Setting Up a New Season

To set up a new season in Audience1st, you need Box Office Manager privilege or higher.

A season has a start date, which is set on the Options tab during initial system setup. All references to seasons use this date as a boundary to separate consecutive seasons. So if the season start date is September 2, then the “2023-2024 season” runs from September 2, 2023, through September 1, 2024 (even if there are no shows after, say, May). If the season start date is set to January 1 so that the season coincides with the calendar year, Audience1st will refer to the season as simply “the 2024 season”.

Because the season start date is set on the Options tab, it will be the same for all seasons. Therefore it is important to choose a day of the year that will work for all of your seasons. January 1 and September 1 are common season start dates. It does not matter if the first show of your season won’t open until some time after the season start date. However, the system will not allow one show to have performances that would span multiple seasons; choose your season start date carefully to avoid a show that would cross a season boundary.

There are three parts to setting up a new season in Audience1st:

  1. A season consists of one or more shows or productions. Each show has one or more show dates or performances. Season setup begins with adding shows and then show dates for each show.
  2. A voucher type represents a particular type of ticket: a reserved seat, general admission, discount admission, comp ticket, and so on. A given voucher type is only valid during one specific season, though you can easily “clone” a voucher type from a previous season when setting up a new season. So the second part of season setup is indicating which voucher types will be used in the new season.
  3. Finally, a redemption specifies which kinds of vouchers can be sold for which performances. In effect, a redemption “connects” a set of performances to a set of voucher types. For example, you might offer a “Matinee Discount” voucher that is valid for matinees but not evening performances. The third part of setting up a new season is creating the redemptions – associating voucher types with show dates. You can optionally specify capacity controls, when tickets go on sale, and other attributes when creating redemptions. These options allow you to, for example, hold back a certain number of house seats on opening night, or limit the number of deeply discounted tickets that can be sold for any one performance, or enable subscribers to buy single tickets for friends before the general public can purchase single tickets.

You can add shows, performances, voucher types, and redemptions to a season at any time, even after the season is well under way and tickets have been sold. You can also make changes to your season at any time, but certain modifications may be restricted once tickets have been sold.

See the other articles in this section for detailed steps to guide you through each part of season setup: