by jonc | Aug 15, 2019 | Product
Payout frequencies and on-demand payouts
We’ve updated the way you receive your payouts on Helm Tickets! You now have more control over when you receive your funds and can select the payout frequency that best suits you.
These new features allow you to access your funds when you need them. It’s completely up to you which frequency you choose. To change your payout frequency, your account must be verified, billing details added, and you must also have received 3 previous payouts on our default monthly schedule.
The payout frequencies available are:
- On-demand
- Every week
- Every 2 weeks
- Monthly (default)
- Quarterly
If you need a quick cash boost, just request an on-demand payout and get your funds without waiting for payout day! There’s a small fee for on-demand payouts (2% of the payout amount, capped at £50/$50/€50), but you’ll have instant access to your funds. All other payouts remain free to process.
Sign in to your Helm Tickets account to see the new options. Click on ‘billing and payouts’ under your profile picture to choose which option you’d prefer.
by jonc | May 20, 2019 | Product
Updates to how you receive your payouts are coming soon! Here’s a quick insight into how it’ll work and what it means for you and your event.
Custom Payout Schedule
Currently, all payouts are carried out monthly, but now we’re giving you a choice when you’d like to be paid. The new options will be available to you once you’ve received 3 monthly payouts from us.
Until that point, payouts are set to the default of ‘monthly’. This is to reduce the risk of fraud and make sure all our organisers are legitimate. As we all know, security is of the highest importance in today’s climate. We pride ourselves on being the ticketing platform that is safe, secure and reliable, so we want to ensure our platform is consistently safe for our organisers and the attendees.
Once you’ve received your 3 monthly payouts from us, you’ll unlock the following options to choose from:
- Weekly
- Fortnightly
- Monthly
- Quarterly
We’re also updating your payouts page with the following information:
- Next payout date
- Next payout amount
- A record of all previous payout amounts and dates, which will be linked to the downloadable pdf statement
We aim to give you access to the vital funds you need when you need them. We know having a reliable cash flow is an essential factor in running any event, and we want to make sure we’re able to take away some of the stress that comes with waiting for payments.
There are, of course, a few situations we had to consider and plan for:
- Your account must be verified for you to receive payments
- If you’re yet to enter your bank account details, we’ll be sending you an email to let you know that if you don’t enter them before your next payout date, we won’t be able to pay you your funds. We’ll be checking this 7 days before your payout date is due to make sure you have plenty of time to update your details. If you don’t manage to update them in time, any funds will carry over to the next payout date.
- The minimum payout amount will be £75 (or the equivalent in your currency, e.g. $75/€75 etc.), which will apply to all currencies. If your account balance at the time of payout is below this, you’ll receive an email explaining that no payout has occurred because your account doesn’t have the minimum balance available. Inside this email will be a link to request an on-demand payout (carry on reading to find out more!) Any balance you have under £75 ($75/€75) will be again carried over to the next payout date.
- Your selected payout option will be locked until the next payout period. So, if you choose monthly payouts, you won’t be able to change them until the current month is over.
On-demand Payouts
And now for the biggest payouts update… on-demand payouts! Currently, there’s no option for you to request an on-demand payout if your balance is below the minimum payout amount of £75 (or the equivalent of your payout currency, e.g. $75/€75), so we’ve decided to create this as a new feature, on the “My Payouts” page. This will allow you to request a payout of your current balance* on demand. Like the new payouts schedule, this feature will only be available to you once you’ve verified your account and have entered your bank account details.
Any on-demand payout will be subject to a small fee for each on-demand payout
This means that if you’ve already had your default payout completed (i.e. 1x monthly payout), you’ll now be able to request an on-demand payout of your full balance from within your organiser dashboard. This might be useful to you when:
- You get paid monthly but want to have an additional payout within the same time period. For example, if your event finishes after your selected payouts schedule and you don’t want to wait another month to receive your funds.
