Version 6.60.03

This is an enhancement/bug fix release for Theatre Manager.

The primary new features are enhancements to the annual patron statistics tracking, support of order fees applied on a per ticket basis (up to a maximum) and a number of small fixes that could assist end of day balancing at some sites.

Version 6.59 • Updates

Released Mar. 18, 2005

Key changes:

Fixed issue where settling end of day could affect web sales
Fixed issue where web listener did not come back to life after starting backup - made system more robust
Added ability to control who could change fees on the payment window without requiring a manager over-ride
Supports per ticket order, mail and exchange fees to a maximum. Soon to support per ticket reprint fees.
Added the ability to limit who can refund ticket to events that are off sale, or are in the past. This assists preventing changes after a show has been reconciled.
Completely revised how annual patron statistics are calculated.
Added tracking of fees to the annual patron statistics
Added ability to eliminate certain events, sales promotions, donation campaigns, and gift certificate types from being tracked in annual statistics

Note: Read prior release notes for any mandatory web pages changes. There are no mandatory changes for this version.

We suggest reading the prior release notes completely - especially if you are not at version 6.57.

Theatre Manager will

The user will need to

Before upgrade	if upgrading from a version before 6.48, read version 6.48 release notes Complete your end of day. Deposit all funds, create all sales entries and post to the GL. Change certain performances, donation campaigns, and/or gift certificates and exclude them from annual statistics. If they are turned off prior to upgrading, they will not be included in the stats during upgrade. note: The ability to turn off stats for certain sales promotions is new to this version and must be done after the upgrade). Verify the database using data utilities and ensure that everything is ok. Make a backup copy of the database.
After upgrade	None
Optional Steps	Look at certain sales promotions, performances, donation campaigns, and/or gift certificates and exclude them from annual statistics.
Time Required	It will take a long time from version 6.48 (see release notes) From any version 6.5x or later, time will depend on the number of transactions, patrons and annual patron statistics that need to be rebuilt.

Before upgrade

if upgrading from a version before 6.48, read version 6.48 release notes
Complete your end of day. Deposit all funds, create all sales entries and post to the GL.
Change certain performances, donation campaigns, and/or gift certificates and exclude them from annual statistics. If they are turned off prior to upgrading, they will not be included in the stats during upgrade. note: The ability to turn off stats for certain sales promotions is new to this version and must be done after the upgrade).
Verify the database using data utilities and ensure that everything is ok.
Make a backup copy of the database.

After upgrade

None

Optional Steps

Look at certain sales promotions, performances, donation campaigns, and/or gift certificates and exclude them from annual statistics.

Time Required

It will take a long time from version 6.48 (see release notes)
From any version 6.5x or later, time will depend on the number of transactions, patrons and annual patron statistics that need to be rebuilt.

Web Sales

Fixed an issue where a ticket was not booked under a very restricted set of circumstances. If:

a person bought on the web and had asked for their card to be authorized AND
it came back successful AND
in the middle of it being authorized, somebody decided to settle the end of day AND
the 'disallow ticket sales while in EOD' was turned on

then, TM would record the payment, leave the tickets on hold and not book them. This has been changed so that if any sale is in the midst of being authorized while on the internet, it will go through, regardless of the setting in the end of day wizard.

Addressed a very rare condition where the listener did not stop listening if it was unable to restart after backups due to a dropped TCP/IP connection. Now, the listener stops (so that other listeners can continue properly) and indicates the failed state. The user can then determine why this happened and correct it.

MAC ONLY: if the web listener to many outstanding incoming requests, the listener will now die gracefully on a mac. This is designed to handle situations where there are multiple listeners running and one gets stuck. The number of sessions will eventually over flow at that point and the listener will die. The others will stay active. The PERL script will notice that one of the listeners has gone away and begin ignoring it. The purpose of this change is to create fail over capability in the situation of multiple listeners. (note: At this time, this feature is Mac only)

Fixed a display issue where the wrong event might be shown if the user called the web listener from an external web page asking for an event that was not longer on sale. This could only happen if the user had bookmarked a hard coded link to look for a specific performance, and the only way that could happen is if the HTML web site developer put a 'buy this performance' button on a web page that points to an event that is no longer on sale.

Implemented the ability to do best available search for one ticket on the internet. It will now find the last ticket in a row if that is the only one available.

Payments

Modified off the check in PC Charge to see if the payment server is there. A user will now only get the message that the server is missing when they attempt their first sale. This is a temporary solution to address an issue on some service providers where the check was causing the first credit card to not to be authorized.

Fixed an issue where changing the order fee that had tax on it by applying a payment after the fact could cause an erroneous tax calculation, but only if there were also exchange fees and/or mailing fees also associated with that order.

