Allocated Seating

What allocated seating is

Ordinary ticketing sells by the number: ten left, take three. Allocated seating sells the seats themselves. You draw your room once as a seating plan, attach it to an event, and the buyer takes row C seat 14 off a map of your actual venue. Nobody can be sold a seat twice.

The most important thing to understand is what happens to quantity. An ordinary ticket type has a number you set. An allocated one does not: its inventory is the seats in its part of the plan, so the plan decides how many exist. A band that runs out is sold out even while another band is wide open.

A plan is a drawing of a room, not of one night. Attach it to a recurring event and every performance of the run sells from the same drawing, each date keeping its own bookings. A single date can be changed on its own when the piano takes out the front row.

Seated and standing in one room

One plan can hold both. A seated section carries individual seats a buyer chooses. A standing section carries a capacity and sells by the number, exactly like an ordinary ticket type - it never appears in the seat map. Rows at the front and a standing floor at the back is one plan with two price bands.

Step 1 - Build the plan

Open Seating on your venue schedule and choose New plan. A plan is a drawing of a room, so the tab appears on venue schedules only. Plans belong to the schedule, not to an event, so one plan serves every show you put in that room.

New plan takes you straight into the designer. Name the plan in the box at the top left, whenever you like - a new plan starts out called Untitled plan and the name saves along with the layout.

The room is on the left and everything that edits it is on the right. Switch levels and zoom from the strip above the map, pick a section to edit it, and click a seat to change its type - seat controls appear under the map, beside the seats themselves. Undo (Ctrl+Z, or Cmd+Z on a Mac) covers every change you make here, and Ctrl+S saves.

Start from one of four layouts and adjust it, or start from a blank canvas:

Theatre with balcony - curved stalls plus a smaller upper level
Cabaret tables - round tables of eight on one floor
Straight rows - a simple grid of numbered rows
Seated and standing - rows of seats in front of a standing area

Levels, sections and rows

A plan is built from three things:

Levels are floors - stalls, circle, balcony. A ground-floor room needs only one.
Sections are blocks within a level, each with its own colour and price band.
Rows and tables fill a section. For rows you give the number of rows, the seats in each, and how they are labelled.

Drag a section to move it. Click a seat to select it, or shift-click for several, then set what those seats are and whether a gangway follows them.

Generate rows adds, it does not replace

Both Generate rows and Generate tables append to what the section already has, so you can build a block at a time - six rows of ten at the front, then four of twelve behind. Press either button twice by accident and you have double the seats - press Undo in the toolbar, or Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z on a Mac).

How rows and seats are numbered

When you generate rows you choose how they are labelled, and a preview shows the first few before anything is created. Rows can be lettered A, B, C (skipping I and O, which are misread as 1 and 0 on a printed ticket) or numbered 1, 2, 3. Seats within a row can run straight across, or odds one side and evens the other, which is how most older theatres are numbered from the centre aisle out.

Whatever you choose, a seat's label is what the buyer sees on their ticket and what the door staff read off the sheet, so it is worth matching the numbers already painted on the seats. You can rename any row or seat afterwards by selecting it and editing the label.

The stage, and labels on the map

A room full of seats and nothing else does not tell a buyer which way they will be facing. Add a stage marker and put it where the stage actually is - buyers use it to orient the whole map, and it appears on the guest picker, the box office console and the printed sheet.

Add text labels for anything else worth naming: BAR, ENTRANCE, the door a latecomer should use. Both can be dragged, resized and rotated, so a stage along one side of the room reads the right way round. They are decoration only - nothing is sold from them and they never affect a seat.

Wheelchair spaces and companion seats

Mark a seat as a wheelchair space and the seat beside it as a companion seat. A companion seat cannot be bought on its own while the wheelchair space next to it is still free - only together with it, or once it has gone. That is what stops a wheelchair user ending up three rows from the person they came with.