- If you get paid monthly, but your ticket sales don’t add up to the minimum payout amount, you’ll be able to make an on-demand payout for any funds under £/€/$75
On-demand payouts apply only to the following payout options:
- Fortnightly
- Monthly
- Quarterly
So remember to keep this in mind when selecting your payout schedule.
There are also a few limitations for on-demand payouts:
- You’ll only be able to request 1 on-demand payout per month
- If you are requesting more than £500, you will only receive 50% of your available balance or £500 (whichever is the greater amount). e.g. if you have a balance of £580, you will be allowed to request up to £500. If you have a balance of £3000, then you should be allowed to request up to £1500
- You’ll only be able to request an on-demand payout instead of your usual selected payout option if your balance is below the minimum payout amount or if you’re likely to receive your payout faster than the normal timeframe (even if it’s just a week early)
by jonc | Mar 15, 2019 | Product
As part of our ongoing mission to make Helm Tickets more accessible to the thousands of organisers that use our software around the globe, we’ve introduced new localisation features for events, assets and organiser profiles. These changes will help your current and future events to run even more smoothly, no matter where you are in the world.
While individually these may not seem like huge changes, individually they’ll go a long way to supporting both organisers and ticket buyers outside of the UK going forward.
Localised times for events and users
With Helm Tickets expanding further around the world, it’s important that dates and times are displayed correctly and clearly to all users – both organisers and ticket buyers.
This feature includes a new time zone setting for your events. This setting allows you to set the time zone the event takes place in, and applies to any other times and dates set within your event, for example, ticket on sale from and to dates and times.
For example:
If you’re hosting a conference at 9 am in New York (EST, GMT-6) but the attendee is visiting from Los Angeles (PST, GMT-8), what time should be displayed – the time local to the event, or the time local to the current user?
Previously, this was ambiguous and there was no clear way of knowing, but now it’s much clearer, with the ability to manually set a time zone.
User’s timezone
The user’s timezone can be set from their profile page. If the person currently viewing the website doesn’t have an account (or is registering), our platform guesses what their time zone is, based on either their browser settings or IP address.
This time zone will be used to display any dates on the website that don’t directly relate to an event’s time slot. For example, see when an order was made or refund was processed, when an invoice is due, or when a member of the reserve list was last notified.
Event time zone
When creating or editing an event, you can set an explicit time zone against it. By default, it will select your time zone (if you’re the event organiser), but you can change this.
The time zone you choose (or your time zone if you leave it as the default) is the time zone that all event slots will be displayed in. Everywhere an event’s time slots are displayed will be in this timezone, usually with a clarification added to it. This helps all times be consistent and make it easy for your attendees to understand what time the event will take place at, in the time zone local to the event itself.
Updated Language Settings
We’ve also introduced a language setting that allows you to choose between English (United Kingdom) and English (United States), and we’re planning to add in further languages at a later date.
Until now, our website has been entirely in British English. This has caused some issues for American users in a couple of ways:
- American users are used to a different date format: they use MM/DD/YYYY whereas in the UK we use DD/MM/YYYY. This causes confusion when dates are shown, as when we display a date like 01/02/2019 it’s unclear whether this is 1st February or 2nd January
- It can appear like we have spelling mistakes to Americans, as we spell words like “organizer” (organiser) and “color” (colour) differently because of our use of the British spellings
This update allows users to select a language from their profile page, currently either between British English and American English. The default language selected is based on the user’s browser settings or IP when they register. The platform also assumes a language based on browser settings or IP if users don’t have an account.
Whichever language you select determines the language you’ll see, and this changes for each user. This means the date pickers show months and days differently, and any words that have different spellings between British and American English will be shown according to the language you choose.
Updated Date Pickers
The date pickers on our platform have proven to be tricky for a while – they weren’t user-friendly and can often be cumbersome and confusing to use.
We’ve replaced these date pickers with new ones. The new date pickers have an intuitive interface that’s easy to use on both desktop and mobile devices, with a clear way to select the time and a range of dates, and none of the hassles the old date pickers brought!
To make sure your event(s) and profile has the correct settings, we’ve made the following changes:
- We’ve updated all existing event time zones using the event(s) address and updated all other dates and times in the event(s) to match this
- We’ve updated your profile time zone, using data you may have already provided to us, such as your address
As we’ve made these changes under the assumptions above, you should check the time zone set against your event(s), and the time zone set against your profile to make sure they’re all correct. This way, we can ensure your event and future events run as smoothly as possible.
We hope you enjoy this update and hope it benefits your event. If you have any questions, please let us know by emailing support@helmtickets.com.
by jonc | Mar 1, 2019 | Product
Planners and owners using Helm Tickets can now download a simple spreadsheet called “All Order Data” a CSV file, which will contain all orders made against an event/asset, no matter it’s order or payment status.
This includes orders that have been:
- Fully paid
- Fully refunded
- Partially refunded
- Cancelled
- Pending invoice payment
This was developed for planners, who needed this functionality to track attendees who turn up to their events having not paid for their tickets. But this feature can be used however you may need
The difference between this download and the guest list/bookings download is it now contains the following columns:
- Ticket Cancelled – whether the ticket was cancelled, as part of a refund or order cancellation
- Order Status – this will show the same statuses found on the “View orders” page, eg. received, complete or cancelled
- Order Payment Status – this will also show the same payment statuses found on the “View orders” page, eg. Paid, Offline, Fully Refunded, Partially Refunded, etc.
Please note: The existing guest list download remains the same and will only contain attendees where the ticket hasn’t been cancelled and has been paid for. This also includes office tickets.
A new “Download All Order Data” button is available in the “Tools” menu of the view event and asset dashboard page. When you hover over it a tooltip appears giving further detail to the planner as to what the download will contain and will warn them that we advise that it isn’t used to aid event entry/asset bookings management.
by jonc | Jan 28, 2019 | Product
Asset Booking is now available with Helm!
You will now be able to book assets and rooms – not just event tickets. There are many uses for this feature, including room booking, hot desking, booking out office space, sports halls or event assets such as equipment or even people!
Here is a quick rundown on the new feature: what it is and how it can help you.
Why use Asset Booking?
Asset booking enables users to be able to book and organise more than just events. It will allow users to book any ‘asset’ – whether it be a room, a physical piece of equipment or an hour of someone’s time.
For example, Asset Booking would be used well for booking stands at conferences.
How does Asset Booking work?
The asset booking feature allows customers to book out any asset for a fee, dependent on how long the asset is used.
An organiser can use the asset booking feature to book:
- Buildings
- Meeting rooms
- Hot desks
- Conference rooms
- Equipment
- Or anything else that needs a booking system
As this feature is built on top of our event ticketing platform (although there are a few differences, such as pricing structure), all other functionality you get from our ticketing platform will work with the asset booking functionality.
This means that the owner of the assets available to book can:
- Refund and cancel orders
- Embed their asset booking page into their own website using a widget
- See the list of people who have rented the asset in a convenient CSV
- Manage orders
- Accept payments by invoice
- Apply discount codes
- Include memberships
The asset management button can be found in the “Utilities” menu in the left-hand sidebar from the dashboard. Then use the “Create New Asset” button to begin.
When creating an asset booking page, the experience will be very similar to creating an event but with some notable differences:
- Some options are missing – you can’t set the event category, use tickets or use the reserve/waiting list.
- You can set the “type” of available asset, which will change the wording when the asset is referenced.
When setting the dates that the asset is available, you can add dates in bulk by clicking “add time slots in bulk” under the date entry fields. This is a new feature to make adding time slots and dates easier and more efficient.
When creating the asset booking, the venue search can be used as it would when creating an event, along with adding a description.
