Where tickets live if the pack is not ticketing
What the Events pack keeps and what it leaves out: no attendee list, check-in or badges. Where ticket sales and attendee data belong instead.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Events businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Launching soon. The Industry CRM add-on described in this article is launching soon. This article describes it as it will work at launch.
When an events company hears that Achekam has an Events & trade shows pack, an early question is "so can we sell tickets in it?" The honest answer is: you can sell them through Achekam, but the pack is not a ticketing system, and it does not try to be one.
Knowing where that line sits before you switch the pack on saves an awkward discovery a fortnight before an event, when someone asks for the door list. This article sets out what the pack keeps, what it leaves out, and how to run tickets and attendee data alongside it.
What the pack keeps
The Events pack is built around the business side of running events: who is paying you, who you are paying, and what has been promised. It keeps four kinds of record:
- Events, the shows, conferences and festivals themselves.
- Sponsorships, with the proposal, signed agreement, invoice, artwork request and benefit checklist that go with each sponsor.
- Exhibitor booths, with the booth allocation, a signed exhibitor agreement, the booth invoice and a request for stand plans, insurance and badge names.
- Vendor contracts, the caterers, hire companies and venues you engage.
Like every industry pack, it sets the words your screens use, its record types, pipelines, workflows, the documents it asks for and sends for signature, and its home-page counts. All of that is aimed at sponsors, exhibitors and suppliers, the relationships worth real money that need following up.
No attendee list, check-in or badge scanning
The pack keeps no attendee list. It has no check-in at the door and no badge scanning. It is not a registration system for delegates and does not issue e-tickets with barcodes.
Notice the one place where badges do appear: exhibitor onboarding requests badge names from each exhibitor. That is a list you collect for your badge printer or registration provider, not a badge system inside Achekam.
Tickets sold on invoices or at the till
Tickets are still sold through Achekam in two ways, both of which put the income in your books properly:
| Situation | Where it is sold | What the customer gets |
|---|---|---|
| A company buys a block of tickets or a table | A customer invoice | An invoice PDF on your letterhead, e-mailed with or without a pay link |
| Walk-up sales at the door or a box office | The till, with the Point of Sale add-on | A till receipt PDF showing every payment and VAT by rate |
Issuing an invoice posts it to debtors, sales and output VAT. A till sale posts its own journal when it reaches the server. Either way, the money is recorded where your accountant expects to find it. What neither creates is a named list of who is coming.
Where attendee data should live instead
If your event needs named attendees, registration questions, e-tickets or scanning at the gate, use a dedicated ticketing or registration platform for that part, and treat it as the home of attendee data. Then decide two things.
How the money reaches your books. Online ticket income paid out by a platform is recorded from the platform's payout reports, with its fees as a cost. Tickets you sell yourself go through invoices or the till as above. Keep the two routes separate so a ticket is never recorded twice.
How personal information is handled. An attendee list holds names, e-mail addresses and sometimes dietary or accessibility needs. In South Africa, the Information Regulator publishes guidance notes, including how to use customer information for direct marketing by e-mail, SMS or phone within POPIA. In Nigeria the Nigeria Data Protection Commission and in Kenya the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner set the equivalent rules. Copying a whole attendee list into a sales tool "just in case" makes those duties harder to meet.
The pack is consistent with that caution. Its post-event workflow passes on visitor details to sponsors and exhibitors only for people who agreed to share them, so the consent question has to be answered at registration, in the platform where attendees actually sign up.
Planning around the gap
A practical split for most events companies:
- The registration platform holds attendees, sells online tickets, scans at the gate and records consent.
- Achekam's Events pack holds the event, sponsors, exhibitors and vendor contracts, and drives their paperwork.
- Achekam's invoices and till handle tickets you sell yourself, to companies or at the door.
- Your books receive platform payouts as gross sales less fees, matched on the bank statement.
Guest lists deserve the same thought. Complimentary tickets for sponsors, artists and media, and names on the door for VIP areas, are attendee data too, even when no money changes hands. Keep them in the registration platform or a controlled list owned by one named person, not in a spreadsheet passed around the production team by e-mail. If a sponsor's guests need passes, the sponsor's benefit checklist in the pack can track that the passes were sent, while the names themselves stay where attendee data belongs.
Write the split down for your team, including who exports what and when. The failure to watch for is not technical: it is a sponsor who was promised the delegate list, when the consent wording at registration never allowed it.
Before you switch the pack on
Decide which platform holds attendees, check its consent wording covers what you promise sponsors, and plan how its payouts reach your books. For the checks after the event, including sponsor reports and consented visitor details, read after the event: invoices paid and sponsor reports, and for selling at the gate yourself, see selling door tickets at the till.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
