Tickets and the door

How a guest gets their ticket, when that ticket starts working, and how to check people in at the door.

Tickets and the door screen belong to the plans that publish events and admit guests against them. If your venue has no door to work, you will not use this page.

What the guest gets after booking

A booking made on your site is a request. Nothing is sent to the guest yet — the request lands on your Reservations screen and you get a notification email.

The guest receives their ticket the moment you set the booking to Confirmed. The email's subject starts with "Your ticket" followed by the name of the event, it opens with "You're on the list", and it contains:

• a QR code to show at the door,
• an Open my ticket button that opens their ticket page,
• the venue, event, date and time, table (if one is assigned) and party size.

Three other moments also send the ticket:

• You add the booking yourself with New reservation on the Reservations screen — the ticket goes out straight away.
• The guest paid online before arriving, and their payment cleared. Online payment only happens if you have connected your own payment processor under Venue settings.
• You confirm a booking that had not been sent one yet, for example because the first attempt did not go through.

Two cases get no ticket at all:

• A guest who left only a phone number. The ticket is sent by email, so a booking with no email address can never be sent one — and it can never be scanned. Ask for an email whenever you can.
• A waitlisted guest. They have no table yet, so there is nothing to admit. They get a ticket once you give them a table and confirm.

When a ticket becomes valid

A ticket only works after it has been sent to the guest. Confirming the booking is what sends it, so in practice: confirmed and emailed means admittable, anything else does not.

This matters more than it sounds, because a booking made on your site quietly reserves the guest's table straight away. That guest can already appear on the door list before you have confirmed them — but scanning them will refuse entry until you do.

What changes a ticket's state:

What you do	What happens to the ticket
Set the booking to Confirmed	The ticket is emailed and starts working
Set it to Cancelled or Declined	The ticket stops working immediately
Move the guest to another table	The ticket keeps working and shows the new table

Refunding a guest in your payment processor's own dashboard does not change their ticket. It keeps working, and the table stays held, until you set the booking to Cancelled or Declined yourself. See Taking payments from your guests.

A ticket also stops working on its own 8 hours after the event's start time, and once it has been scanned in. That window is why a ticket is worth resending rather than reusing from an earlier date.

The guest's ticket page

Every ticket has its own web page — the Open my ticket button in the email goes there, and the QR code in the email points at the same page. It is worth knowing what your guests see, because they will ask.

The page always shows the current state of the booking, not a snapshot from the moment you confirmed. If you move the guest from table 4 to table 11 at 23:40, their page shows table 11.

Guests see one of four things:

• Your ticket — the normal state. A large QR code, the line "Show this at the door", and the event, date, table and party size.
• Awaiting confirmation — the booking exists but you have not confirmed it yet. They see the details but no code.
• Already admitted — the ticket has been scanned in.
• Ticket not valid — the link is wrong, out of date, cancelled or expired. The page deliberately gives nothing else away.

If a guest needs their ticket again

On the Reservations screen, open the row's menu (the three dots) and choose Resend ticket. The guest gets the same "Your ticket" email again, with the same code — the old email keeps working too. The option only appears on a Confirmed booking that has an email address; nothing else can be sent.

If you would rather not resend:

1. Ask the guest to search their inbox — and their spam folder — for an email whose subject starts with "Your ticket" and then names the event.
2. The ticket link keeps working and always shows the latest details, so a forwarded email is still fine.
3. If they cannot find it, admit them from the Expected guests list at the door (see below).

Confirming an already-confirmed booking a second time does not send another email; only Resend ticket does.

Free entry and vouchers

These are amounts you record against a booking so your door staff can see them — Noctessa does not charge anyone for them. Charging a guest online is a separate setting; see Taking payments from your guests.

You set them up on the event, under Table voucher tiers and VIP voucher tiers. Each tier has an Amount, a number of Tickets (the free entries included in that package) and a Band, where 1 is closest to the stage. The event also has a separate Door (entry) price field.

When an event has tiers, the guest must pick one to book — they see Choose a package on the booking form, with the number of free entry tickets shown for each option.

Afterwards:

• The Reservations screen shows the voucher amount and the free entry count in the Benefits column, along with a Paid badge if the guest paid online.
• On the Floor plan, opening a booked table lets you change or clear its Voucher package.
• At the door, the guest's card shows Free entry and Voucher with the amount, so staff know what the guest has already paid for.

