For events you never marketed through Noctern (a flyer campaign, a radio spot, word of mouth), Checkout Questions give you real attribution: up to 5 optional questions — e.g. "How did you hear about this show?" plus a second one for a series or a survey — shown to every buyer, with the answers rolled up in the Channels report, one card per question.
This is separate from Noctern's own custom fields (which live on the patron record) and separate from any tracked/UTM attribution — it's simply what the buyer told you.
Turning it on
Go to AdminVenues[venue]Edit and scroll to the Checkout Questions card.
- Click Add question to start a new question, up to 5 total. Each one has its own label, options, and toggles below.
- Edit the Question label — e.g. "How did you hear about this show?" or a second question for a specific series or survey.
- Edit the Options list for that question. Add, remove, or reword options to fit your venue.
- Toggle Allow "Other" free text if you want buyers to be able to type a free-text answer instead of picking a listed option.
- Toggle Require an answer if you want that question mandatory. Leave it off to keep it optional.
- Toggle Ask this question on for each question you want live — off by default, and a question can be turned off without deleting it.
- Use the up/down arrows to reorder questions — the order here is the order buyers see them in, and the order the Channels report lists them in.
- Click Save Checkout Questions.
Where it shows up
- Online checkout — every enabled question appears on the details step, in order, above the Pay button.
- Box office — staff see the same questions, in the same order, in the sale form and ask the patron directly before completing the sale.
Checkout questions never block a sale, even if you mark one required — a save or network hiccup degrades to "no question shown" rather than stopping checkout. Required only controls whether the client asks the buyer to answer before Pay is enabled.
Reading the answers
Go to Admin → Reports → Marketing → Channels. When a checkout question has any recent answers, a Self-reported at checkout card appears for that question — titled with the question's label — with counts and percentage share per option. A venue with 2 questions answered gets 2 cards; a question no one answered in the recent window doesn't get a card.
These cards are clearly separate from any tracked (UTM) attribution and from any other self-reported breakdown that may appear on the same page. Don't add these numbers together — they answer different questions about different time periods and different buyers.
Enable one or two checkout questions on a test venue, complete a free or comp checkout answering each, then open the Channels report and confirm each answer appears under its own Self-reported at checkout card.