Go to AdminVenues[venue]Ticket delivery and scroll to the Box-office surcharge card. You need the canEditSettings capability — the same permission that edits your delivery methods.
What it is
The box-office surcharge is a percentage of the ticket subtotal you add to card sales made at your box office and at the door. It is your revenue: Noctern collects it with the charge and pays it to you on the event payout. It is never part of Noctern's service fee.
The surcharge is your money, so it always rides as its own line — at the box office, on refunds, on the event payout and its PDF, on the event P&L, and in the QuickBooks Desktop export. It is never blended into Noctern's service fee or into the ticket price.
Settings
| Setting | What it does | |---|---| | Charge a box-office surcharge | Off means buyers pay no surcharge at the window. A venue that has never configured this is off. | | Percent of the ticket subtotal | 0 to 25%, two decimals. Applies to the ticket subtotal only. | | Tax the surcharge | On means the surcharge sits in the taxable base, like the ticket itself. Off leaves it untaxed, like a delivery fee. | | The surcharge is non-refundable | On means refunding a ticket never refunds its share of the surcharge. |
Where it applies — and where it doesn't
- Applies to: card sales at the web box office and at the door POS (including Tap to Pay and terminal sales), on the ticket subtotal.
- Does not apply to: online sales, add-ons, delivery fees, day-of-show upcharges, or donations.
- Does not apply to: cash, check and "other" tenders. You already hold that money, so no fee schedule is applied — exactly the way Noctern's own service fee behaves on those tenders.
On an all-in priced event the surcharge comes out of the sticker price rather than being added on top, so the patron pays the advertised figure and you take the surcharge out of your own ticket revenue. Turn the surcharge off for all-in events if you don't want that.
Refunds
Refunding a ticket also refunds its share of the surcharge, prorated evenly across the order's tickets — unless you turn on The surcharge is non-refundable, in which case it stays with you no matter what else on the order gets refunded. The refund dialog shows Box-office surcharge as its own checkbox, separate from Platform fee, so staff can decide about each.
The terms are snapshotted at the time of the sale. Changing the percentage or the switches never changes the terms of a ticket that was already sold.
The same page has a Box office comps card below this one: choose who may give a whole sale away at the box office — Nobody (the default), Venue admins only, or All box-office staff. A comp charges nothing, including this surcharge, and always requires a reason.
Reports and QuickBooks
The surcharge shows up as Box-office surcharge (yours) on the venue payout report and its PDF, and on the event P&L, where it adds to your take-home rather than being deducted like Noctern's fees. It has its own column on the ticket ledger and, in your QuickBooks Desktop settings, its own account mapping under Box-office surcharge (it defaults to your Ticket sales account if you don't set one). Keep it off your Merchant fees account — it is your revenue, not a processing fee.
Turn the surcharge on at 5%, run a $20 card sale at the box office, and check the order summary: you should see a $1.00 "Box-office surcharge" line separate from the fees line. Then open the event's payout report and confirm the same $1.00 shows as a line you are owed.