Organizer guide: Custom fees and taxes (new Dashboard)

Using the previous Dashboard? See Organizer guide: How to create and manage custom fees and taxes at all levels.

Custom fees and taxes are charges your organization adds on top of the item price: a facility fee, a parking fee, GST, an admissions tax. Each one is a custom rate made of one or more rate cards. A rate card sets the amount and when it applies (item type, sale channel, payment method and who pays). Organization rate cards apply to every event, product and membership unless an event, ticket type, product or variant overrides them. Customers see each customer-paid fee and tax as its own line item at checkout and on their invoice.

Set up custom fees before an item goes on sale. Once a ticket type or product variant has its first sale, its fee settings are locked (see Changing fees after sales start).

Before you start

• Custom fees and Fee Settings need the Manage Financials permission (Organization > Permissions). The default All Access and Owners roles have it.
• A new organization has no custom rates. Nothing is charged until you create one.
• Fee and tax names come from fixed lists. To use a name that is not on the list, ask Showpass support to add it.
• Decide which sale channels and payment methods each charge belongs to. The terms are defined below.
• The Other payment type (processed like cash) is switched on for your organization by Showpass support. Until it is, rate cards offer Card and Cash only.

Sale channels, payment methods and item types

Rate cards use the same three conditions everywhere.

Where to find custom fees

In the Dashboard sidebar, open Finance and choose Custom Fees. The page lists every custom rate with its type (Fee or Tax), an Active or Inactive chip, and a table of its rate cards: Rate card, Source, Amount, Applies when, Paid by and Actions.

Direct path: /manage/finance/custom-fees/ on your Dashboard domain.

Creating a fee

1. Click Add (top right).
2. Leave Type set to Fee and choose a Name: Host Fee, Artist Fee, Facility Fee, Environmental Fee, Green Fee, Promoter Fee 1 to 5, Processing Fee, Cost Insurance and Freight Fee, Handling Fee, Ticket Fee or Parking Fee.
3. Leave Active ticked so the fee applies at checkout, or untick it to save the fee without charging it yet.
4. Check the Rate card description, an internal name for the rate card. It starts with a numbered name (for example Rate Card 3830), so replace it with one you will recognise.
5. Enter a Fixed amount in dollars, a Percent, or both.
6. Set when it applies: Applies to (Ticket, Product, Membership) and Sale channels (Online, In-Person). Under Payment methods, Card is always offered and Cash appears when In-Person is ticked.
7. Choose Paid by: Customer adds the fee to the price at checkout; Organizer records the fee without charging the buyer. Organizer-paid fees cannot be withheld from customer refunds.
8. Tax Percentage: the share of this fee collected as tax, used for internal reporting only. It does not charge a tax; to charge tax on a fee, set up a tax as described in Charging tax on your fees.
9. Click Create.

Creating a tax

1. Click Add and set Type to Tax.
2. Choose a Name: GST, LST, HST, PST, QST, VAT, TAX, LET, Admissions Tax or Sales Tax.
3. Enter your Tax number, a Rate card description and the Percent.
4. Set Applies to (Ticket, Product, Membership, Fee), Sale channels, Payment methods and Paid by. Ticking Fee charges the tax on your custom fees as well as on items.
5. Click Create.

Charging tax on your fees

When a tax has Fee ticked under Applies to, it is charged on your custom fees as well as on the items it covers.

• The tax is calculated on the full fee amount.
• The tax follows the fee's Paid by setting. When the customer pays the fee, they also pay the tax on it; when your organization pays the fee, your organization also absorbs its tax.
• Several taxes can apply to the same fee, for example GST and PST. Tick Fee on each tax that should apply.

The Tax Percentage field on a fee is separate. It records the tax share inside the fee for your own reporting and adds nothing to the customer's total.

Adding more rate cards to a rate

One custom rate can carry several rate cards, for example one for online card sales and one for in-person cash sales. Click + Rate card on the rate's header row, fill in the same fields as above, and click Save rate card.

