payments” and “additional” donations sections on your form. You will see a warning saying these sections are disabled:
The ticket purchaser created by the form has multiple addresses, how do I know which one to use as their 'billing address' for invoicing?
If your new supporter has multiple addresses, the billing address will be stored as a secondary address for them. This is the one that you will use for billing and invoicing purposes.