Box office¶
Sell general-admission tickets and supporter wristbands from your own festival address, take payment through your festival's own Mollie account, and scan the QR tickets at the gate with Festinato Ops — without a third-party ticketer.
This page is the setup guide: connecting Mollie, creating ticket types, running a test purchase and refund, and scanning at the gate. For what the module covers, see Features → Box office.
Already selling elsewhere?
If you sell on Eventfrog, Ticketino or another ticketer, set the box office mode to External link instead — the mobile app's Tickets page then points at your external shop, with an optional info text, and you can skip the rest of this page. External link works on every tier; running your own box office requires the Community tier or above.
Before you start: a Mollie account¶
Festinato never touches the money — your festival's own Mollie account processes every payment, so ticket revenue lands directly in your bank account. If the festival doesn't have one yet:
- Create the Mollie account early. Mollie has to verify your organisation before live payments are possible, and that can take several days — start well before tickets go on sale, ideally during onboarding.
- Enable the payment methods you want in the Mollie dashboard — cards, TWINT, Apple Pay, Google Pay, iDEAL and Bancontact are all supported by the shop.
- Copy the API keys from the Mollie dashboard (Developers → API
keys). There are two: a test key (
test_…) and a live key (live_…). Start with the test key.
Turning it on¶
Festinato → Settings → Box office
- Set the mode to Own box office.
- Paste the Mollie test key into the Mollie API key field.
- Save.
The shop page appears on your festival's own address (or your custom domain), and the mobile app's Tickets page picks it up automatically — nothing to deploy.
Creating ticket types¶
Festinato → Editions → (your edition) → Box office
Ticket types belong to an edition, so next year's prices never disturb this year's. For each type set:
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Name | What the buyer sees, e.g. Festival pass or Supporter wristband. |
| Price | A fixed price — or switch on pay what you want with a minimum amount and a few suggested amounts, the model for supporter wristbands and donations. |
| Quota | How many can be sold. Leave at 0 for unlimited. |
| Sales window | When the type is on sale; outside the window it disappears from the shop. |
| Per-order limit | The maximum quantity in a single order. |
Do a test purchase¶
With the test key in place no real card is ever charged — Mollie shows a payment simulator instead of a real checkout.
- Open the shop page, pick a ticket and check out.
- On the Mollie test screen, choose Paid.
- You land back on the shop's confirmation page, and the QR ticket arrives as a PDF at the buyer email you entered.
- The order appears under Festinato → Box office → Orders, and the day's sales show up in the edition's takings.
Refund the test order¶
Refunds are issued by an operator from the back-office — there is no attendee self-service refund, so your refund policy stays in your hands.
- Open the order under Festinato → Box office → Orders.
- Click Refund. The whole order is refunded through Mollie, its tickets are revoked (their QR codes stop scanning), and the day's takings are corrected automatically.
Refunds are whole-order: to refund one ticket out of a larger order, refund the order and let the buyer purchase the remainder again.
Go live¶
Once the dry run looks right, swap the test key for the live key under Settings → Box office. From that moment payments are real.
Scanning at the gate¶
Gate staff scan tickets with Festinato Ops — see Ops app → Gate scan. Each scan returns an instant verdict — valid, already scanned (with the time it was first used), or invalid — with a manual search by name or ticket number as the fallback for a phone screen that won't scan. The scan screen also shows sold-versus-scanned counts, and tickets can be resent or revoked from the back-office at any time.
What the box office doesn't do¶
The box office is deliberately kept to the simple general-admission case: no merch, no seat maps, no discount codes, and no per-concert tickets. If your festival needs those, External link mode with a full-service ticketer is the better fit today.
