Answers to FAQs about the Tito Platform in Response to COVID-19
Today we wanted to share some guidelines around using Tito to facilitate changes to events that you’re running due to the effects of COVID-19.
In this post we’ll answer some of the most common questions regarding the same that we’ve received over the past number of days but, if anything you need help with isn’t answered here, you can contact us directly at support@tito.io.
If You Choose to Run Your Event as Planned
If you’re choosing to run your event as planned and it’s permitted by local, national and international authorities, some guidelines have been outlined in the interest of public health. Here are some links regarding the same that may be helpful:
Here you can find a compiled list of cancelled and postponed events that’s updated multiple times as day.
If you have any suggestions as to where else the event and conference organising community can share updates that may be helpful, you can contact us here and we will add more useful links as the situation progresses.
Managing Changes to Your Event in Tito
If you choose to cancel your event
How do I send a refund to all my attendees?
Right now, refunds can only be issued individually within the user interface (UI). We’re currently working on a new feature to make it easy for event organisers to refund all tickets in one go, but in the meantime this is something our engineers can do on your behalf. Email support@tito.io and let us know which event you need to cancel, and we’ll be happy to help you with this.
How do I notify all my attendees?
You can use Tito’s Messages feature to send an email to all your attendees at once. You can select all ticketholders, or certain ones only. If this feature isn’t yet enabled on your account, please contact support@tito.io with your event name and we’ll switch it on for you.
How will refunds be handled if I’m using Stripe?
When you use Stripe as your payment gateway, any transaction fees are deducted automatically. If you later decide to refund an order, the transaction fees aren’t returned. So, if you were to refund all payments in one go, there’s a chance your Stripe account would go into a negative balance. We checked with Stripe to see how they handle this, and they say:
When you carry out a refund to a customer, we first look at your available Stripe balance to cover the amount. If you do not have a sufficient available balance and carry out a refund, your Stripe account will then become negative. Negative balance handling varies from country to country.
If your Stripe account is registered in Australia, Canada, USA or the UK, we will attempt a withdrawal from your bank to bring the account to a positive balance again. If we are unable to debit your bank account, we may require you to send a wire transfer to cover the negative amount.
If your Stripe account is registered in Continental Europe, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Mexico or Brazil. we wouldn’t attempt a withdrawal from your bank account. You may be required to send a wire transfer to pay off the negative balance.
You can learn more about this here, and you can refer to the full documentation about Stripe refunds here.
What will the impact be if I use another payment processor?
If you’re using PayPal as your payment gateway in combination with Tito and there’s not enough money in your PayPal balance to cover the refund, they will issue the refund from your primary bank account. More details about that are available in the PayPal help centre.
If you’re using a platform other than Stripe or PayPal as your payment gateway, please contact us at support@tito.io and we can help if you have any questions.
How does this work for invoice payments?
If you’re using Tito’s beta Pay by Invoice feature, the associated transaction fee is charged to the card we have on file for you when we do our billing run each month. This fee still applies if a ticket is subsequently cancelled.
If you choose to reschedule your event
How do I reschedule my event in Tito?
The first thing you’ll want to do is edit the event date. If you’re using the original Tito UI, head to Customize > Basics and you can change the start and end dates there. If you’re using our brand new UI, you’ll find this option under Settings > Dates and Times.
When you change the event date, all ticket PDFs will be updated automatically with the new date. Of course, if anyone has already downloaded the PDF to their device, this will still show the old date, so it’s a good idea to use Tito’s Messages feature to notify your attendees.
By default, a link to any orders and tickets associated with the recipients’ email address will be included at the bottom of the email, so you can use the body of the message to let attendees know to click on their ticket and re-download it with the new date.
Finally, if you’re still selling tickets, you may want to extend their availability so that people have more time to book. If you’ve already set a cut-off date, scroll down to the Scheduling block within your ticket and you can change this to a later date.
How do I notify all my attendees?
As mentioned in our section about cancellations, you can use our Messages feature to notify attendees about any updates to the dates and times of your event.
How do I transfer tickets to my next event?
There unfortunately isn’t a super simple way to move an attendee from one event to another right now. The best solution would be to export your attendees from the cancelled event, and import them into your new event.
Please note that this will issue the attendee with a brand new ticket with a different reference. You can use our Messages feature to send out emails from your new event, with the ticket attached.
How do I update the location of my event?
If you’re simply updating the location of an existing event, you can navigate to Customize > Basics (in the new UI, the option can be found under Settings > Locations). Again, you may want to use the Messages feature to notify ticketholders of the change.
If you choose to move your event online
How do I invite my participants to participate in my online event?
Using our Messages feature, you can send links to where you’ll be hosting your sessions online. Most webinar hosting services and similar sites also allow you to send invitations with dial-in details using their own interfaces.
If you need to get data from Tito into one of these services, you can navigate to Attendees and export your attendee details either as a CSV or an XLSX file.
This post is not to be taken as legal or medical advice but is rather here to simply help you facilitate the actions you choose to take in the wake of COVID-19.
Finally, this is a trying time for our industry and we want to do everything we can to help with your use of Tito in relation to your events. If you need any extra help with your set-up or have any questions about these outlines, you can contact our team at support@tito.io.