A wheelchair space needs an Accessibility only section

Wheelchair spaces are only sellable from a section ticked Accessibility only. That is deliberate - it keeps them from being handed out as the next available seat. But it also means a wheelchair space marked inside an ordinary section is bookable by nobody at all. If you mark wheelchair seats, put them in their own section and tick the box.

The issues panel

An amber panel lists anything that will stop part of the plan selling: a section with no name, no seats, no price band, a standing section with no capacity, or the same row and seat number used twice. These are advisory - you can save with them outstanding, and nothing breaks. A section with no band simply never becomes sellable.

Step 2 - Put it on sale

On the event's Tickets tab, choose a Seating plan. Each ticket type then names the price band it sells. Stalls at 40 and Circle at 25 are two ticket types pointing at two bands of the same plan.

Once a ticket names a band, its Quantity field goes read-only and reads "Set by the seating plan". The count comes from the seats in that band - or, for a standing band, from the section's capacity.

Renaming a band strands the ticket that used it

A ticket type remembers its band by name. Rename a section's band in the plan and the ticket no longer matches anything, so it stops selling seats - and its stored quantity is left as it was rather than dropping to zero, which makes it look like stock still exists. If you rename a band, open each event using that plan and re-pick the band on its ticket types.

A section whose band matches no ticket type is not sellable, and buyers never see those seats. That is the usual reason a freshly attached plan shows fewer seats than expected.

Change a single date

On a recurring event, Modify this date only opens the same designer pointed at one performance. An amber banner names the date you are editing. Changes there affect that date alone; the plan and every other date are untouched.

Revert this date throws the date's own layout away and puts it back on the plan. It is refused while any seat is sold or a customer is mid-checkout.

Two screens that look identical

The one-date designer and the plan designer are the same screen. When you are on one date the heading names the event and the night, and an amber banner says so as well; on the template the heading is the plan name and there is no banner. Reverting a date discards any seats your box office had held back for it, not just layout changes - the confirmation says so before you commit.

What the buyer sees

Buyers choose how many seats they want and, by default, get the best available together - the earliest section, the earliest row, closest to the middle of what is free. Most people never open a map. Those who want to choose select Choose your own seats.

Seats are held for 12 minutes while they check out, with the time left on screen. An I need more time link appears in the last two minutes.
The map is live. Seats other people take grey out while a buyer is looking.
There is a list view as well as the map, and it is a complete alternative - a purchase can be finished without the map at all.
The map is keyboard operable. Tab into it once, then move with the arrow keys and select with Enter.

Seat numbers follow the booking everywhere afterwards: on the ticket, in the confirmation email, on the door scanner, in the check-in feed and in the sales export.

Rules that refuse a selection

Three rules can turn a buyer's selection down. All of them apply to buyers only - your box office is exempt from every one, because staff can see the whole room.

The single-seat rule

A selection is refused if it would strand one seat on its own between two bookings, because a lone seat mid-row rarely sells. A gap that already existed is not blamed on the buyer, and a gangway counts as the end of a run.

The rule lifts automatically once the house is about 90% sold, when one more seat sold matters more than a tidy row. It is on by default, and the Selling rules panel in the designer turns it off or tunes it - both the run it protects and the percentage at which it lifts. Set it on the plan and every date inherits it; change it on one date and only that night differs. A room where single seats are normal, a bar or a comedy club, should simply turn it off.

Accessible seating

A wheelchair space can only be bought from an Accessibility only section. A companion seat cannot be taken alone while the wheelchair space beside it is free. See Wheelchair spaces and companion seats.

Whole tables

A table set to Whole table only is sold as a unit: clicking any chair selects the table, and a partial booking is refused. If part of such a table has already gone, the rest is not offered to anyone - which is what you want for a fundraising dinner, and why Single seats or whole table is the better setting for cabaret nights.

Run the door

The box office console is the same map with the names on. Open it from the event, and use the date picker in the header to move between nights of a run. Click a seat to see who has it, turn on Pick several to add more by tapping (a tablet has no shift key), or take a whole section from the sidebar - and a whole row from the seat you have selected.