Setting up your door staff

Give each person on the door their own login. On Staff, enter their email, set Role to Door, and choose Invite.

A door login is deliberately narrow. When that person signs in, they land straight on the check-in screen and see nothing else — no reservations list, no events, no settings, no guest contact details. All they can do is scan, admit, move a guest to another table, switch between light and dark, and sign out.

If you are a full admin and want to see the check-in screen yourself, add /door to the end of your admin address. It is not in the menu.

Checking guests in

The screen shows tonight's event at the top — the soonest published event — with a running count of how many guests are in.

1. Point the camera at the guest's QR code, from their phone screen or a printout. It reads it and beeps.
2. Their card appears: name, party size and table. Check it is the right person.
3. Tap Admit.
4. The result fills the screen in colour, with a symbol and words.
5. The camera comes back on its own after a couple of seconds, ready for the next guest, or you can tap Scan next.

If the camera cannot be used — no camera on the device, or you use a handheld scanner that types codes — use Manual entry at the bottom. Paste or scan the ticket code into the box and tap Admit.

Keep the device on a working connection. The chip in the top corner reads Online or Offline, and every check-in is confirmed against your venue's live guest list.

Below the scanner is Expected guests — everyone holding a ticket for tonight, with party size and table. Guests already checked in are marked In. This list updates by itself as other devices admit people.

What each result means

What the screen says	What it means	What to do
ADMITTED (green)	Good ticket, first scan.	Let them in.
Already in (this device) (green)	You scanned the same ticket twice on this same device.	Nothing is wrong. Carry on.
ALREADY ADMITTED — ANOTHER DEVICE (amber)	This ticket was already used at another door or on another phone.	Stop and check. It may be a copied or forwarded code. Tap Acknowledge & continue when you have decided.
NOT CONFIRMED — DO NOT ADMIT (red)	The booking has not been confirmed, or it was cancelled or declined.	Do not admit on this ticket. A manager can confirm the booking on the Reservations screen; the ticket works from then on.
REVOKED — DO NOT ADMIT (red)	The ticket was withdrawn — the booking was cancelled or declined.	Do not admit. Send them to a manager.
INVALID / EXPIRED (red)	The code is not one of yours, is out of date, or belongs to another venue.	Do not admit. Check they are at the right venue and the right event.

Every scan is recorded, including the refusals, so a manager can look back at what happened.

The amber "another device" result is the only one that will not clear by itself — it waits for someone to acknowledge it, on purpose.

What door staff can and cannot see

The guest card is built to be readable at arm's length in the dark, and to hold nothing sensitive.

Shown: guest name, party size, table, free entry count, voucher amount and currency, and whether the booking is marked paid or refunded.

Never shown: phone number, email address, or the note your team wrote on the booking.

Moving a guest to another table

After a guest is admitted, tap Move table. You get:

• Auto — nearest free, which picks the closest free table for you, or
• a grid of free tables with their seat counts — tap one.

If someone else takes that table in the same second, you are told to pick another and the list refreshes. Moving a guest needs a connection, so the button is unavailable while the screen says Offline.

When a guest arrives without their ticket

1. Look for their name under Expected guests. If they are there, the booking is real and you can see their table and party size.
2. Ask them to open the "Your ticket" email on their phone and scan it from the screen — that is the fastest fix and keeps the check-in recorded.
3. If they truly cannot produce it, admit them at your own discretion. They will stay unmarked on the list, so tell whoever is holding the count.
4. A guest who is not on the list at all has no confirmed booking for tonight. Treat them as a walk-in.

If something looks wrong

• "No event tonight" — you have no published upcoming event. Publish tonight's event on the Events screen.
• "No issued tickets." — nobody has a ticket for the event yet. Confirm bookings on the Reservations screen.
• A confirmed guest scans as NOT CONFIRMED — the booking most likely has no email address on it, so the ticket was never sent. Check the guest on Expected guests and admit them from the list.
• A guest says the QR never arrived — check the email address on their booking, and ask them to look in spam. Guests who booked by phone number only never get one.
• The ticket page says "Awaiting confirmation" — the booking is still sitting unconfirmed. Set it to Confirmed.
• The chip says Offline — the device has lost its connection. Get it back on the network before you keep scanning.
• A ticket scans as INVALID / EXPIRED at the end of the night — tickets stop working 8 hours after the event starts.