DHES

I was going to work on the time clock but then George from the UK talked me up about selling theater tickets by seat / performance. That seems like much more fun and since i am still ambelevent about the time clock feature I am going to work on the theater thing.

George and I traded some emails and then went to chat.

Here is the chat that George and I had...

15:29:23 [Dale] Hi George

15:31:22 [George] Hello

15:31:47 [Dale] Any more ideas?

15:32:30 [George] hmm

15:32:46 [Dale] do you have the concept of how the seating chart will be created?

15:32:54 [George] yes

15:33:17 [George] so it will be a huge grid and then you just select the seats and and then press tab

15:33:32 [George] and i presume that will be the same for selecting seats to sell?

15:34:14 [Dale] You have to move to each square in the grid where you want to place a seat and press [TAB]

15:34:33 [George] yup

15:34:38 [Dale] Press [TAB] again and the seat will disapear

15:35:15 [Dale] When you create the seat you will have to enter its value and its seat ID

15:35:47 [George] would it be possible to assign a key through out the program (for example F12) and that will lock the system and then you just type your ID in to unlock it again

15:36:14 [Dale] When you sell a seat you will only be able to press [TAB] on squares that are seats

15:36:29 [George] seat value meaning its price catagory and seat ID meaning A12 or H18

15:36:42 [Dale] Yep

15:37:21 [George] cool

15:37:51 [George] and when you go back to the cash register will it come up with all the seperate seats at all the seperate prices?

15:38:48 [Dale] You sell seats by [TAB]ing on them in the chart. The program will know the value of each seat and the price that goes with that value

15:39:28 [Dale] You create seats in the POSCONFG.EXE program but sell them from the POS.EXE program

15:39:58 [George] ok so when it comes back to the cash register to take the money will all the seats be run up as seperate items or will they all come up as one item?

15:40:05 [Dale] You will also have to use the POSCONFG.EXE program to set up each performance.

15:40:14 [George] ok cool

15:41:13 [Dale] I was thinking of the coming up as one item for each price. So 2 at $80.00 + 3 at $55.00, etc

15:41:53 [George] if possible could they all come up seperatly with there seats ID's

15:42:24 [Dale] Well those would be individual tickets which are printed separately

15:42:36 [George] for example 1) Friday 18th Dec Seat B19 1 £50.00

15:42:37 [Dale] So you get tickets and a receipt

15:43:21 [George] (sorry the 1 and the £50.00 would be in seperate colloms for the qty and the total price)

15:43:39 [George] would the pos software be able to print tickets?

15:45:07 [Dale] The THEATER.EXE program where you sell the seats would print out a ticket for each seat. Then when you return to the POS.EXE program it would ring up the receipt for all the seats purchased at that time

15:45:22 [George] ok cool

15:45:42 [George] how would the theatre.exe print tickets?

15:45:43 [Dale] stand by...

15:46:52 [George] k

15:47:12 [Dale] It could print out the tickets on the receipt printer. Or it could print out the tickets on a different printer.

15:47:43 [George] ok cool

15:48:31 [Dale] but text only and one horizontal line at a time like a receipt.

15:49:32 [George] ok so it would print the tickets like it prints coupons and gift vouchers

15:49:41 [Dale] The tricky part is to put the tickets in a print queue and then actually print them out after they have been paid for

15:49:48 [Dale] Yep

15:50:34 [George] yeaaa

15:50:38 [Dale] The other tricky part is how to keep people from counterfiting tickets

15:50:52 [George] what do you mean counterfiting?

15:51:36 [Dale] Well the tickets are just printed on paper. What would keep someone from printing their own tickets?

15:52:31 [Dale] And then going to the show for free or scalping their counterfit tickets?

15:52:43 [George] could you have the software print the tickets out as if they were coupons then the customer could swap the coupons for there tickets within a week before the show

15:54:04 [Dale] True, but even then you have to know if it is a counterfit coupon

15:54:25 [George] and on the coupon had a certain number and the customers name and infomation

15:54:44 [Dale] Plus it is an extra step. I am assuming that the people are coming to your theater to purchase the tickets

15:55:05 [Dale] What do you use for tickets now

15:56:12 [Dale] Could you buy special paper for your printer or put stickers on the tickets when they are printed out?

