Looking up or creating a patron at the box office

Every sale starts with a buyer — an existing patron, a brand-new patron, or someone you sell to as a guest without creating a record.

Finding an existing patron

1. 1

   In the Patron panel, type into Search name or email….

   

   1Search name or email

   2Member + Donor badges

2. 2

   The search matches the start of a patron's first name, last name, or email (not a mid-word match). It also finds a name that's just one typo off — a swapped, missing, extra, or wrong letter, like "Jon Smtih" for "John Smith." Email matching is still exact start-of-address only. Up to 20 results are shown.

3. 3

   Click a result to select them as the buyer for this sale.

Reading the badges

• A result row shows the patron's membership level (for example, Gold) if they have an active membership, and a Donor badge if they have any lifetime giving on record.
• A Close match badge means the row was found by the typo-tolerant search, not an exact or prefix match — double-check the name before selecting it.
• Once you select a patron, the buyer chip shows simpler badges: Member, Donor, Guest, or No email. The buyer chip doesn't show the membership level name or an expiry date — check the search result row (or the patron's own record, if you have access) for those details.

Creating a new patron

1. 1

   Switch to the New patron tab.

   

   1Find patron / New patron / Guest

   2Create & select

2. 2

   Fill in first name, last name, email, and (optionally) phone.

3. 3

   Click Create & select. You need at least a name or an email — leaving both blank shows Enter a name or email.

Selling as a guest

If the buyer doesn't need a saved patron record — a one-off attendee, for example — use the Guest tab instead. Enter a first and last name (required) and an email (optional, labeled Email (optional)). Click Sell as guest. No patron record is created from this — Noctern still creates a lightweight guest account behind the scenes to hold the order, but it won't show up in the venue's patron list as a searchable contact the way a "New patron" would.

What box office staff can and can't do with patron records

Box Office can search for and create patrons, but cannot edit an existing patron's details (name, email, phone, tags) — that requires Venue Admin or higher. If a patron's info is wrong, flag it to a venue admin rather than trying to fix it from the box office.