Sell tickets and receive donations with ChurchDesk
ChurchDesk Forms is a powerful tool that not only updates your contact database but also helps you manage sign-ups for events. In this article, you’ll learn how you can:
Sell tickets for a paid event
Manage multiple ticket types
Let people claim a ticket for a free event
Collect donations with gift aid
Easily share the form on social media and your website
Automatically close a form when it’s sold out
TIP: Use one of our form templates to get started fast!
Selling tickets for paid events in ChurchDesk is really easy. All you need to do is create a form and drag in a ticket field. You’ll find the ticket field in the list of fields at the bottom of the field selector in the left side of your form builder.
Now all you need to do is name your ticket and specify quantity and price. When you save the form with a paid ticket we’ll ask you to confirm our terms and your currency. That’s all.
Behind the scenes, we’ll create a payment project in ChurchDesk Payments & Giving and link it to the form. The payment project will group all the payments made to this specific form - allowing you to later see how much you made as well as easily exporting the payment details for your finance team.
TIP: In case you want your finance team to access the payments you simply give them access to ChurchDesk Payments & Giving. Thereby you prevent them to get access to the form and some of the personal details it might include.
From ChurchDesk Payments & Giving you’ll be able to see when your next transfer is up. In case, you need to know more about ChurchDesk Payments & Giving we recommend you read this guide.
For every payment/donation you receive via ChurchDesk, we charge a transaction fee and a payment processing fee. Read more here. Managing free tickets in ChurchDesk is of course free!
Adding different ticket types allows you to offer tickets for different age groups with individual prices and quantity. You can customize your tickets by name, price and how many of each type can be sold.
Adult admission (£5.00)
Child 4-16’s (£2.00)
Child 0-4’s (Free)
OR HOW ABOUT...
Friday (£5.00)
Saturday (£5.00)
Both days (£8.50)
OR PERHAPS LIKE THIS…
General admission (£5.00)
Food ticket (£2.50)
Drink ticket (£1.00)
In case you wanna offer free tickets for one of your events you simply follow the same steps as when selling tickets with a price.
First, you create a form and drag in a ticket field. You’ll find the ticket field in the list of fields at the bottom of the field selector in the right side of your form builder. Now all you need to do is name your ticket and specify a quantity and leave the price field empty.
When the form is submitted, an e-mail with ticket(s) will be sent to the person submitting the form. The ticket shows the name of the event (= name of the form), name of the person who filled the form and an ID.
The layout of the ticket cannot be edited.
Whether you’re selling tickets or offering them for free, it’s worth considering if you should ask for a donation.
Asking people to add a donation is very easy to do in ChurchDesk.
First, you need to set up a donation project in ChurchDesk Payments & Giving.
Now you navigate to ChurchDesk Forms and edit the form you want to allow donation on.
Finally, you add the donation project to the form via the ‘Form settings’ (2nd tab in the top of the page).
TIP : You can add your donation project to multiple forms at the same time._
When people fill out your form, we’ll now ask them kindly to donate towards your project. They’ll be able to add the amount they wish to add as well as enable gift aid on the donation.
When you need to claim your gift aid, you can easily export the gift aid information in a HMRC friendly format and upload it straight away.
It’s important that people know about your event and don’t have to struggle with figuring out how they can sign up and claim a ticket. When you’ve created your sign-up form in ChurchDesk you get a unique link that we suggest you share as many places as possible. Here’s a couple of suggestions:
Link to the form from your event description in the Calendar
Add the link to your website, i.e. in a text view
Create a facebook event and paste in the link into the tickets URL
If you have specified a max amount of tickets for your different ticket types, the form will automatically close when all tickets are sold. Visitors will now be informed the event is sold out.
We also recommend you to set an end date for your form, to prevent that tickets are sold after the event has passed in case your event is not sold out.
Simply edit your form and click the ‘Form settings’ tab in the top of the page. Now specify an end date.
