Schoolboxoffice.network · seats · will-call · comps · the door · settlement · early access
The box office a school program runs itself — the seats, the door, and the settlement. Built to fail closed, not to oversell.
A ticketing site starts and ends on the night of the show. A school box office is more than a night -- the reserved house or the open floor, the will-call window, the comps for the board and the families, the fundraiser line, and the settlement someone has to reconcile the next morning. Schoolboxoffice.network carries all of it on one account: ticket types priced in exact whole cents, a capacity that never oversells, reserved seating that fails closed on a double booking, will-call and comps, a QR door scan that admits each ticket once, and a settlement report. The engine is built and tested. The live payment rail is honest-off -- no card is charged today. Early access is open -- book a conversation.
The whole box office, not one night
The tools a box-office adviser is usually handed each solve one slice: a ticketing site for the night, a spreadsheet for the seat map, a shoebox of envelopes for will-call, a sticky note for the comps, and a second spreadsheet the next morning to work out what actually came in. None of them know about the others, so the reconciliation is done by hand, twice, and the oversold seat is only discovered at the door.
Schoolboxoffice.network is built the other way around -- from the house, not from the transaction. One event holds its ticket types and their exact-cents prices and finite capacity; the reserved-seating map and the general-admission count both refuse to oversell; will-call and comps are first-class, not a workaround; the QR scan admits each ticket once; and the settlement report reconciles the whole run in one place. One account, from the first seat you sell to the final settlement you sign off.
The engine behind each part is built and tested. The live payment rail is honest-off -- present in the codebase, routed through one shared rail, and not enabled for a live charge today: no card is charged, and an unpaid order is not admitted at the door. No school has run a live-money event on schoolboxoffice.network yet, and the page will never pretend otherwise.
How it works
Each step is described as it is built today. The engine is production-ready; the live payment rail is in active build and honest-off. Nothing on this page charges money.
Step 1 · Publish the event
Set up the ticketed event: name the ticket tiers, price each in exact whole cents, set a finite capacity per tier, and choose a reserved-seating map or open general admission. The engine prices and counts the house; the live payment rail is honest-off, so nothing is charged.
Step 2 · Seat the house
Sell into a reserved map that fails closed on a double booking, or an open floor that fails closed on capacity. Comps for the board and the families draw from the same finite house, so you cannot comp past the seats you have. No card is charged today.
Step 3 · Sort will-call and delivery
Route each order to will-call pickup at the window or delivery to the buyer, and transfer a seat cleanly from one holder to another. The fulfillment engine tracks it and moves no money -- will-call is a fulfillment mode, not a second place money moves.
Step 4 · Scan the door
At the gate the QR scan admits each ticket exactly once; a second scan of the same ticket is refused. The scanner runs offline and reconciles when it reconnects. An unpaid order is not admitted, because no card is charged today.
Step 5 · Settle the report
After the run, the settlement report reconciles the house: seats held, sold, comped, and scanned, and what the payment rail returned. Because the live rail is honest-off, it reconciles to a queued, not-charged total -- an honest picture of a run whose money side is not enabled yet.
The platform
Every part is labelled honestly: Built means the engine is production-ready. Money honest-off means the engine is built and tested but the live-money rail is not enabled yet. We do not claim otherwise.
A ticketed event carries named ticket tiers -- adult, student, reserved, general -- each at an exact-cents price and a finite capacity. The capacity never oversells: an order that would push the sold count past a tier's limit is rejected whole, so the house cannot be sold past the seats it has, not by one ticket, ever. What is honest-off is the live payment rail. Every charge routes through one shared rail that is not provisioned today, so no card is charged and an unpaid order is held, not sold. The engine that prices and counts the house is real; live checkout is founder-gated and not enabled yet.
Ticketing engine built -- live checkout honest-off
For a reserved house the box office holds a seat map, and every order is checked against it before it is admitted. An order clears only when every requested seat exists and is free; if any seat is already taken, or the same seat is requested twice in one order, the whole order is rejected. The guard is fail-closed by construction, not a setting an operator can switch off -- so two families can never end up holding the same seat. General-admission and reserved tiers live side by side in the same event.
Reserved seating built -- fails closed on a double booking
Each order carries a fulfillment method -- will-call pickup at the window or delivery to the buyer -- and the fulfillment engine routes and tracks it so nothing is lost between the sale and the door. Ticket transfer moves a seat from one holder to another cleanly, and the order-history view keeps a family's tickets straight across a season of events. These are pure engines: they route, transfer, and reconcile an order's tickets, and they move no money doing it.
Will-call, delivery, and transfers built
At the gate, the QR door scan admits each ticket exactly once -- a second scan of the same ticket is refused, so a screenshot passed down the line does not get a second person in. The scanner runs as an offline-capable PWA with its own queue, so a gate in a dead zone still admits ticket holders and reconciles the scans when it reconnects. An unpaid order is not admitted, because no card is charged today. The scan-once engine and the offline scanner are built and tested.
Gate scan built -- admits once, works offline
Behind the window, the concessions point-of-sale rings the stand's adjacent sales, and the reporting dashboard rolls up a settlement and the box-office numbers for the night. Access to both is RBAC-gated to box-office staff, so a volunteer sees the till they run and not the whole ledger. What is honest-off is live money: the shared payment rail is not provisioned, so no card is charged at the ticket window or the concession stand today, and the settlement reports on counts and prices, not on money that has actually moved.
House engines built -- live money honest-off
Who it is for
You set up the event, price the ticket types in exact whole cents, seat a reserved house or open the floor, and decide who gets a comp -- often for three shows at once. The capacity and the seat map fail closed, so you cannot oversell or double-book by accident, and the settlement report reconciles the run for you instead of a second spreadsheet at midnight. Only box-office staff can touch any of it; the permission check fails closed for everyone else.