15:56:27 [George] i print them all on a seperate computer with a special ticket printer and then just issue them as people buy them

15:56:41 [George] yea i could have some special paper made up or i could stamp them

15:57:19 [Dale] A better idea would be to figure out how to print the tickets on your ticket printer

15:58:32 [George] i dont think that would work because you have to go through this special software so your tickets would have to be saved and then opened in this software then printed on the printer

15:58:59 [Dale] that is what I thought you would say.

15:59:06 [George] lol

16:00:06 [George] its probs best to print coupons as tickets and then i can either stamp the coupons or the customer could swap them for there tickets

16:00:36 [Dale] That works for me if it is OK for you

16:01:20 [George] yes that will be fine

16:01:37 [George] and if it doesnt work out we can always change it in a diffrent version

16:01:47 [Dale] You are not in a hurry for this are you?

16:01:57 [George] not realy

16:02:00 [George] why?

16:02:33 [Dale] February seems link a good deadline for this

16:02:35 [George] I suppose i could hang out till next friday the 23rd

16:02:37 [George] ?

16:02:49 [Dale] February seems like a good deadline for this

16:02:54 [George] lol yea

16:03:02 [George] i was joking about the 23rd

16:03:09 [George] yea cool February

16:03:37 [George] and you can send me loads of the Theatre.exe and i can keep testing it ect

16:03:53 [Dale] To quote Douglas Adams, "I love deadlines, I love the wooshing sound they make as they go by."

16:04:05 [George] haha

16:04:31 [Dale] Yep, you will be testing this?

16:04:39 [George] theres no deadline "the sooner the better" but its just a good tast for you?

16:04:48 [George] i duno

16:04:57 [George] if theres any testing i can do i will

16:05:24 [Dale] there will be lots of testing

16:05:27 [George] like when it starts to work ill test it and then i can tell you if the program crahses ect

16:05:42 [Dale] You have to tell me when I have a stupid idea

16:05:51 [George] ok

16:06:19 [Dale] Thanks

16:06:30 [George] how will the tickets come through the register will i have to set them all up in the Stock Table

16:07:00 [Dale] I will work on the part of the program that creates the seats first, then you get to test that.

16:07:16 [George] ok cool wicked =]]

16:07:41 [Dale] You will have to set up lines on the stock table for the tickets but I do not know exactly how yet.

16:08:07 [George] yup =]] so somthing that refers to the values

16:08:22 [Dale] first we get this to work as a standalone program then it gets integrated into the POS program

16:08:31 [George] im not sure what other features realy

16:08:39 [George] (ooo blue writing)

16:08:59 [George] as long as we have the customer history because we have to keep that buy law

16:09:12 [Dale] I am sure that we, or your employees, will think of additional things to keep me from sleeping

16:09:31 [George] sure will =]]

16:10:00 [Dale] That is weird. Why would you have to keep a history of your customers?

16:10:40 [George] its to do with our council they ask for a record of all the people that watch shows ect

16:11:02 [George] and we also use it for our marketing purposes but our council make us keep a copy of it every month

16:11:07 [Dale] Who cares if Joe Blow bought a ticket to The Fantastics in 1997?

16:11:52 [George] lol exactly! ill print them every month then delete them!

16:11:59 [Dale] Well I know why you would care, for marketing. Why would the council care?

16:12:00 [George] and then i send one to the council and file the other

16:13:00 [Dale] Plus I do not think that I would want the council to know what shows I am going to.

16:13:19 [George] lol

16:13:29 [Dale] no, really

16:14:51 [Dale] I assume that you can rent out your theater for politial or religious functions. I do not want the government to be able to track which ones of those I go to.