The lookup box jumps to a seat typed as C14 or row C seat 14, a range typed as C1-C12, or a customer by name or email. It selects every match, so searching a name finds the whole party rather than one seat of it, and the bulk actions then apply to all of them.

A sold seat shows who holds it, what they bought, when they bought it, and whether they have come through the door yet - with their email and phone as links, and a way through to the order in Sales. Releasing takes seats off a booking and can do a whole party at once; it does not move any money, so refund the customer in your payment provider as usual. Every hold, release, exchange and counter booking is recorded in the schedule's audit log, with who did it.

Hold seats back with a reason - house seats, production, accessibility or box office - and an internal note only your team sees. A staff hold never expires on its own.
Book by phone sells the selected seats to a caller, marked paid or awaiting payment. Leave the amount blank for the list price, or enter zero to comp them.
Move to another seat takes one booking to a different seat without touching the rest of the order.
Release this seat puts one seat of a booking back on sale.

Releasing a seat does not move any money

Release frees the seat and takes it off the booking, and anyone on the waitlist is offered it. The sale itself stays as it was - refund the customer in your payment provider as usual.

Seating plan report

The report is the sheet front of house carries on the night: every seat, its status and who holds it, section by section, with a summary at the top. Status is drawn as a shape as well as a colour, so it survives the black and white printer you actually have.

Three views, because a full house and a door list are different sheets. Taken seats lists only what is sold, held back or in a basket - on a half-sold room that is half the paper. By name orders the same rows by surname, which is how you look up somebody standing in front of you. Every seat is the whole house. The map always draws the whole room whichever you pick.

Each sold seat carries a box you can tick, and it arrives already ticked for anybody the scanner has let in - so the sheet works whether or not you are scanning. The header shows how full the house is, section by section, and on a run it lists every night beside it, so you can see which dates are soft without opening them one at a time.

The figures cover one date; the run summary is the exception. Download as CSV gives you the same rows for a spreadsheet, and the CSV additionally carries each booker's email, which the printed sheet leaves out.

Every option and limit

Setting	Choices, and what they mean
Section kind	Seating (individual seats buyers pick), Tables, or Standing (a capacity, sold by the number, never shown on the map).
Price band	The name matched to a ticket type. Sections sharing a band are priced together.
Accessibility only	Required before a wheelchair space in that section can be sold.
Seat kind	Standard, Wheelchair space, Companion, Restricted view.
Row labels	`A, B, C` or `1, 2, 3`. Letters continue past Z as AA, AB.
Seat numbering	Straight across the row, or odds and evens from the centre out.
Decorations	Stage marker and free text labels. Draggable, resizable and rotatable; never sold.
Curve	0-120. Lifts the outside of each row, for a room that faces a stage.
Aisle after seat	A comma list, e.g. `6, 14`. Marks a gangway - seats either side are not neighbours, so best-available will not seat a couple across one.
Table shape	Round or Rectangular.
Table booking	Single seats only, Whole table only, or Single seats or whole table.
Number the seats at each table	Off means a chair at that table rather than a numbered seat.
Hold reason	House seats, Production, Accessibility, Box office. Shown only to your team.
Plan size	Up to 12 levels, 200 sections, 500 tables and 6,000 seats.
Seat hold	12 minutes, extendable by the buyer in the last two.

What it does not do

Decorations are not seats. A stage marker or text label is never sold, counted or reported on - it only tells the buyer which way the room faces.
Invoice Ninja payment links cannot be used with allocated seating, because quantities are chosen after checkout there rather than before. The refusal happens at checkout, not when you attach the plan.
Passes are house-wide. A pass holder booking an allocated date gets a real seat assigned automatically - best available, with no picker - but a pass cannot be restricted to one band.

If your plan lapses

Allocated seating is an Enterprise feature. An event that is already selling allocated seats keeps doing so if the schedule drops off Enterprise - deliberately, so nobody's sold seats vanish - but the designer and the box office console stop being reachable. You would be selling seats you can no longer manage, so re-subscribe before the next performance.