Helping with community events?

How to ticket a community hall or village event

Are you responsible for your local community or village hall? Do you put on ticketed fashion shows, jewellery fairs, Christmas fairs or other events? Would you like to use a simple, free way to sell your tickets from your local community website?

IRIS Express makes it simple - from advertising a single point to buy tickets from your website, to enabling visitors to purchase tickets using their credit cards.

Here’s how IRIS Express can benefit your community hall and help to ensure your special events are well attended:

Free - IRIS Express really is free to use, we make our money from the advertising on the site and on the print-at-home tickets, meaning there are no booking fees to pay for the people attending your events.

Simple - You don't need to be an IT expert to use IRIS Express, it’s simple to set up and you can easily place images relevant to each event, and any other important information, on your sales page and on your tickets. Click here to see the 6 simple steps to setting up your IRIS Express account.

Easy - All you need to do is set up a PayPal account, have access to the internet and have an email address and you can start to set up your online ticket sales for your community hall events. Click here to see how easy it is to set up a IRIS Express account.

Safe - Access to your IRIS Express and PayPal accounts are password protected. You have total control over access to the system, protecting your information and your money.

Secure - PayPal is a secure payment site which lets you take credit card, debit card and PayPal account payments for your tickets in advance, but without you having to worry about handling card details yourself.

Less work - As IRIS Express is simple to administer, it won't be a huge task for you to take on and run. This is important when you have limited time to spare or are relying on volunteers to help. It will mean less cheques and cash to pay into the bank, and will reduce the number of phone calls you receive.

Transparent - At any time you can see exactly how many tickets you have sold for each event. You can see who is coming and how much money you have taken. You can watch your sales grow by the minute and report back with all the facts and figures.

Flexible - Decide how you want to sell your tickets. You can set different price bands for ticket concessions and even sell merchandise items such as t-shirts, cds and programmes in advance which people can collect when they arrive.

Choice - Let attendees to each event pay for their tickets in advance by credit card or enable them to simply reserve their tickets and pay for them on the gate - all using the same online system. So if people don't want to use their credit cards, you can still let them reserve their tickets to the events online (and you won't get a PayPal charge for this!). You can even 'sell' free tickets through IRIS Express, helping you keep control of all your events without having to charge your visitors for tickets.
Find out more about this: click here

Visibility - Print out a door report on the day so you know who is coming to each event, and whether they have pre-paid or not, helping you better manage your event planning and logistics.

Funds - You can have virtually instant access to your ticket money through PayPal and, once verified, can transfer the takings straight to your chosen bank account.

Costs - Depending on the number of tickets you sell, Pay Pal’s charges are between 1.4% and 3.4% of the transaction cost plus 20p per transaction. For example if you have sold 2 £5.00 tickets in one transaction, this will cost you between 54p and 34p.

Prevention - If your visitors have already paid for their event tickets online in advance they are more likely to turn up, no matter what the weather! And they might buy more tickets for their friends at the same time.

Be Viral – the more tickets you sell in advance, the more chance you have of your ticket buyers persuading their family and friends to come too... and book their own tickets online.

Sell - We give you a web link to put on your chosen website which attendees can click on to buy tickets. It takes just minutes to set up, and you can be selling your tickets almost instantly.

Share - Share the ‘buy tickets now’ link with other websites - your local newspaper, radio stations, schools and other local support groups. People can then click on the link directly from there to buy their tickets. Extending your reach and making it easier for people to buy tickets.

Marketing - You will have the name, address and email details of the people who have bought tickets so you can contact them with details of future events at your venue, or encourage them to get involved or even join a ‘Friend’s of’ group.

Promote – Your event tickets will get listed on the www.ts.com ticket portal and the other web sites, including www.wherecanwego.com, automatically, helping you reach a new audience and boost your ticket sales. Find out more about promotions by clicking here.

Control - IRIS Express from ts.com puts you in total control of your tickets your payments and your events.

If you have any more questions on using IRIS Express, click here to read our FAQ page.