16:15:13 [George] if i dont give it to them then i can get fined =/ but if the feature isnt avalible for begining then we can do the traditional pen and paper

16:15:19 [Dale] But we in the US are paranoid. Must be different in the UK

16:16:04 [George] yea its just basic data to show them how many people have brought tickets and who brought tickets

16:17:10 [Dale] If the local government tried that here the Amercian Civil Liberty Union would be aloverthem like molassas on pancakes.

16:17:44 [George] the theatres achully closing early next year for a refurb because its quite small at the moment so were having it all revamped to 600 seats =]

16:17:48 [George] lol

16:17:54 [Dale] How many is cool, it is the "Who" that would get them in trouble

16:18:47 [George] oh right

16:18:47 [Dale] So what kind of things tdo you book in your theater?

16:19:03 [George] we get a few tours about 2 a year

16:19:20 [Dale] so plays and stuff?

16:19:28 [George] we do a few of our own productions and have amature groups productions

16:19:34 [George] yea and musicals

16:19:35 [Dale] cool

16:19:56 [George] we also have a religious group in on a sunday

16:19:58 [Dale] How many seats do yiou have now?

16:20:10 [George] 350

16:20:23 [Dale] so big increase then

16:20:27 [George] yup very

16:21:01 [Dale] Do you have to make the building bigger or just knock out some interior walls?

16:21:36 [George] its very run down i have only taken the theatre over for the past just over two years i used to work there for about 5 years before so when i took over i just slapped paint on but now we are having a huge revamp

16:21:48 [George] nocking walls down building huge extentions

16:22:00 [Dale] cool

16:22:19 [Dale] I have to go now. My wife wants me to take her somewhere

16:22:29 [George] were extending straight into the carpark because thats all ripped up

16:22:53 [George] ok then thank you for helping me out with this feature i think its going to be realy popular

16:22:53 [Dale] I am usually not home at this time but Tuesdays are my days off

16:23:01 [George] oh right cool

16:23:02 [George] =]

16:23:03 [George] cya

16:23:33 [George] (its realy wired because its 10:30PM in london)

16:23:42 [Dale] so if you email me at this time in the future I will probalby not answer until much later

16:23:58 [Dale] 4:30 pm here

16:24:20 [Dale] Bye

16:24:27 [George] Bye

I have an idea to make sure people aren't counterfeiting tickets. You could have the cash register print a code or barcode on the ticket, you could link a name with the ticket, and then if peoples tickets are stolen/lost, you can look their ticket up and reprint it with a new code, invalidating the old ones. For verifying the ticket, you could create a program that would look up ticket numbers, the attendant at the front would scan or type the ticket no, in and that would verify that the ticket was real

i was just going to say that

It cant do barcodes....but have every ticket assigned an ID number (something non sequential so people cant print a counterfeit with a number)

Put all the valid numbers into a database or w/e you use.

Make like 'checker.exe' with just a # prompt (alot like the price checker just wants the upc#)

the checker enters the id number and it can make the typical BEEP if its valid and display "VALID" and the person moves on.

If invalid it can do that "do DOOOOO do" that it makes when a number is not in the stock table and say "invalid"....The checker can then give the person a dirty look and deny them admitance.

My other notation is - thinking of a movie theater you just dont have assigned seats, It just prevents over booking the auditorium. You should probably make it allowable to just sell tickets to a show without issuing seat #'s

You may have mentioned the above...to be honest i didnt read the whole thing

Cool idea

Hey (btw im George the guy that went into chat with Dale)

Yea the ideas for the numbers are great, me and dale also thought of stamping the tickets or even printing them on special paper.

Most theatres and cinimars do sell tickets to seats because you can therefore setup diffrent prices for diffrent seats (diffrent bands ect) so meh!

From what me and Dale have chatted about the software sounds like its going to be great alot to keep Dale from sleeping - but anyone with ideas that could help??

Here is the concept. 6 ticket takers have to admit 2000 people into a theater in 30 minutes. Which is 11 per minute. The odds are they are not going to have time to (error free) type in a serial number every 5.4 seconds.

Plus they would have to have 6 computers (laptops) and a place to sit them.

