Tickets, PDFs & the door

A ticket in Platypus is a PDF: a bordered stub with the event details on one side and a QR code on the other, ready to print or show on a phone. The QR is what door staff scan on the night. This page covers how those PDFs reach buyers, how to issue tickets yourself, and the printed door sheet.

How buyers get their tickets

The moment an order is confirmed (a payment succeeding, or a free order's final confirmation — see Stripe payments), Platypus emails the buyer a confirmation with the ticket PDF attached: one document containing every ticket in the order, QR codes included, sent through your mail settings. The email doubles as their receipt, itemising ticket prices, any discount, and the total paid with payment date and method. The seller block carries your organisation name, venue address, ABN, and contact email, plus a link to your ticket terms when you've set them (see Business identity).

An order of free tickets skips the payment step: the tickets issue the moment the buyer confirms, the email's totals read Free, and there is no payment line. That email is their only receipt — no card statement backs it up.

The confirmation screen at the end of checkout shows the same order summary and a Download your tickets (PDF) button that returns the identical PDF, so a buyer whose email is slow still walks away with tickets. The download only works for that buyer's own paid order. A pending, expired, or someone else's order gets nothing.

For an event with several dates, the email, the confirmation screen, and the tickets all name the exact date purchased — that date's time and location, not another stop's and not your home venue. On single-date events the ticket's venue line is the event's own location if you set one, otherwise your venue address from Settings.

Two limits worth knowing:

• If the confirmation email fails to send, the sale is safe — the tickets stay issued and the failure lands in your audit log. Download the order's PDF from the admin Tickets page and send it on yourself.
• There is no buyer login and no resend button. A buyer who loses both the email and the confirmation page needs you: find the order under Tickets, download its PDF, email it over.

Issuing tickets yourself

For box office sales, comps, and guests, create a ticket group from Tickets in the admin: pick the event, enter who it's for and how many tickets of each type, and download the group's PDF (same stub-and-QR layout as an online order) to print or email. Ticket types come from the event's batches (see Setting up an event), and admin-issued counts draw down the same capacity as online sales: asking for more than a batch has left is rejected with the remaining count, and nothing is created.

Admin-issued tickets are sold tickets everywhere it matters: they appear in the sold totals and on the door sheet, and they scan at the door exactly like a purchase.

The printed door sheet

The door sheet is a printable list of everyone coming. Open it from the Door sheet link on the Tickets page, the Events list, or the Dashboard (shown only for events with ticketing enabled). The page opens in a new tab: plain black-and-white A4 with no app chrome, made for a printer.

It shows the event's title, date, and time, sold totals broken down by ticket type, and one row per sold ticket: a tick-box, the ticket code in monospace, the ticket type, and the name with the buyer's email — Alex (person@example.com). Rows are ordered by name (ignoring letter case), so finding someone with a pen is fast. Only paid tickets appear; pending checkouts and expired orders are excluded. Every printed page carries a footer, <Event> - <Date> <Time> - Page x of y, so you can tell at the door that no page is missing.

For a multi-date event you get a Door sheet link per date as well as one for the whole event. The per-date sheet lists only that date's ticket holders and puts that date's time and location in the header. Print the one for tonight, not the tour.

The sheet lists buyer names and emails, so treat the printout like the personal data it is. It's for the door, not the noticeboard.

Paper sheet or scan link?

Use both. The door check-in link is the primary: scanning verifies live that a ticket is genuine, paid, for tonight, and not already used. A paper tick can't stop the same ticket walking past two doors. The sheet is the backup that needs no battery and no wifi, and it doubles as a name list for regulars who never open the email. Print it close to doors opening: it's a snapshot, so tickets sold after printing won't be on it. They'll still scan fine.

A PDF that won't download or looks wrong is worth reporting — email support@platypus.tickets with the order reference. For the night itself, read Door check-in.