There is a “payment options” section to allow customers to pay by invoice or not. Please get in touch with our support team if you wish to have Pay By Invoice added to your asset booking.
Unlike our event platform, where the pricing is based on tickets, the pricing is set by the amount of time being booked in, and how much it will cost is specified by the asset’s owner.
For example:
- A 30-minute time slot will be charged £6
- A 1-hour time slot will be charged for £10
This is how the prices can be set when an asset is booked for a time slot.
When a customer places a booking for a specified time slot, the price is calculated to give the customer the cheapest possible rate for longer amounts of time.
As an example using the rates above:
A 2.5 hour time slot will be calculated as (2 x 1 hour) + (1 x 30-minute) slot = £25 rather than 5 x 30-minute slots = £30.
Please note that the paid rates are subject to a booking fee that will be worked out using the same pricing structure as our fees on tickets.
At the end of the asset creation page, images can be added along with any terms and conditions, privacy policies and refund policies.
When a customer is booking a time slot, they will see all available time slots throughout the date parameters that they have set and then continue to select the time slots they wish to book.
Once a customer is happy with their selection and clicks “checkout”, they will continue through the purchasing process as if buying a ticket. However, they will not be asked to provide a “ticket holder name” for each time slot booked if more than 1 is selected.
How does it affect you (the planner)?
As previously mentioned, this feature would be handy if you run events like conferences or trade shows where stands can be booked out for certain lengths of time and still needing to sell visitor tickets.
The uses for this are huge and can be used depending on your needs. Examples being room booking, hot desking, booking out office space, sports halls or event assets such as equipment or even people.
Our goal is to make your life easier as an organiser: we aim to build these features to get you selling tickets for your events as soon as possible and as smoothly as possible.
So this a brief guide on how to use our new Asset Booking feature and why it would be useful to you as an organiser!
For more advice on features both new and old, check out our help desk.
by jonc | Jan 3, 2019 | Product
When organising events and selling tickets, we all know that some refunds can be inevitable and unavoidable. We also understand how frustrating it can be when you need the funds from ticket sales to help with cash flow and pay for your event expenses.
This is why we’ve created a new feature for you – Partial Refunds.
You can now select which attendees from a specific order need a refund, as well as having the choice to issue a full refund or a partial refund.
This is useful for situations such as a price drop or issuing cancellation fees.
To get started on issuing a partial refund:
Access the “View All Orders” page from your dashboard and select “Refund Order” on the order you wish to issue a partial refund to by using the green arrow icon on the order.
From here, you’ll be able to see a pop-up.
By default, the popup is set up for a full refund, and all tickets will be selected at their full purchase amount. The selected ticket will be cancelled if you proceed with the refund without making changes.
If you wish to issue a partial refund, you’ll need to deselect the tickets that will not be included in the partial refund using the left-hand checkboxes.
If you would like the tickets to be cancelled and make them invalid at your event, select “Yes” on the “Cancel” drop-down. Otherwise, select “No”, and the ticket will still be valid at your event but refunded/partially refunded anyway.
Now you can adjust the amount to be refunded from each ticket.
The total amount will adjust to how much is being refunded as a whole. This amount includes booking fees and tax. Please note: the minimum amount that can be refunded is 0.50 in all currencies.
When you’re happy with the amount of the partial refund(s), you need to submit a reason for the refund to continue. You can choose if you wish to notify the attendee of the partial refund via email or not.
If you wish to leave an internal note on order for yourself, you can leave a note on order. This could be a reason for the refund, such as a price change on the ticket purchased.
When you’re happy with all of the information, click “refund”, and the refund will be complete. The ticket price will adjust automatically to reflect your revenue amounts on your dashboard.
Any fully refunded and cancelled tickets will be removed from your guest list CSV, so this will need to be downloaded again to ensure the changes are reflected in the final list.
Please note: Refunds can take 5 to 10 working days to reach the attendee’s bank account, but most take place immediately.