It is much easier to have the ticket itself be fairly difficult to duplicate by having it printed on colored (paisley?) paper, have a sticker attached to it, or a weird shaped hole punched into it, or all three, or something else.

Dale

Yeah, very nice. But highly specialised. Lot of work just for one person I'd have thought, but then who am I to say

I'd still prefer to have the option when you receive new stock you automatically update the value of stock held of each item received (by the new average cost) and hence the value of the stock file. Much less work and everyone could/would use that.

But there you go.....

Yea, i do agree with Dale, at the moment all we do is print our tickets on small precut cards that are watermaked with our theatres name and yes we have had 1 or 2 people try to copy them but they are usually pretty obvious and when you have two people trying to sit at the same seat hmmm =/ so we can therefore just look on the system and see who achully brought them. (customer infomation)

George

Here is the latest on this project.

(New version is below)

It will allow you to set up a theater and create one performance and show you a sample ticket on the screen.

It will not allow you to sell seats yet.

My next trick is multiple performances.

Let me know what you think

Dale

Dale- You might want to look at the FGL (friendly ghost language) and Bocca printers as ticket printers, they have COM ports and work great!
A student where i go to school acctually made us a linux GUI for touchscreens that worked really well. Boca printers are fast and have serial ports too.

Well folks it may not look like it but I have done a lot of work on the “Theater” feature. Check later posts for the download link.
It will now save and retrieve multiple performances. The total number of performances that can be saved is 100,000,000 or disk storage, after that you are screwed.

You can copy performances with different dates / times. This means that to add a performance you do not have to type in all of the pricing and other information again. Just load a current performance, change the date / time (performance name or theater) and save it as a new file. After saving a performance the program will ask you if you want to do it again with different data.

If you created a current performance using an old version of this program it is lost, you will have to start over.

You can load an existing performance, change the pricing data and only the new prices will be saved. The seats sold will not be changed and any seats sold already sold at the old prices will still have the old prices.

Note: Theater / Performance data will now be kept in a sub-folder with the same name as your register file. This is why you have to pick a register file when you start the program. My main POS folder is C:\POS and my register file is KEYSHOP so the folder that stores my theater files is C:\POS\KEYSHOP.
To use your existing .THR theater files run the THEATER program, select a register file name, and the program will make the sub-folder for you. Manually (using Windows) move your current .THR files into the sub-folder and this new version of the program will be able to find them.

When you load an existing theater the program will ask you if you want to copy it to a new file name. This will allow you to duplicate a theater and then make changes to it. For example for some performances you may not want to allow seating in the balcony, you may want to add seats on the stage, you may want to change the seat pricing numbers, etc. This will allow you to create similar theaters without having to retype all of the information all over again. Of course if you copy a theater the original will remain intact. Similar theaters should have similar file names like BIJOU.THR, BIJOU2.THR, BIJOU3.THR, etc.

WARNING!!!! Once you have sold seats to a theater you must not move seats in the theater seating plan (the theater file). If you do the program may allow you to sell more than one ticket to the same seat. The program sells seats by the position in the seating grid. If you move a seat to a different position then any tickets sold to that seat will not be moved with the seat but will remain assigned to the old location in the grid.

I seem to be done on the “Create a theater” and “Create performance” parts of this feature and it is now time to get the program to sell seats and print tickets.

Dale

Dale, I love this new feature! It seems simple and fun to use! Thank you for all of your hard work!

New stuff in the theater program.

I don’t have a file yet but here is a screen shot of the selling screen.

http://www.dhpos.com/theater.jpg

A change in the “Make theater” part is that you can now enter the row labels on the left edge of the screen. This will allow you to place them where you want. It also means that the old standard row label will no longer be there. One other point, pressing [CTRL] + [INSERT] or [CTRL] + [DELETE] will not insert or delete a row in both the row labels and the seat map. It will only insert or delete a row where the cursor is.

If you look are the graphic you will see how seats will be sold. As you move the cursor through the seating map the possible prices of the seat at the cursor location will be displayed near the bottom of the screen.

