In Yale Connect, you can create a ticketed event in which registrants pay a fee to purchase a ticket and complete their event registration. Configuring a ticketed event requires a Group Officer to submit a request:
- Students with Yale College and the Yale School of the Environment can request a ticketed event in the event request form they must complete when creating a Yale Connect event.
- Students, staff, and faculty with the Graduate School or any of Yale's other professional schools who would like to setup a ticketed event in their Yale Connect group can request assistance via the form below.
Ticketed Event Request Form
Please submit a Ticketed Event Request Form.
This form must be submitted at least 3 weeks prior to when tickets go on sale.
Submission of this form will notify the Yale Connect team who will then send you a calendar invite to discuss details of the event further and configure the payment settings. The Yale Connect team will also invite the Finance team to this conversation.
Important Information About Ticketed Events
In addition to following the procedures outlined below, Group Officers managing ticketed events are expected to adhere to Yale policies and their organization's handbook as it relates to event procedures.
The Transfer of Funds
A Group's payment integration must be turned on by the Yale Connect team. Once this feature is enabled and the account information saved in the Group's settings, the Group can create an event in which registrants are charged a fee to purchase a ticket.
It is important to note that Yale Connect does not collect or store funds. Rather, when users click to buy a ticket from the Yale Connect event page, they are passed to a payment gateway (hosted by Touchnet, the university's financial management software) where they enter their credit card information. Funds charged to an event registrant's credit card are then stored in a single merchant account that is shared among all Groups using the ticketed event feature.
It is the responsibility of the group's assigned business office to transfer the funds from the single merchant account to the correct COA for the group; the Yale Connect team is not responsible for transferring the funds from the merchant account to the group's COA.
A Group that hosted a ticketed event will receive funds collected from their event in their COA once their business office has processed the transfer. The length of time that it takes for funds to be transferred is dependent on the procedures of the business office.
Adding Payment Options to Your Event
When creating the event, the Group Officer can enter different ticketing options under the section "Registration Options." Select Add New Option to add another ticket choice. Select Edit to the right of the name of each option to edit the settings of that ticket. Group Officers can adjust the following settings for each ticket option:
- How much the ticket costs
- The number of tickets available
- The minimum and maximum number of tickets a single user can purchase
- The start and end date and time for when tickets are on sale
- Which users have access to purchase the tickets
Managing Refunds
Group Officers managing the ticketed event must share their contact information in the event description as the point of contact for registrants looking to refund their purchase. In addition to a point of contact for refund requests, it must be stated in the event description that requests for refunds can only be made prior to the start of the event, and that refund requests are not allowed after the event has concluded.
Group Officers must take several steps to manage refunds:
- Be on the lookout in the email address provided for any refund requests.
- Maintain a list of all refund requests that your group approved (the name of the requester, their email, and the amount they need to be refunded).
- For each refund request your group approves, log the refund in the Money module in your Group (more information on how to do this below).
- At the conclusion of the event, send the list of approved refunds to the Finance Team so that they can manually process the transfer of funds back to each user.
For item #3 in the list above, to log refund requests, go to the Money module in the Group Dashboard and go to the Online Revenues section. Select Refund for the correct user in the Status column.
Selecting Refund will open a window where you must confirm the appropriate number of tickets and amount refunded for that user. By default, a notification will be sent to the user when you select Submit Response in the bottom right to log the refund.
We recommend that you uncheck the notification box to prevent the user from receiving a message before selecting Submit Response. We make this recommendation because taking the steps mentioned above only logs a record that the refund is approved; these steps do not process the actual transfer of funds back to the user, and we do not want the user to be under the impression that their refund has processed when they get the notification.
It is important to log the refunds in the Money module in your Group as this helps to ensure that the financial report in the system is accurate. Business Offices and the University Finance Team rely on the financial report when transferring funds from the merchant account to the appropriate groups that hosted ticketed events.