You work the will-call window and the door. Will-call matches an order by its buyer reference and hands over the tickets; the QR scan admits each ticket exactly once, so a screenshot of a used ticket does not get a second person in. Comps scan the same way as sold seats. The line moves, and no one argues about a seat that was quietly sold twice, because it cannot be.
You keep the program funded and answerable. The settlement report shows sold seats, comps, scans, and what the payment rail returned, and a fundraiser line can be tracked against a goal beside the ticketed seats. Money is honest-off today -- the engine is built; the live rail is not enabled yet -- so every figure is reconciled and none is invented. The data is commerce and program data only, never a student roster.
What is built and what is honest-off
Built and tested: the ticketed event with exact-cents ticket types and a finite capacity that never oversells; reserved seating that fails closed on a double booking; general admission that fails closed on capacity; will-call fulfillment; comps that draw from the same finite house; the QR door scan that admits each ticket exactly once; the adjacent concessions point of sale; and the settlement report that reconciles the run. The permission check that gates all of it fails closed for anyone who is not box-office staff.
Honest-off -- built, not yet enabled for live money: the live payment rail. Every charge routes through one shared rail, and today it returns a queued, not-charged result with no transaction identifier -- no order is marked paid, no receipt is printed, and an unpaid order is not admitted at the door. The rail exists in the codebase. It is founder-gated and not enabled for a live transaction today.
No pricing is displayed. No checkout is present. No subscription is asked for. This is a commercial product for a school program, and it is described plainly as one. The next step is a conversation: we show you what is built and what early access means for your program.
Connected platforms
The operating platform for a theatre program -- the season, the rights, the cast, and the playbill. It renders its ticketing over this same box office; this is the seats-and-door layer under the production.
The all-school events platform. When an assembly or a school-wide night needs seats and a door, it points here as the events and ticketing platform.
The K–12 school platform behind the shared account, permission, and privacy the box office runs on -- which is why the box office never needs a student roster to sell a seat.
Early access
The engine is built and tested; the live payment rail is in active build and honest-off. Book a conversation to see the current state, walk the five steps, and get early-access priority. There is nothing to buy today -- just a conversation.
Common questions
It is the box office a school program runs itself -- the events, the seats, the door, and the settlement, on one account. A box-office adviser or manager sets up a ticketed event with named ticket types, seats a reserved house or opens general admission, issues will-call and comps, scans tickets once at the door, and reads the settlement report afterward. Only box-office staff can do any of that -- the permission check fails closed for anyone who is not. It holds program and commerce data only: an opaque buyer reference and the school's own identifier, never a roster.
Not yet. The box-office engine is built and tested -- the ticketed event, the exact-cents ticket types, the finite capacity that never oversells, reserved seating, will-call fulfillment, comps, the QR door scan, and the settlement report. What is honest-off is the live payment rail: no card is charged today, and an unpaid order is not admitted at the door. Book a conversation to see the current state and get early-access priority.
No. Every charge routes through one shared payment rail, and today that rail returns a queued, not-charged result with no transaction identifier -- no code path marks an order paid or prints a receipt. The box office can price a ticket type in exact whole cents and reserve a seat, but the live rail is honest-off. There is no pricing on this page, no checkout, and no subscription. The next step is a conversation, not a purchase.
Both are fail-closed by construction. A ticket type has a finite capacity, and an order that would push the sold count past that capacity is rejected whole -- over capacity, nothing sold and nothing charged, not oversold by one. On a reserved-seating map an order is admitted only when every requested seat exists and is free; if any seat is already held, or asked for twice in the same order, the whole order is rejected. Two families never end up holding the same seat.
An order can be fulfilled for pickup at the window instead of delivered ahead of time. The order carries its opaque buyer reference; at will-call the box-office staff match that reference and hand over the tickets, and each ticket still passes the QR door scan that admits it exactly once. Will-call is a fulfillment mode, not a second place money moves -- the live payment rail stays honest-off through pickup as everywhere else.
Yes -- a comp is a ticket issued at no charge to a fixed count: a reviewer, a board member, a student's family. Comps draw from the same finite capacity as paid seats, so you cannot comp past the house, and each comp is scanned once at the door like any other ticket. Because a comp is issued at no charge it moves no money at all, and the settlement report counts it as a comp, kept separate from sold seats.
A program often wants a night to raise money for the department as well as seat an audience. The box office can carry a fundraising line against a goal so the settlement report shows it beside ticketed seats. Today it tracks the goal and the intent; it moves no money, because the live payment rail is honest-off. It is a commercial product for a school program and is described plainly as one -- it makes no charge and no giving-campaign claim.
The settlement report reconciles the house: how many seats a ticket type held, how many were sold and how many were comped, how many were scanned at the door, and what the payment rail returned. Because the live rail is honest-off, it reconciles to a queued, not-charged total with no transaction rather than a settled cash figure -- an honest picture of a run whose money side is not enabled yet. When the rail is switched on, the same report reconciles the charges.
Commerce and program data only. An order carries an opaque buyer reference and the school's own identifier -- not a name, not a roster, not a class list. A ticket type, a seat map, a capacity, and a scan count are numbers and structures, not children. No student roster and no child's name lives on the box office. Prices are exact whole cents in the school's own currency, US or Canadian dollars, and that currency is consumed as given, never widened or guessed.
The platform is in early access. The box-office engine described here is built and tested; the live payment rail is in active build and honest-off, so there is no online payment yet. There is no sign-up form and no checkout. Book a conversation -- email [email protected] -- to see the current state and get early-access priority.