PDF Print at Home Tickets

Whilst offering a Print-at-Home ticket option for your online customers may seem like an ideal way to minimize time and effort in processing and printing tickets, addressing envelopes and mailing out tickets to your customers, you need to be aware of a couple of limitations regarding PDF printed tickets.

Security
The main problem with PDF tickets is that it is all too easy to simply photocopy or reprint a ticket that is printed at home. Whilst this may not be so much of a problem with reserved seating events, (since one could normally assume that a person contemplating copying a ticket would realise that two people cannot sit in the same reserved seat) it is a major problem for general admission events. Even if a PDF ticket is printed with a customer's name and address, there are a number of PDF editing programs which can quite easily edit names and addresses using the same font type and size as the original which would make it impossible for a person checking tickets to easily recognize a forged ticket, even if they were to check the ID of a person entering the venue.

The normal solution to this problem is to print all PDF tickets with bar codes, (which is done by default with the HandyTix system) but of course this then requires that tickets are scanned at the entrance to the venue with some sort of a scanning device. And generally speaking, the scanner must be connected to the live database through an Internet connection. With some ticketing software it is possible to download the bar code details to a file before the event, so that the scanner then validates entry based on the bar codes in the downloaded file. But naturally this can be somewhat more inconvenient as it means shutting off ticket sales before the bar codes are downloaded.

Home Printers
Print-at-Home tickets of course also rely on the customer owning a suitable printer, which may not always be the case. Of course the customer could take the file to a print shop, but this becomes a rather tedious method for the customer to be purchasing a ticket. So if you wish to offer the option of Print-at-Home PDF tickets to your online customers, you should always offer another alternative such as mailed tickets or exchange vouchers.

Ticket Formats
Ideally, you should have the ability to completely customise the PDF ticket that the customer will be printing, because in this case, not only can you add additional information about how to reach the venue, parking restrictions etc but you can also use the PDF ticket for other purposes such as sponsors names, discount offers etc. With the HandyTix system you can completely customise the PDF tickets with any text, images, logos or other elements you require, plus you can choose to insert data from over 150 different data fields.

Vouchers
An alternative to Print-at-Home PDF tickets is an emailed voucher. In this case, the customer would receive an e-mail containing a unique voucher number, which they would then bring it to your box office prior to the event and would receive actual tickets in exchange. The box office would in this case only print one set of tickets for each unique voucher number that was presented, thus reducing the possibility of fraud. Of course a person could photocopy their e-mailed voucher, but the second person who presented this voucher to the box office would be denied the issue of any tickets.