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Guide to Understanding the Financial Process
Guide to Understanding the Financial Process

Learn about transaction fees, passing fees onto your customers, refunds, DRM unlock fees, deferred fees, and more.

Iddo Patt avatar
Written by Iddo Patt
Updated over a week ago

Your organization can sell passes, tickets, items, and donations, all of which incur some type of fee, whether transactional or virtual content-based.

All revenue is processed through Stripe. Fees may be collected at the point of sale or invoiced monthly.

Learn more about the various fees you may encounter while using Eventive below!

Transaction Fees

Every credit card transaction - such as a ticket or pass purchase - on Eventive is subject to a 5% + 99¢ transaction fee. This transaction fee is made up of two components:

  • Credit card processing fees: These fees are charged by Stripe. This is a standard flat 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction.

  • Eventive ticketing fees: These fees are 2.1% of the transaction. We also charge 99¢ per item in the transaction, although for the first item in each transaction we only charge 69¢ so as to absorb Stripe's flat 30¢ per transaction.

Therefore, the total transaction fee on a paid order is 5% + 99¢. Learn about the transaction fee in other currencies here.

Credit card transactions coming from donations and item bucket purchases only incur the Stripe portion of the transaction fee, which is 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction.

Free orders do not incur credit card transaction fees.

NOTE: International credit cards incur an extra 1% in fees due to the currency conversion.

Learn more about transaction fees.

Virtual Content Fees

DRM unlock fees are charged on ticket orders to virtual screenings that include ingested video content.

If a ticket is PAID, this fee is collected at the point of sale.

If a ticket is unlocked for free using a pass - or is otherwise complimentary/free - the DRM unlock fee is reported as a deferred fee and will show up on a monthly invoice.

Unlock fees from free or passholder tickets are credited back to your organization on tickets that were never used before the unlock window closed.
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After your event, all unwatched unlocks of free tickets will show up on your invoice as Unlock Fee Rebates, which are credits for any deferred fees for tickets that were not used before the unlock window closed.

If you sell tickets BEFORE uploading virtual content...

Fees can be affected if VOD content is not uploaded by the time of purchase. This is because DRM unlock fees only apply to content that has been uploaded into Eventive. Therefore, if your organization puts tickets on sale before uploading VOD content, the Eventive system has no way of knowing whether it should collect the DRM unlock fee or not, so it will default to not collecting the fee.

In this instance, none of those tickets will incur the DRM fee at point of sale and after the film is ingested, our billing department will review the itemization/streaming report at the end of the month and add the unlock fees where needed.

Donations & DRM Unlock Fees

If a customer adds a donation to a free standalone ticket order, the DRM unlock fee will be taken out of the donation transaction instead of being added as a deferred fee.

DRM Fees on Test Screenings

We will issue a credit on your monthly invoice for any unlock fees incurred on screenings clearly titled "TEST."

Pass Fees on to Customers

These settings are configured by clicking “Open Fee & Tax Settings” on your Event Bucket Settings page.

NOTE: Eventive cannot advise on any customer’s tax questions. Please contact your tax adviser for more information.

Physical Event & Pass Sales Customer-Facing Fees

These fees apply to paid pass sales and physical event tickets, as free "purchases" do not incur any transaction fees. These fee settings only apply to paid online orders of passes and physical event tickets.

You have three options:

  • Pass Fees Onto Customer - purchaser pays 100% of credit card fees

  • Absorb Fees - your organization pays 100% of fees

  • Split Fees - you'll choose the percentage you absorb/they pay

There are other restrictions you can place on fees including absorbing specific fees or specifying the maximum amount of fees your customers pay.

Screenshot of Fee and Tax setting options for Physical Event & Pass Sales customer-facing fees. Options listed (in order) are; pass fees on to customer, absorb fees and split fees.

If you are selling passes or tickets to physical events using the Box Office, these pass/absorb/split fees settings will not apply. To pass fees onto your customers on orders placed using the Box Office, use the optional Box Office fee.

Virtual Screening Customer-Facing Fees

These fees only apply to paid purchases of standalone virtual event tickets (not tickets redeemed with a pass), as free "purchases" do not incur any transaction fees.

To pass fees on to customers buying virtual tickets, add the specific amount you'd like to include on single ticket purchases. The fee you add here is to help offset the fact that single virtual ticket purchases incur both a credit card transaction fee and a DRM unlock fee (provided the ticket is for an event with ingested, DRM-protected content).

