Integrations

Navigate to: Menu > Ticketing Integration > Integrations

Overview

Backstage Manager works alongside the ticketing system your theatre already uses. You don’t need to move your box office to a new platform or retrain your team. Your ticketing stays where it is, and Backstage Manager connects to it so your performances, sales and audience information can be used across your scheduling, settlements, reporting and marketing without anyone rekeying it.

This page is also where you connect the tools that support your ticketing, such as payments, website tracking, address checking at checkout and your own website or app.

Connect your ticketing platform

Backstage Manager has pre-built integrations with:

●      Spektrix

●      Ticketsolve

●      Eventbrite

Click Other Ticketing Platforms to see the other platforms available, or to request one if yours isn’t listed. There is no migration and no disruption to your box office: you keep selling tickets exactly as you do now.

Once connected, your ticketing information can support the rest of Backstage Manager, for example:

●      Seeing performances alongside get-ins, rehearsals and staff shifts in Calendar & Scheduling

●      Using sales figures for settlements with visiting companies and promoters in Budgeting & Settlements

●      Tracking how each show and performance is selling in Reports & Insights

●      Building audiences from bookers to send campaigns from Email & Promotions

Connect tools that support your ticketing

You can also link the other tools your box office, finance and marketing teams use:

●      Stripe: Take card payments

●      Xero and QuickBooks: Send takings to your finance team

●      Google Sheets and Excel: Keep sales figures in the spreadsheets you already use

●      Mailchimp: Keep your bookers in your mailing lists

●      Gmail: Connect your email

●      Shopify: Link retail sales, such as merchandise or programmes

Thousands more pre-built integrations are available through Zapier. See the Zapier section below.

Advanced options

Click Advanced Options to set up tracking and checkout tools for your online booking pages.

Google Analytics

See how people find and use your online booking pages, for example how many visitors go on to book.

●      Enter your Google Analytics ID

●      Click Save

●      If you don’t have an account yet, click Get a Google Analytics Account

Google Tag Manager

Add and update tracking codes on your booking pages without changing the pages themselves, for example to measure bookings from a social media campaign.

●      Enter your Tag Manager ID

●      Click Save

●      If you don’t have an account yet, click Get a Tag Manager Account

Loqate

Check customer addresses as they type them at checkout, so addresses are captured accurately for postal tickets, season brochures and Gift Aid.

●      Enter your Loqate API key

●      Click Save

●      If you don’t have an account yet, click Sign Up and Configure

Google Ads

Track which Google adverts lead to ticket sales, so you can see which campaigns are working. You only pay for results, such as clicks through to your booking pages.

●      Enter your Conversion ID

●      Enter the Format and Label

●      Set the Colour

●      Enter an Image URL

●      Set Remarketing to True or False. Remarketing lets you show adverts to people who visited your booking pages but didn’t book

●      Click Save

●      If you don’t have an account yet, click Get a Google Ads Account

Social Media

Backstage Manager is pre-integrated with Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), LinkedIn, YouTube, Vimeo and Pinterest. Click Go to Social Settings to connect your accounts, then schedule posts about on-sale dates, last few seats and new shows from Social Scheduling.

API

The API lets other systems talk to Backstage Manager automatically, instead of someone copying information from one system to another. For example, your theatre’s website can ask Backstage Manager for tonight’s performances and how many seats are left, so the “what’s on” page is always up to date.

With the API you can:

●      Push information into Backstage Manager, and pull information out

●      Get a list of events and performances, for example to show on your website

●      Get the tickets linked to an order

●      Create contact lists

●      Connect your social media accounts

●      Extract data to display in your own reports

You can also connect your own website or build your own app, so your audiences can:

●      View their tickets

●      Use loyalty and membership benefits, such as Friends discounts

●      Scan in and out at the door

●      Hear about on-sale dates

●      Pay for purchases in the venue, such as interval drinks or programmes

Webhooks send information to your connected systems the moment something changes, for example as soon as a booking is made or refunded, rather than your systems having to keep checking.

To get started, click Configure on the API panel and follow the steps to generate and manage your API keys. The API is available to all customers. Contact your account manager for the API documentation and your credentials.

Import contacts from your previous system

If you are bringing bookers, members or a mailing list across from another ticketing system, you can import them into Contacts & Relationships.

●      Download the data import template

●      Open it in Excel or a similar program and fill in your contacts using the columns below

●      Save the file as a .csv. It must be no larger than 4MB

●      Go to the Help icon > Case, and submit a case with your import file attached

●      The support team will schedule the import for you

Import template columns:

●      Company Name: The organisation the contact belongs to, for example a school or group organiser. If it doesn’t exist yet, it will be created and the contact attached to it

●      Job Title: The contact’s job title

●      First Name and Last Name: The contact’s name

●      Email: The contact’s email address. If left blank, a stand-in address is created automatically

●      Phone: The contact’s phone number

●      Notes: Any notes about the contact, for example seating preferences. These appear in the Note field on the contact record

●      Subscribed: Whether the contact has opted in to marketing. Enter Y for opted in

●      Tags: Tags for the contact, separated by commas, for example Friends Member, Panto Booker, Schools

●      Address Line 1, Address Line 2, City, County, Country and Postcode: The contact’s address. Country is required. Any contact without a Country will be rejected

Once scheduled, the import appears in the import table at the bottom of the screen, showing who scheduled it, the type of import and its status:

●      Import Lines: How many lines of data are to be imported

●      Result Lines: How many lines failed and were rejected

●      Imported Lines: How many lines were imported successfully

You can carry on working while the import runs, and you’ll get an email when it is complete. If any lines failed, click Export Result to download a CSV listing each line that wasn’t imported and why.

Zapier

Zapier connects Backstage Manager to thousands of other apps without any coding. You build a Zap, which is a simple rule: when something happens in one app, do something in another. For example, when a new booking is made, add a row to a Google Sheet and post a message in your team’s Slack channel.

Every Zap has two parts:

●      Trigger: The event that starts the Zap, for example a new order

●      Action: What happens next, for example adding a row to a spreadsheet or sending an email. You can add more than one action

Set up a Zap:

●      Go to Ticketing Integration > Integrations and click Go to Zapier Settings

●      Use the Search for Pairing Apps box to find the app you want to connect, or pick one from the list

●      Sign in to your Zapier account, or create one. A free tier is available

●      Choose your trigger in Backstage Manager and connect your Backstage Manager account when prompted

●      Choose the action in the other app, connect it and map the fields you want to send, for example customer name, show name and performance date

●      Test the Zap, then turn it on

Your Zaps are managed in your Zapier account, where you can turn them on or off, edit them, see every time they ran, and re-run any that failed.

Ticketing ideas for Zapier:

●      Add every new booking to a Google Sheet for your weekly sales meeting

●      Post a message in Slack or Teams when a performance sells out or passes a sales target

●      Add new bookers to your Mailchimp audience automatically

●      Send daily box office takings to Xero or QuickBooks

●      Email yourself a summary of each day’s sales during a run

If a Zap isn’t working:

●      Check it is turned on, and that the trigger has actually happened since you turned it on, for example that a booking has been made

●      Check the task history in Zapier for errors, and check your field mapping

●      Reconnect your Backstage Manager or other app account in Zapier, as sign-ins can expire

●      Edit the Zap and check every field the other app requires is filled in

Tips

●      Connect your ticketing platform first, so your performances and sales are available across Backstage Manager from the start

●      Set up Google Analytics and Tag Manager before a big on-sale, so you can measure where bookings come from

●      Tidy your contact list before importing, removing duplicates and checking every contact has a Country

●      Only import contacts as Subscribed if they have genuinely opted in to marketing