FAQ and Troubleshooting

How can I test my shop before taking it live?

On your event dashboard, click on the first tile that shows your shop status. On the lower part of this page, you can place your event into “test mode”. In “test mode”, everything behaves the same, but orders created during test mode can later be fully deleted. Be sure to actually delete them when or after you turn off test mode, since test mode orders still count toward your quotas and are included in your reports.

How do I delete an event?

You can find the event deletion button at the bottom of the event settings page. Note however, that it is not possible to delete an event once any order or invoice has been created, as those likely contain information on financial transactions which legally may not be tampered with and needs to be kept on record for multiple years in most countries. In this case, you can just disable the shop by clicking the first square on your event dashboard.

If you are using the hosted service at pretix.eu and want to get rid of an event that you only used for testing, contact us at support@pretix.eu and we can remove it for you.

Why doesn’t my product show up in the ticket shop?

If you created a product and it doesn’t show up, please follow the following steps to find out why:

1. Check if the product’s “active” checkbox is enabled.

2. Check if the product is in a category that has the “Products in this category are add-on products” checkbox enabled. If this is the case, the product won’t show up on the shop front page, but only in the first step of checkout when a product in the cart allows to add add-on products from this category.

3. Check if the product’s “Available from” or “Available until” settings restrict it to a date range.

4. Check if the product’s checkbox “This product will only be shown if a voucher matching the product is redeemed.” is enabled. If this is the case, the product will only be shown if the customer redeems a voucher that directly matches to this product. It will not be shown if the voucher only is configured to match a quota that contains the product.

5. Check that a quota exists that contains this product. If your product has variations, check that at least one variation is contained in a quota. If your event is an event series, make sure that the product is contained in a quota that is assigned to the series date that you access the shop for.

6. If the sale period has not started yet or is already over, check the “Show items outside presale period” setting of your event.

Can I have different payment deadlines for different payment methods?

No. We do not think it makes a lot of sense, for a number of reasons. First of all we believe it is not very customer-friendly. You might for example want to configure a 1-day deadline for credit card payments and 2 weeks for bank transfers. However, think for example of a customer who wants to pay by card and then the payment fails because the bank locked the card or refused the payment. The customer now needs to worry about not getting their ticket, or needs to create a new order with a different payment method. A payment deadline is a guarantee to your customer to hold the ticket if it is paid for within a certain time frame. If you give a two-week guarantee to some of your customers, why not to others?

There are some other issues with it as well. pretix allows customers to switch payment methods as long as their payment has not been started or if it has failed. For example, a customer who selected bank transfer can later switch to credit card if they haven’t sent the money yet, or a customer with a failed credit card payment can switch to a different method without creating a new order. If payment deadlines were dependent on the payment method, switching back and forth could either allow someone to extend their deadline forever, or render someones order invalid by moving the date back in the past.

Why does pretix not support any 1D (linear) bar codes?

We often get asked, why pretix depends on QR codes instead of more traditional 1D bar codes. More often than not, people tend to already own linear (laser) bar code scanners.

The truth is: we have deliberately chosen not to support 1D bar codes - and that for multiple reasons.

1. 1D bar codes would get very long:

   The bar code contains the “ticket secret” - a long alphanumeric string which uniquely identifies the ticket across all events in the system. By default it is 32 characters long, but it could be even longer if the future ever makes it necessary. Making the bar code shorter would expose the system to easier means of fraud if the customer can just try out random character/letter combinations, until they find a valid one.

   Of course, we could just put the 32 characters or more into a regular, 1D bar code - but these bar codes are huge! See for yourself:

   • Code-128:

     

   • Code-39-alpha:

     

   This is getting to a point, where scanning the bar code from a phone screen is nearly impossible.

2. 1D bar codes are not robust

   Scanning it from paper is a whole different adventure: Linear bar codes have little to no redundancy. Meaning, if someone would fold their printed ticket in a way that the bar code got a kink in it which could prevent the scanner from reading it, there is no way to recover.

   A QR-code however, while also not 100% immune to kinking it, has some redundancy built into it, so that even slightly damaged bar codes are still readable.

3. Laser bar code scanners don not work on (most) phone screens

   To be fair: There is a variety of bar code scanners out there. But when people ask about linear bar code support because their existing scanners are professional grade, they are talking about laser bar code scanners.

   Unfortunately, laser bar code scanners tend to have a lot of issues when used on cell phone screens: Nowadays, most phone screens are made of glass - and laser scanners cannot scan anything from glass screens. That is also the reason why most companies that use bar code scanners use CCD bar code scanners - even if they are only/mostly scanning linear bar codes.

You can see that we’re not not putting 1D bar codes into pretix to annoy you - it really is about practicability in the end.

However: Most professional bar code scanners allow for the scan-engine to be swapped out for a 2D-engine. It certainly won’t be cheap - but depending on the manufacturer it might still be more affordable than replacing the scanners.