To reserve a seat at the cursor location you press either [A] – [E] or [1] – [5] depending on the type of admission for that seat. As you select seats the “Seats reserved” and “Cost” will increase. If you reserve a seat and the customer decides that he does not want it then you move the cursor to that seat and press [TAB] to clear it. Seats reserved will be displayed with a red background and the seat price number will change to a letter from A to E.

If there are already seats sold for this performance they will be displayed with a black background and the seat price number will change to a letter from A to E. You will not be able to either reserve these seats or clear them.

Once you have reserved all the seats the customer wants, he will pay for them and you will press [F1] to print the tickets and receipt. The red backgrounds on the reserved seats will change to black.

Dale

The current version of THEATER.EXE will not work over a network and does not yet tie in with the
POS.EXE program. Two new main menu options. 1. Sell tickets and 4. Printer setup

PRINTER SETUP
Use this feature to setup the ticket printer. Even if you are using your receipt printer to print
tickets you must use this feature or no tickets will be printed.

Printer PATH
In the future you will be able to use a network printer (more than one register - one ticket printer)
to print tickets. You enter the PATH to the network printer here. At the moment this feature is not
supported.

Print tickets on a printer.
Must be set to "YES" to print tickets.

The following ticket printer paramers are work the same as for the recipt printer.
Print on a page printer or print continuously.
Number of blank lines between receipts. (Continuous) 0 - 20
Number of top margin lines. (Page) 0 - 5
Number of printed lines per page. (Page) 50 - 70
Number of bottom margin lines. (Page) 0 - 5
Use form feed at end of page. (Page)
Forced line feed.
Program cutter bar.
Set "printer ready" code"

You can set the ticket printer to a different printer port than your receipt printer. For example if
you have two parallel printer ports you can print receipts on the printer attached to the LPT1: port
and tickets on the printer attached to the LPT2: port. Of coures if you are using the receipt printer
to also print tickets then you would use the LPT1: port for both printers (for example.)

SELLING TICKETS
Once you have created a theater and created performances you may begin selling tickets.

To sell a ticket choose the main menu option "1. Sell tickets", enter the date of the performance,
and press [TAB]. A list of all the performances for that day will appear on the screen sorted by
time. Scroll to the performance you want and press [ENTER].

The seating chart will appear for the performance. Numbered seats with a purple background
have not been sold. Lettered seats with a black background have been sold. Use the arrow keys
to move to the seats you wish to sell. As you move the cursor over the seats the current prices for
that seat will appear at the near of the screen. If you have multiple prices (General / Child /
Discount /etc.) then all possible prices for that seat will be displayed. Note: Pressing [F5] will
display the entire pricing chart. If you move over a sold seat the actual price that seat was sold for
will be displayed even if you later change the seat pricing.

To sell a seat (once you have the cursor over it) press either a number from 1-5 or a letter from
A-E. It makes no difference if you press a number or letter because pressing [1] is the same as
pressing [A], [2] = [B], and so on. Pressing [1] or [A] will sell the seat at the #1 pricing type,
pressing [2] or [B] will sell the seat at the #2 pricing type, etc.

When you sell a seat the seat number will change to the pricing type letter and the background
will change to green. The screen will show you the number of seats sold at this time and the total
price of all the seats sold at this time.

If you sell a seat in error (while selling seats), or for the wrong pricing type, you can press [TAB] to
unsell a green seat. Once you complete a sale and print tickets when you next return to the
performance the green seats will be black and cannot be unsold.

Once you have all the seats marked correctly pressing [F1] will print tickets. Therefore you must
make sure that they have been paid for first.

To clear the sale without selling any of the marked seats press [ESC]

See below for latest download link.

When using theatrg.exe and searching for a performance on today's date, I get this error after hitting [TAB]:

File already open in line 66 of module THEATR2 at address 12f3:0abo0
Hit any key to return to system

There is now a "Delete a performance" feature. When you are looking for a performance and you are asked for the date if you press [F1] it will allow your to browse all of the performances from all dates. It now works in network mode if you set the server PATH in the POSCONFG.EXE program.

And I did a lot of work on the file handeling so it may now actually work.