Editing, turning off and deleting

• To rename a rate or turn it off, click the pencil on its header row. Untick Active and Save to stop charging it on items without sales. Items that already have sales keep the fee settings they had at their first sale.
• To change a rate card's amounts or conditions, open the Actions menu on its row and choose Edit rate card.
• To remove a rate card, choose Delete rate card from the same menu. Past sales keep the fee and tax amounts recorded at the time of purchase, because those amounts are saved on each invoice item.
• To delete a custom rate entirely, first delete all of its rate cards. A bin icon (Delete custom fee) then appears on the rate's header row. Confirm to delete it; this cannot be undone. Rates that still have rate cards anywhere show no bin icon, so turn them off instead.

Changes reach customers the next time an item is added to a basket.

Changing fees after sales start

When a ticket type or product variant has its first sale, its fee settings are locked at their current values (price lock). After that, edits to organization, event or product rate cards, new rates and turned-off rates do not change that item. Every later buyer pays the fees and taxes that were in place at the first sale.

You can see the lock in the ticket type editor. On a ticket type with sales, the Custom fees tab reads "Custom fee values are read-only because this item has locked financial settings," and the Finance tab reads "Ticket type financial settings are disabled."

To change fees on an item that already has sales, contact Showpass support with the event, the ticket types or products, and the new fees. Support removes the lock so the current rate cards apply from the next purchase, and the item locks again at its next sale. Sales made before the change keep their original fee amounts, so reports for that item will show different fee amounts across its sales.

If Showpass support changes an item's price, the price lock is released in the same way and current rate cards apply from the next purchase.

Overriding a rate for one event

1. Open the event (Build > Events > All events, then Edit) and choose Custom fees in the event menu, under Manage.
2. The tab lists the organization rates with Override in the Actions column.
3. Click Override on the rate card you want to change, enter the new values, and click Save override. The Source column then reads Event (override) instead of Organization default.
4. To go back to the organization rate, open the Actions menu on the overridden row and choose Delete rate card. Only the override is deleted; the organization rate card applies to the event again.

Add on the event's Custom fees tab creates a rate that applies to that event only. Calculator previews fees for the event.

Overriding a rate for one ticket type

1. Open the event, choose Tickets, and click the edit icon in the Actions column of the ticket type.
2. In the ticket type panel, choose Custom fees. The tab has the same Override, Add, + Rate card and Calculator controls as the event tab.
3. Make the override as you would for an event.

Changes on this tab save immediately. Closing the panel or discarding other ticket type edits does not undo them. A ticket type with sales shows its custom fees as read-only.

The ticket type's Finance tab sets whether the customer pays or the organization absorbs the Processing and Showpass fees for that ticket type (or Use Event Settings), and lists the custom fees in effect. View custom fees opens the Custom fees tab.

Overriding a rate for a product or variant

Open the product (Build > Products > All products, then Edit). The Custom fees tab works the same way as the event tab, with Override, Add, Rate card and Calculator controls.

For a single variant, open the Inventory tab, click the Actions menu on the variant and choose Variant financial settings. That page holds the variant's service fee settings and seller commissions, with a read-only list of the custom fees in effect. Click Manage custom fees to open Variant custom fees, which has the same Override, Add, Rate card and Calculator controls as the event tab.

Previewing fees with the Calculator

Click Calculator on the Custom Fees page (or on an event, ticket type or variant Custom fees tab). Choose the Item type (Ticket, Product, Membership), enter an Item price, choose the Purchase platform (Online, In-Person) and Payment type (Card), and click Calculate. The preview lists each fee and tax with the rate card behind it, then the total the customer pays. Run it for each channel and payment method you sell through before going on sale.

Packages and refunds

• Packages: the custom fees and taxes of the child ticket types inside a package are not charged when they are sold as part of the package. For example, if a child ticket type carries LST, the LST is not added when that ticket is sold in a package.
• Partial refunds: when part of an order is refunded, each custom tax and each custom fee is refunded in proportion to the refunded amount, and the refund is tracked separately for every tax on the invoice.
• Organizer-paid fees and absorbed Processing and Showpass fees cannot be withheld when you issue a refund.
• Box office in Web POS mode: cash, free and complimentary sales use the web box office (In-Person) rate cards.

