Theatre software for the whole season, not just the ticket sale.

Theatre management software runs a performing arts venue from season planning to show night. It covers season packages and renewals, reserved seating, box office sales online, by phone, and at the counter, one patron record across tickets, gifts, and memberships, fundraising, front-of-house lists, and the reports the board asks for. It makes sense when the season is run from spreadsheets and separate systems and the manual work repeats every show.

Buy and configure a proven product such as Tessitura, Spektrix, or AudienceView when it handles your season, seating, patron record, and fundraising with reasonable setup and its pricing makes sense. Build custom only for the part those products cannot cover, such as a workflow tied to how your venue sells, renews, or reports. Keep a proven box office system when it already settles sales and reports cleanly; custom work earns its place on top of it, not instead of it.

Season subscriptions can be sold as full-season, mini, or flex packages, with the same seat held for renewal, renewal reminders sent before the deadline, instalment plans, and exchanges inside the rules you set. Lapsed subscribers get a follow-up instead of falling off the list quietly. Patrons manage their own seats and exchanges where the rules allow it, and your box office team handles the exceptions, not the routine.

Yes, when one patron record carries all three. A gift is tied to the same person as their tickets, membership benefits apply at checkout, and the development team sees giving history next to attendance. When ticketing, memberships, and fundraising live in separate systems, staff re-key the same person three times and no one can say who your best patrons really are.

Moving records starts with field mapping, duplicate handling, and a list of records that should not move. We run rehearsal imports, compare counts and important values against your own reports, keep legacy identifiers where they are useful, and plan rollback before cutover. The old system stays available until the new record is verified, so the season is never held hostage by the changeover.

Each performance gets its own seat map, with holds for press, sponsors, and accessible seating that release on rules you set, not by accident. Renewing subscribers keep the same seat until the renewal deadline passes. Exchanges move the seat, not the order, and the door list is drawn from the same record as the sale, so the house list and the box office always agree.

Exchanges follow the rules you set and patrons can make them without a phone call where the rules allow it. Refunds and credits come from the same order record as the sale, so the money and the seat stay in step. A cancelled performance is handled from one list: rebook or refund every affected patron, with a record of who did what and when.

The first paid phase may cover a bounded audit, a proof of concept, a recovery plan, or a small first release. The final price depends on how deep the season workflow goes, how many kinds of users it serves, what it needs to connect to, whether data needs moving over, whether phones or tablets are involved, any compliance requirements, and the condition of existing code. The agreed phase is priced in writing before it starts.

Timing depends on scope: a bounded audit or proof of concept is a smaller engagement, while a platform with several system connections, data to move over, mobile apps, or formal compliance controls takes longer. The schedule is set once the first workflow and what 'done' looks like are clear.

Yes. Takeover is a common first engagement, and it always starts with an audit: where the code lives, how your data is organized, what is tested, which outside services it depends on, who can access what, and how updates go live. Code that is understandable and fit for the next release stays; only the parts blocking reliability get replaced. And if you already paid another vendor and have nothing working, the audit tells you which story you have before you spend more.

You judge what you can see, not the code. Every checkpoint is working software you click through yourself, tested against the workflow agreed at the start: sell a season subscription, renew a seat, exchange a ticket, record a gift. Progress is reported in plain language: what changed, what's next, and what it costs. Because you own the code, the accounts, and the operating notes throughout, nothing about the work is locked inside our heads. Our job is to make the work checkable; your job is to check it against your business.

You own the code built for you and control where it lives, the cloud accounts, the data, analytics, and third-party subscriptions. Outside services and open-source pieces keep their own licence terms. The operating notes and handover material stay current so another capable team can take over.

Your data is yours. You get a full export any time, in a usable format, covering patron, order, gift, and membership history, and your payment account stays yours. Nothing is held hostage. We would rather earn your renewal every year than trap you into staying.

For a small, well-defined task with someone technical managing it, freelancers are often cheaper. The pattern that goes wrong is a non-technical buyer coordinating several freelancers becoming the project manager, the tester, and the person who discovers the pieces don't fit. A theatre management software company earns its fee when the work needs coordination across screens, rules, data, and connections: one accountable party, one phase price, and checkpoints against the whole season. If your need is one screen or one fix, hire the freelancer.

Yes, when the accounting or email product offers suitable access and your finance lead owns the mapping. Define which system owns patrons, orders, gifts, payments, and messages. Test duplicates, closed periods, retries, rejected postings, and reconciliation. RaftLabs builds the connection; your finance team approves the accounting treatment and controls.