Dizko ticketing: capacity, tiers, comps, fees and payouts

The Dizko box office lives on each event at /organizer/events/<event>/ticketing. It handles capacity, ticket types, prices, promo codes, comps, refunds and payouts. Everything you build there stays private until you publish it, so you can set the whole thing up before you announce.

Capacity first

Set the capacity before anything else, because every ticket type draws from it. Capacity is the real limit on the room, including the tickets you give away, which is the correct way round: a guest list that does not consume capacity is how rooms end up over-sold.

Ticket types and tiers

Create as many types as the night needs: general entry, early, concession, a table, a workshop slot. Each carries its own price and its own share of capacity.

Early-bird pricing is a tier on a ticket type rather than a separate product, so the ticket keeps its identity as the price moves. Set the early price and the allocation, and it closes on its own. Tiers work as urgency only when they genuinely close, so let it.

Promo codes and hidden tickets

Promotions can discount a ticket or unlock a hidden one, which is how you run a private allocation for a guest list, a partner or a members' pre-sale without exposing it on the public page.

One thing to know: you see the full code once, immediately after creating it. Existing codes are stored hashed and cannot be read back. Copy it somewhere when you make it.

Complimentary tickets

Comps are free tickets you issue yourself. They use up capacity and they carry a normal QR, which means they scan at the door like any other ticket and appear in your headcount.

This is the right way to run a guest list. A name on a paper list is a person you cannot count and cannot verify; a comp ticket is both. The door guide covers running it on the night.

What the buyer experiences

Once ticket types exist, the ticket picker renders on the public event page. A buyer chooses a ticket, enters an email, and gets the QR immediately plus a copy by mail. No account required, which removes the largest single point of drop-off in event checkout.

Every ticket also carries a short reference like DZ7K2M9QRT for manual entry when a screen will not scan. Tickets can be transferred to a friend by email from the ticket page: when the new holder claims it, the old QR retires and theirs becomes the live one. Transfers remove most refund requests, because the answer to "I can't come" becomes "send it to someone who can".

Fees

Free tickets cost nothing to issue. On paid tickets, the Dizko default is 8 percent of the net ticket price plus 0.50 per order. You can adjust the combined fee down as far as a 3 percent floor, and you choose whether the buyer pays it or you absorb it.

How that compares depends entirely on your ticket price, because percentage-weighted structures and fixed-heavy structures cross over somewhere in the middle. The fee maths is here, with the arithmetic worked out at several price points.

Refunds

Find an order by purchaser email or by order reference, and refund the remaining tickets on it. Publish your refund policy on the event page before you sell, and prefer transfer to refund where the buyer just cannot make it.

Payouts

You can pay out to your own connected account or nominate someone else as the payout recipient, searched by their Dizko account, which is how a collective pays a single treasurer or a promoter pays a venue directly. Payout details live in account settings.

Settlement runs after the event rather than as sales come in, and there is a hold period before funds release, seven days by default. Plan cash flow around that: deposits and artist advances due before the night have to come from somewhere other than ticket income.

Cancelling

Cancelling ticketing stops sales and invalidates every QR immediately. Buyer emails and any remaining refunds then run in durable batches, so a large event does not depend on your browser staying open. It is not reversible, so it is for events that are genuinely off rather than postponed.

Current state

Free ticket types are live and work end to end: issue, email, QR, scan, headcount. Paid checkout depends on card payments being connected for your event, and the box office shows which mode you are in. If you are planning a paid on-sale, check the box office first rather than announcing a date and finding out afterwards.