Added an error check on credit card expiry date to indicate if the expiry ate is invalid at time of entry into the field (instead of when OK button was clicked). This should help where patrons have heavily used credit cards with an expiry - so TM will alert the user earlier to get the right info. This is mostly important for those with manual credit card processing machines instead of Theatre Managers automated credit card authorization servers.

Added 4 new privileges to employee setup to indicate which fees that a user may change. The administrator now has the ability to decide which users can change:

Order Fees
Ticket Fees
Mailing Fees
Ticket Reprint Fees

Ticket Sales

Found an issue where if user purposely crashed Theatre Manager in the middle of the sale before going to the payment window, the date that the order was updated was not changed. This meant that order fees may have been added to an order (with an order date) without the transactions being created. If that was the case, it would be really difficult to find the old order during the end of day 'balance' process to correct the order fee. This has been fixed. Adding anything to an order changed the order date updated.

Fixed similar issue if adding a donation or a gift certificate to an old order and then purposely crashing Theatre Manager. Transactions were created perfectly, but the order date updated was not changed to reflect the recent activity.

Revised the way Annual history is tracked and calculated to be more accurate and based on all transactions that are created. This will address some issues where numbers were not calculated properly. The history will be recalculated on upgrade.

Added the ability to do best available search for one seat.

Added two more employee permissions relating to ticket sales. These are:

Tickets-refund tickets when performance is over. This means that once the performance is over, the tickets can no longer be refunded. An employee with this privilege can provide an over-ride for an employee that does not have it.
Tickets-refund tickets when performance no longer on sale. This means that if a performance is taken off sale, an employee must have this privilege to refund a ticket to that event. Otherwise, the ticket cannot be refunded. Use this if you wish to lock down the current ticket sate based on tuning on/off the event on sale. An employee with this privilege can provide an over-ride for an employee that does not have it.

Patron Window

Fixed a bug where the annual statistics and donor summary record tabs were not cleared when a new patron was added. They are now cleared to reflect the status as a new patron.

Allow editing of expired credit cards in the credit card tab. If the card is set inactive, you can now leave the window with a 'past' expiry date, if it is in the proper format. If the card is still 'active', then a current/future expiry date must be entered.

Default Data

Added the abiltiy to set order fees, exchange fees, and mailing fees to be 'per ticket' or 'per order'. If the fees are to be 'per ticket', you can also specify a maximum value of the ticket fee so that Theatre Manager will calculate the fee based on what the patron purchases. For example:

if the order fee is set to $2.00 per ticket to a max of $5.00, then Theatre Manager will add the $2.00 for each of the first two tickets, $1.00 for the third and nothing for the rest of the tickets.
if the exchange fee is set to $1.00 per ticket to a max of $3.50, then Theatre Manager will FOR EACH EXCHANGE, add $1.00 for the first 3 tickets, $0.50 for the 4th and nothing after that.

This information can be changed in the default data window on the ticketing 2 tab. Note: it looks like there is an ability to charge per ticket reprint fees; this feature is not implemented in version 6.60. It should be implemented shortly in version 6.60.01

Reports

revised the count by zip/postal code reports to run faster. Added the ability to get total sales by order, or by ticket by zip code area (if you select the files ticket orders or ticket data for reporting). Added lookup into the zip code/postal code table to print the town that the zip code area belongs to.

Printing mail labels - the total report of labels by zip code area also has the closest city representing that zip/postal code area.

Annual Patron Statistics

Made some significant changes to the calculation of patron statistics. They are now determined based 100% on transactions so that they are not calculated for all patrons until the end of day is done. However, if you go to the tab on the patron screen for 'annual statistics', they will be immediately updated for that patron.

The annual statistics now tracks all fees, gift certificates, donations and ticket sales.

The initial setup for all of these during the upgrade is to 'include in patron statistics'

You can exclude specific sales promotions, events, donations and/or gift certificate (passes) from patron statistics. All you need do is:

For sales promotions, go to the sales promotion setup window and turn off (or on) the 'include in annual statistics'. Doing so will recalculate all prior sales statistics for each patron and remove (or add back in) any ticket sold with that promotion. This might be useful for eliminating comp's or things like that from the patron statistics.
For performances, go to the play & dates window and click on the performance tab. If you double click on a performance, you can turn on (or off) the 'include in annual statistics' flag.
For gift certificates, go to the setup->system tables and change a specific gift certificate/pass/membership to 'include in annual patron statistics'. Same rules apply as for sales promotions or performances
For donations, go to setup->system tables and change the appropriate donation campaign setup to 'include in annual statistics'. This may be useful for eliminating certain past donations or attendance at gala fundraisers where those are not included in the patron statistics.

Miscellaneous Changes

Added the ability to search for promotion using various criteria in order to deal with some site with a growing number of sales promotions.

Added the ability to show volunteers involved in the entire production on the play & dates window (instead of just volunteers for a particular performance)

Fixed a display bug for the account number format when inserting a new event. TM now displays the account number of the Outlet that the user is logged in as.