Purchasing raffle tickets

If you have not yet set up your raffle campaign, or configured your ticket fulfillment workflow, please follow the linked articles first.

You will now have your raffle campaign and ticketing fully configured and should have tested the online purchase process to ensure it is easy to follow, informative, and acknowledging for your purchasing contacts. If necessary, additional fields and further customisation can be made to your widget but it can also be embedded on your website without any other changes using the iframe code found within the widget configuration.

 

Online purchases

It is recommended that the event widget is used as your primary if not only source for processing raffle ticket purchases to make use of the automated ticket fulfillment and acknowledgement process. The widget can be embedded on your website and promoted through various channels to increase your contact database throughout the campaign. It is also recommended to email your existing contact database to promote the raffle and link to the widget webpage with a personalised URL.

A widget can also be used to process phone purchases, telefundraising agents can be assigned a separate raffle channel and widget to process their calls.

All widget purchases can be found under Money > Website Payment Log

From the website payment log, you can view limited information for each contact who has purchased tickets.

You can access each contact by clicking on the row to be taken to their contact dashboard, where you can view all information entered, any attributes included on your widget, and detail of the ticket numbers assigned to this contact.

Please note- The vega ID needs to be generated and Posted status as TRUE before you can click through to the contact.

 

vega processed purchases

It is also possible to process payments directly within vega, either on a contact or in a batch. To add payments for a raffle campaign directly in vega the campaign must be published.

When adding a payment for a raffle campaign in vega you will need to select the product being purchased, otherwise it will be added as a donation towards the raffle campaign and not a ticket purchase. If an additional donation is being made then a second distribution without an associated product can be added. 

The recording below shows how a raffle purchase can be added in vega.

As shown above, the same ticket fulfillment document can be used here to email the ticket confirmation after the payment is processed on a contact or in a batch. If the purchase is unsuccessful for any reason then the ticket fulfillment document will not be sent.

Each contact who makes a raffle ticket purchase will have the transaction recorded on the payments tab and the products tab, showing the ticket type and assigned ticket numbers.

Payments & Recurring tab

Products tab

 

Unable to process ticket purchases

There are some instances where you will not be able to successfully process ticket purchases, either in a widget or in vega. These transactions will show with a Tickets Suspended status and even though they will not be assigned ticket numbers they will be deducted from the total items remaining, this is why the ticket range should always be larger than the maximum capacity.  Please see below for detail on these reasons and what can be done.

 

Tickets have run out

If the maximum ticket capacity set in your raffle campaign action has been reached then the widget will not allow any further ticket sales to be processed. A notice will be displayed on the widget stating that it is full and there will be a message stating the number of tickets left once the remaining number reaches 10 or less:

The banner displayed when tickets have run out can be any document assigned in the widget configuration as the Event capacity full document. If no document is added to the widget configuration then the default banner shown above will be displayed on the widget.

If you try to add a ticket purchase within vega after tickets have all sold out then it will display 0 items available and the product dropdown will no longer include your raffle products:

The widget will update the number of tickets left as soon as it starts processing a transaction but it is possible that the widget is used at the same time to purchase the last remaining tickets and it will process both transactions successfully to the contacts. As soon as the second transaction process is started vega will check the capacity and know not to issue tickets above the capacity limit. The payment will still be recorded in vega but no ticket numbers will be assigned and they will show as Tickets Suspended status, there will also be a note in the Pay Details to show the reason for this. Please see the screenshot below for how the payment will be recorded in this scenario:

If you are not restricted to a specific capacity due to licence requirements then the raffle campaign action can be unpublished and edited to increase the capacity and ticket number range to allow more purchases in this instance. Any suspended payments can be right-clicked and chosen to set as successful, this will update the ticket status and assign ticket numbers to the purchase. The ticket fulfillment document can then be manually emailed from the payment.

 

The campaign or ticket types have ended

Tickets will not be able to be purchased via the widget or directly in vega if it is past the event available to date or the available to date of the specific product. On the widget, products with a specific end date will no longer be displayed past their end date. If the campaign date is reached then a message will be displayed on the widget and the submit button will be hidden. The highlighted message shown below can be replaced by any document by selecting it as the Event expired document within the widget configuration.

It is possible that the widget may be opened and completed while the event is active but submitted past the end date-time of the campaign. When the widget begins to process the transaction it will check the end date of the product and campaign and will not issue tickets if it has then past this date and time. Below shows a payment that was submitted past the campaign end date to show how this will be recorded on the payment:

If there is a reason that this transaction should have been able to process, then the campaign or product end dates will need to be updated and then the payment can be right-clicked and chosen to be set as successful, this will update the ticket status and assign ticket numbers to the purchase. The ticket fulfillment document can then be manually emailed from the payment.

 

Invalid card payments

If a payment is attempted on a widget or in vega and the credit card is declined then the payment attempt will still be recorded against the raffle campaign but no tickets will be assigned. When this is attempted on a widget the purchaser will see an error on the screen, showing that the payment has been declined and that the purchase has not been processed to allow them to try again. These payment attempts will be available to see in the Website Payment Log and on the contact with a Payment Declined status. If a declined payment is right-clicked and updated to successful then it will not assign tickets as these payments do not have the ticket distribution allocated when they're created. In this case, a new successful payment will need to be added to the contact.

 

Cancel / Refund payments

There will be some instances where a raffle ticket purchase needs to be cancelled in vega, the purchaser may require a refund, or the transaction was entered incorrectly. If a credit card payment needs to be refunded then this must be actioned in your payment gateway and then recorded in vega. When viewing the payment on a contact you can right-click and choose Delete Payment to update the status to Payment Cancelled.

After selecting delete:

These cancelled payments will still be available to see in reports but the ticket numbers will not be reallocated to the available tickets. You should always record the reason that the payment was cancelled in the Pay Details section on the payment for audit purposes. A raffle ticket purchase cannot have only some of the tickets cancelled so if a partial refund is needed then the whole payment will need to be cancelled and a new payment created for the correct amount being purchased.