This fee is a flat rate and does not fluctuate with different virtual ticket prices.

Screenshot of fee options for Virtual screening customer-facing fees. Options include (in order); no additional fees (recommended) and to add a (flat) fee for virtual unlocks.

Learn more about how fees are calculated.

Monthly Review & Invoicing

At the end of each month, our billing department compares ticket sales, orders, and audience behavior/streaming reports to ensure that all fees are removed or added appropriately. Thus, while the reporting tools are very helpful in seeing estimations of revenue and fees, you will usually see a slight adjustment at the end of the month.

Please note that we are unable to issue invoices at any time other than the end of the month.

Stripe & Payouts

All payments on Eventive are processed through Stripe. As soon as you connect your bank account, your organization can collect payments for tickets, passes, items, and donations on Eventive!

Payment transfers arrive in your bank account on a 2-day rolling basis – no need to wait until the end of your event to collect your earnings! Learn more about getting paid.

To edit your payout schedule, log in to the payouts section of your Stripe account dashboard here.

Platform-Managed Accounts

If your organization is unable to connect to Stripe, you may be eligible for a Platform-Managed Account. Eligibility may be determined based on the country in which your organization conducts business, university status, and other factors. When an organization is set up as a Platform-Managed Account, all payments flow through Eventive's own Stripe account. Those payments will then be issued to your organization through periodic transfers. Please contact us if you'd like to be considered for a Platform-Managed Account.

Stripe Reserves

Once the COVID-19 pandemic hit the global economy, Stripe took extra precautions to ensure uninterrupted service for your organization and its customers. Due to these precautions, you may encounter some withheld payments from Stripe, which have been temporarily held in your Stripe account in the form of Reserves. In some cases, an organization may contact Stripe to arrange a release and/or to waive the reserve requirement. Visit Stripe's Reserves FAQ to learn more.

You can log in to your Stripe account & access your dashboard HERE.

Refunds

Refunds can be tracked in a number of places throughout your eventive dashboard.

A refund can be found with the associated order. Orders can be located by searching for the customer profile using the search bar at the top of your dashboard, or by locating the order in the orders page and clicking “View order” next to the appropriate order. In a Physical Event or Virtual Screening Insights page, when looking at the tickets tab, orders can also be located by clicking the link icon that appears next to the order date. Once you have located the order, the refund is displayed in the summary at the top of the page as well as in the Ledger transactions at the bottom of the page.

Refunds also appear in some reports in the Global Reports section of your dashboard. Global reports can be found in the left hand sidebar of your dashboard by scrolling to the bottom of the menu.

Reports including refunds are as follows:

Bank Transfer reconciliation by transfer date (unified): This report is broken out into sheet tabs according to the date that funds were transferred from Stripe to your bank. A refund will be listed according to the date that the refund occurred in a sheet tab that corresponds to that day’s deposits. For information pertaining to the customer and the corresponding order, please include Purchaser details and Eventive platform metadata when running this report.

Order reconciliation ledger (unified): This report records refunds according to the date that the refund occurred and lists all transactions in a single list chronologically. For information pertaining to the customer and the corresponding order, please include Purchaser details and Eventive platform metadata when running this report.

All Orders: Refunds and their associated orders can be found on the All Orders Report. Sort the spreadsheet using the "Refunded at" column to find the corresponding refunded orders.

Custom ledger report: You can also access a report of all refunded orders by navigating to Global Reports --> Ledger Beta Reports --> Custom Ledger Report.

Upon clicking "Build Report," you'll come to a page where you'll specify "Ledger Transaction Report" under Report Type, select an Event Bucket, then select "Refunds" under Filter by Transaction Type. Select a specific date range or leave "All Time" selected under Date Range to see all refunds in the selected Event Bucket.

Deleted Event or Screening Recovery

Deleted screenings and event buckets can be recovered within approximately 14 days of deletion for a $250 recovery fee.

To begin the recovery process, please let us know when you or someone from your organization last recalls having seen the deleted screening. Any knowledge you may have regarding when the screening may have been deleted will be helpful in the recovery process.

We DO NOT recommend deleting screenings, events, or event buckets from your dashboard. Instead, we recommend either changing your Event Bucket mode to Archived or changing the Visibility settings of no-longer-needed screenings to "Hidden from Public."

You remain responsible for fees associated with deleted screenings. If you delete a screening for any reason, your organization will be billed DRM unlock fees for the deleted event(s).

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