A regular cash sale still needs Noctern to price the ticket and mint it. If the venue's network goes down mid-show, that's not possible — so for events where connectivity is a known risk, a venue admin can hold a block of tickets on your device before doors. Once that block is on the device, you can keep selling and printing from it with no connection at all.
Before doors: a block of tickets is held for your device
This is set up by a venue admin from the web admin, on the Box Office → Seat Holds page, in the Prepare device for offline card. You don't need to do anything on the device to receive it; it shows up automatically the next time the app syncs. See Preparing a Door POS Device for Offline Sales.
One block holds at most 200 tickets, and there's a ceiling on how many tickets can be out on blocks for one performance at once (the room's own capacity, unless the venue has set its own number). A venue admin who needs more than that at one door should talk to Noctern support rather than creating block after block.
The held block — either a quantity of general-admission tickets in a tier, or a specific set of seats — is taken out of the pool everyone else can sell from the moment it's created. Nobody else, online or on another device, can sell those same seats or that GA quantity while your device holds them.
While offline: sell from the block, print immediately
Every ticket in the block already has its price, seat/section, and QR code fixed — nothing about a sale needs a live connection. When you sell one:
- Enter the patron's name (and email, if they want a receipt later) and take payment same as any cash sale.
- The ticket prints immediately from the block, using the layout downloaded with the block itself.
- If a ticket needs to be given away instead of sold (a comp), the sale records $0 collected, but the ticket still exists and can still be scanned at the door.
Comps are capped
Because the only credential the offline path has is the door PIN, free tickets are bounded:
- 10 comps per sign-in at one performance. Sign in again and you get a fresh allowance — which is why there's a second limit.
- 50 comps across every device and every sign-in at one performance. Nothing you do on a device resets this one.
A venue can have either number changed; ask Noctern support. Always give a reason for a comp — an offline comp uploaded without one is recorded with a warning in the venue's activity log today, and a venue that has moved every door device onto a build that collects the reason can have Noctern refuse a reasonless comp outright, which would make its printed ticket invalid.
The amount you collect must match the ticket's price + tax exactly — there's no discounting or promo codes on an offline sale. If a patron needs a different price, sell them a regular ticket once the network is back instead.
Day-of-show upcharge still applies, automatically
If the venue has a day-of-show upcharge turned on, it's already baked into the block's tickets when your device downloads them — you don't do anything differently. Each ticket already knows its own upcharge amount (or $0.00 if its tier is exempt) and exactly when that amount starts applying, so a ticket held in the block well before doors is still charged correctly if you don't actually sell it until after the day-of-show cutoff. The amount you collect must include the upcharge from that point on — same as the warning above, Noctern checks the total server-side once the sale uploads.
The box office's "pencil" waiver for the day-of-show upcharge is not available offline. If a patron has a reason the upcharge shouldn't apply, sell them a regular ticket once the network is back instead of a comp — a comp still records the full price (including the upcharge) as given away, it doesn't waive it.
Back online: sales upload automatically
Once the device reconnects, every offline sale from the block uploads to Noctern in the background, the same way offline check-ins do. This is safe to run more than once — a sale that already made it through isn't recorded twice.
If two orders somehow reference the same held ticket (shouldn't happen in normal use, but a bug or a very unlucky retry could), only the first one to reach Noctern wins — the second is rejected, never double-sold.
What happens to tickets left unsold
A block gives its unsold tickets back on its own 12 hours after the performance ends (a venue can shorten that window), so a device that only gets plugged in the next morning still has time to upload what it sold. A venue admin can also release the remainder early from the web admin. Anything still unsold goes straight back into the pool for everyone else to sell — nothing is lost, and nothing you already sold from that block is affected.
Get the device back online before anyone releases its block early. The moment the block is released those seats can be sold again, and a sale that uploads afterwards can no longer be turned into a ticket — it lands on the venue's Incomplete Orders page needing a decision instead. The web admin warns before releasing a block from a device with unsold tickets on it, but it will let an admin go ahead.
If an upload can't be turned into a ticket
If a seat in your block was somehow sold to someone else before your sale reached Noctern, the money is still recorded — the drawer and the books balance — but it's held as pending review and no ticket is issued. It shows up for a venue admin on AdminBox OfficeIncomplete Orders under "Offline POS sales needing review", where they either honour the sale (once the seats are free) or refund the patron. See Finishing Up Incomplete Orders.
From the web admin, open AdminBox OfficeHolds, choose the event, and look at the Prepare device for offline card to see any allocations currently held for a device.