Sell tickets for a paid event
Manage multiple ticket types
Let people claim a ticket for a free event
Collect donations with gift aid
Easily share the form on social media and your website
Automatically close a form when it’s sold out
TIP: Use one of our form templates to get started fast!
Sell tickets for a paid event
Selling tickets for paid events in ChurchDesk is really easy. All you need to do is create a form and drag in a ticket field. You’ll find the ticket field in the list of fields at the bottom of the field selector in the left side of your form builder.
Now all you need to do is name your ticket and specify quantity and price. When you save the form with a paid ticket we’ll ask you to confirm our terms and your currency. That’s all.
Behind the scenes
Behind the scenes, we’ll create a payment project in ChurchDesk Payments & Giving and link it to the form. The payment project will group all the payments made to this specific form - allowing you to later see how much you made as well as easily exporting the payment details for your finance team.
TIP: In case you want your finance team to access the payments you simply give them access to ChurchDesk Payments & Giving. Thereby you prevent them to get access to the form and some of the personal details it might include.
From ChurchDesk Payments & Giving you’ll be able to see when your next transfer is up. In case, you need to know more about ChurchDesk Payments & Giving we recommend you read this guide.
For every payment/donation you receive via ChurchDesk, we charge a transaction fee and a payment processing fee. Read more here. Managing free tickets in ChurchDesk is of course free!
Manage multiple ticket types
Adding different ticket types allows you to offer tickets for different age groups with individual prices and quantity. You can customize your tickets by name, price and how many of each type can be sold.
Examples of ticket types
Adult admission (£5.00)
Child 4-16’s (£2.00)
Child 0-4’s (Free)
OR HOW ABOUT...
Friday (£5.00)
Saturday (£5.00)
Both days (£8.50)
OR PERHAPS LIKE THIS…
General admission (£5.00)
Food ticket (£2.50)
Drink ticket (£1.00)
Let people claim tickets for a free event
In case you wanna offer free tickets for one of your events you simply follow the same steps as when selling tickets with a price.
First, you create a form and drag in a ticket field. You’ll find the ticket field in the list of fields at the bottom of the field selector in the right side of your form builder. Now all you need to do is name your ticket and specify a quantity and leave the price field empty.
Tickets are sent by e-mail
When the form is submitted, an e-mail with ticket(s) will be sent to the person submitting the form. The ticket shows the name of the event (= name of the form), name of the person who filled the form and an ID.
The layout of the ticket cannot be edited.
Collect donations with gift aid
Whether you’re selling tickets or offering them for free, it’s worth considering if you should ask for a donation.
Asking people to add a donation is very easy to do in ChurchDesk.
First, you need to set up a donation project in ChurchDesk Payments & Giving.
Now you navigate to ChurchDesk Forms and edit the form you want to allow donation on.
Finally, you add the donation project to the form via the ‘Form settings’ (2nd tab in the top of the page).
TIP : You can add your donation project to multiple forms at the same time._
When people fill out your form, we’ll now ask them kindly to donate towards your project. They’ll be able to add the amount they wish to add as well as enable gift aid on the donation.
Export gift aid details
When you need to claim your gift aid, you can easily export the gift aid information in a HMRC friendly format and upload it straight away.
Easily share the form on social media and your website
It’s important that people know about your event and don’t have to struggle with figuring out how they can sign up and claim a ticket. When you’ve created your sign-up form in ChurchDesk you get a unique link that we suggest you share as many places as possible. Here’s a couple of suggestions:
Link to the form from your event description in the Calendar
Add the link to your website, i.e. in a text view
Create a facebook event and paste in the link into the tickets URL
Automatically close a form when it’s sold out
If you have specified a max amount of tickets for your different ticket types, the form will automatically close when all tickets are sold. Visitors will now be informed the event is sold out.
We also recommend you to set an end date for your form, to prevent that tickets are sold after the event has passed in case your event is not sold out.
Simply edit your form and click the ‘Form settings’ tab in the top of the page. Now specify an end date.
Updated on: 02/05/2023
Thank you!