Extras sold with the ticket

A ticket is rarely the whole sale. The table wants champagne on arrival, the couple driving in want a parking space, and half the room will buy a programme if somebody asks them to. Extras are how you ask, at the moment they are already paying.

A catalogue, not a form field

An extra is a thing you sell, so it is kept like one: a name, a description, a picture and a price, in a list of its own under Sales & finance. It outlives the event it was sold at — the same parking space is on sale every night the venue opens — which is exactly what a question on a booking form cannot be.

You choose where each one is offered. Name the events, or name the categories and let every event filed under them inherit it. Name nothing at all and it is on sale everywhere, which is usually what a parking space wants.

Two kinds of running out

A venue has fifty parking spaces tonight, and fifty again tomorrow. A season has two hundred programmes printed once, and when they are gone they are gone. Those are different numbers, and Eventnetic keeps both.

• A limit per date is a capacity. It comes back each night.
• A limit in total is an inventory. It runs out for good, across every date and every event.

Set either, both, or neither. Set both and whichever runs out first is the one that binds.

Nothing is stored as a counter. What is left is worked out from the bookings that sold it, so a cancelled booking hands its stock back without anyone remembering to, and there are never two numbers to disagree with each other.

Required, or merely offered

Give an extra a minimum of one and it becomes part of the booking rather than an afterthought: the step says Required, and a booking that leaves it out is refused. That is the dinner every guest is expected to attend.

Leave the minimum at zero and it is an offer. A maximum bounds what one order may take, so nobody walks off with the last eight parking spaces.

For the booking, or for each person

Some extras belong to the whole order: one parking space, one souvenir photo. Others belong to a person: a meal, a T-shirt size, an audio guide, a glass of champagne each. Mark an extra per attendee and each guest chooses it in their own block on the booking form, its least and most apply to each of them, and every line says whose it is: Lunch — Marie Dupont.

The name follows the line to the invoice, the door list, both exports and the customer's own ticket, so the kitchen knows the fish is for Marie and the vegetarian plate for Paul.

Where the customer meets them

A step of their own in the booking form, after the tickets and before the details — what is being bought is settled before who is buying it. Each extra is a row with its picture, its price and a stepper. One that has run out says so; one that is nearly gone says how many are left.

The number the stepper offers is already capped by what is left, so the form cannot offer something the booking would then refuse. Extras sold per attendee are not on that step: they sit in each guest's block, where the guest is named.

And at the desk

A booking taken over the phone sells the same things. Editing a booking in the admin, the Extras tab offers the same list with what the booking already holds already chosen — and the stock it is holding is credited back to it, so a booking that took the last two can still be saved. Extras sold per attendee are chosen inside each attendee on the Attendees tab.

On the paperwork

Extras are lines on the order like any other, which means they are simply there: on the invoice, in the confirmation email, in the booking's own tab, and in your reports. Two keywords, {{extras_list}} and {{extras_total}}, put them in any message you write, and {attendee_extras} puts one person's on their ticket or their reminder.