Fee Settings

Finance > Fee Settings holds the organization-wide settings that sit beside custom fees (direct path /manage/finance/settings/).

• Service Fee Settings set whether customers pay the Processing and Showpass fees on top of the ticket price (Customer Pays) or your organization absorbs them (Absorb). Absorbing fees does not change your ticket prices, and absorbed fees cannot be withheld when issuing a refund. Additional charges for premium sales channels or features may still apply and may not be passed on to customers. Events, ticket types and product variants can override these settings on their own finance tabs.
• Tax: Sales tax number and Sales tax exempt.
• Custom statement descriptor: the name shown on customer card statements. It defaults to Showpass Tickets when left blank.
• Seller commission: an amount per ticket for credit sales and for cash sales.

What customers see

• At checkout, each customer-paid custom fee and tax is added to the order as its own line item, on top of the item price. The same line items appear on the customer's invoice.
• A fee set to Paid by Organizer is recorded for your reporting and does not add to what the customer pays.
• A tax charged on a fee is part of what the customer pays only when the fee itself is customer-paid.
• Processing and Showpass fees are added to the customer's total when your Service Fee Settings are Customer Pays, and are absorbed by your organization when set to Absorb.
• The customer's card statement shows your Custom statement descriptor, or Showpass Tickets if you have not set one.

Where fees and taxes appear in reports

• Itemized Sales Report: totals for Organizer Fees and Taxes on each line, and a column for each custom fee and tax after the Settlement Amount column (for example Host Fee and Host Fee - Tax). Rate cards with the same name and value share a column, so a report across several events with different rate cards and overrides can have many fee and tax columns.
• Settlement Report: fees and taxes for each transaction in a payout (CSV) or as totals (PDF).
• Event Financial Summary and Ticket Type Financial Summary: fees and taxes per event or per ticket type.
• In every report, Taxes is the total of custom taxes charged to customers, Organizer Fees is the total of custom fees charged to customers, and Net Revenue is Gross Revenue minus Taxes and Organizer Fees. See Financial Glossary.

Limitations

• Fee and tax names are fixed lists; new names are added by Showpass support.
• Fee settings lock at an item's first sale. Changing them afterwards needs Showpass support and creates differences between earlier and later sales in reports.
• Child ticket fees and taxes are not charged inside a package.
• Rate card changes apply from the next time an item is added to a basket, not to baskets customers already have.
• Cloning an event does not copy its custom fee overrides. Review the Custom fees tab on the cloned event and its ticket types before going on sale.
• A custom rate can be deleted only after all of its rate cards are deleted.

Troubleshooting

• A fee is missing at checkout: check that the rate is Active and that its rate card covers the item type, sale channel and payment method of the sale. Then check the event, ticket type, product and variant Custom fees tabs for an override. If the item already has sales, it keeps the fee settings from its first sale.
• A ticket type's custom fees are read-only: the ticket type has sales and its fee settings are locked. Contact Showpass support to change them.
• Payment methods shows only Card: tick In-Person under Sale channels to show Cash.
• A tax is not charged on a fee: open the tax's rate card and tick Fee under Applies to.
• A fee was changed but some customers still pay the old amount: those items had sales before the change and are price locked, or the customer's basket was created before the change.
• Report fee totals differ between sales of the same ticket type: fees were changed after sales started. Earlier sales keep the amounts recorded when they were purchased.
• There is no bin icon on a custom rate: the rate still has rate cards. Delete them first, or untick Active to stop charging it.
• A package does not charge a child ticket's fee or tax: this is expected. Fees and taxes on child ticket types are not charged inside a package.

Related pages

• Itemized Sales Report: the fee and tax columns described above.
• Financial Glossary: definitions of Taxes, Organizer Fees and Net Revenue.
• Reports: how to build and schedule the reports that show fees and taxes.
• Creating and editing products: where the product Custom fees tab and Variant financial settings sit.