Selling tickets at the door on the till
How an organiser sells tickets at the door on Achekam's till, caps sales with the opening quantity, takes QR payments and gives buyers a receipt as proof.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Events businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Door sales are where an event's paperwork tends to fall apart. A queue forms, the cash box fills, someone writes sales on the back of a programme, and by the end of the night nobody is sure how many people came in on paid tickets, how many were comps, and whether the cash matches either.
Selling door tickets on the till fixes most of that. Each ticket becomes a sale with a receipt, the count of tickets sold is kept for you, and the money is recorded by payment method. This article explains how to set it up in Achekam for a concert, a conference, a market or a sports day.
A ticket as a product on the till
The till sells products, so a ticket needs to be one. With the Point of Sale add-on, products are created in the Item Master under the Accounting menu, on the server, with an SKU, name, category, selling price, cost price, opening quantity and VAT treatment.
Create one product per ticket type you sell at the door:
- "Door ticket: adult" and "Door ticket: child" if prices differ;
- "Day pass" and "Weekend pass" for a multi-day event;
- a separate product for any door-only price, such as a late-entry rate.
Keep names short and clear, because the cashier will be tapping them in a hurry and the buyer will read them on the receipt. Set the VAT treatment your accountant confirms for ticket sales in your country.
Stock rules and the opening quantity
A till sale takes the sold quantity off stock in the same step, at the till's location, and refuses to go below nil unless the business allows negative stock. For tickets, that rule is a capacity control.
Set each ticket product's opening quantity to the number of tickets available at the door. When that many have been sold, the till refuses further sales. Leave negative stock switched off for ticket products: the refusal is what stops the venue being oversold at eleven at night when the door team is under pressure.
If some capacity has already been sold online or on invoices, subtract it before setting the door quantity, and agree who adjusts the figure if late cancellations free up space.
QR payment through your gateway
Door queues move faster when buyers can pay by phone. A customer can pay at the till by scanning a QR code for a pay page of a payment gateway the business has set up, and the payment counts only after the server has confirmed it with the gateway. Which gateways are offered depends on the till's currency and on the gateways you have set up and switched on.
Make the routine clear to door staff: ring up the ticket, show the QR code, wait for the till to confirm, then let the buyer in. A buyer waving a phone with a "payment sent" screen has not paid until the till says so.
Cash still has its place at the door. For a cash sale, the till records the money handed over and the change given.
The receipt PDF as proof of purchase
Every door sale produces a receipt. The till receipt is a PDF made by the server from the posted sale, showing every payment, VAT by rate and the business's tax number, and it can be printed, downloaded or e-mailed to the buyer.
At a busy door, e-mailing the receipt is often the quickest proof of purchase: ask for the buyer's e-mail address and send it while they walk in. Buyers who need a receipt for a claim, such as conference delegates, will appreciate having it in their inbox. In South Africa, the Consumer Protection Act requires a supplier to give a consumer a written record of each transaction; the text of section 26 on sales records sets out what that record must contain.
Two practical limits. The till does not drive receipt printers, cash drawers or other hardware, so a printed receipt comes from printing the PDF. And the paper-size, logo and footer options on the receipt screen change only an on-screen mock-up, not the receipt itself, so do not spend the morning of the event adjusting them.
Full payment only at the door
The server refuses any till sale that is not paid in full. There are no "pay the rest later" tickets at the door: either the ticket is paid for, by one method or a combination, or it is not sold.
That is the right rule for a door. Anyone who should come in without paying, such as guests and crew, belongs on a comp list and is rung up with a supervisor's approval, as described in complimentary tickets and guest-list drinks. Corporate groups who want to pay later should be invoiced before the event instead.
At the end of the night, cash up the door till like any other, and compare the number of tickets sold with the opening quantity and with the head count your door staff kept. If the three agree, the door is reconciled; if not, you know which question to ask while the team is still on site.
Door checklist
- Ticket products created, with prices and VAT treatment.
- Opening quantity set to door capacity, negative stock off.
- Gateway set up and tested for QR payments.
- Float counted for cash sales.
- Receipt e-mail routine agreed with the door team.
- Comp list handed to the door supervisor.
If the venue's connection is unreliable, read selling when the venue's signal drops before the day. Then sell one test ticket of each type, refund it, and check the opening quantity has come back, so the door team has seen the whole cycle before the first buyer arrives.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
