A layout is your venue's reusable seating chart: a room with seats, rows, tables, booths, sections or GA areas inside it. Build one layout for each way you set your room up, and attach it to reserved-seating shows. Many shows can start from the same layout.
The seating chart editor is on the venue hub, not under Events: go to AdminVenues[venue]Layouts, or click Seating layouts in the Setup group of the venue hub.
Layout types
- Reserved seating — individual seats, rows, tables or booths. Each seat a buyer reserves is its own ticket with its own QR code.
- GA area — a labelled area with a capacity and no individual seats; use it for a general-admission section inside a seated room.
You can mix reserved and GA sections in the same layout.
Start with a room
Every layout needs a room before it can take seating. The Tools & Properties panel on the right has two tabs, Standard Objects and Custom Objects. Room is the first button on Standard Objects and is always clickable — every other tool stays greyed out with an "Add a room first" hint until the layout has one.
- Pick an existing layout from the Layout dropdown, or choose Create New Layout.
- Click Room. A room appears on the canvas. Drag it into position, then set Width (ft) and Length (ft) under Room Properties in the same panel.
- With a room on the canvas, the seating tools below it unlock.
Each layout keeps its own room — editing a room in one layout never changes another, even one that started as a copy of it. Fit to Contents under Room Properties shrinks or grows the room to just hold what you have placed.
Adding seating objects
Click a tool on the Standard Objects tab. The object appears on the canvas just to the right of the room:
- Stage, Seat, Row, Table (round or rectangular), Booth, Section, GA Area, Label
- Custom Objects tab — your venue's own saved templates (see below)
- Drag the object into the room, and resize or rotate it with its handles. To nudge a selected object, press the arrow keys (one step; hold Shift for ten).
- Select the object and use the Properties section of the panel to set its Label and Section Name, and the number of seats: Number of Seats for a row or a table, Seats for a booth.
- To mark wheelchair-accessible seats, click Select Accessible Seats under Actions, then click each seat that should be accessible. Click Done Selecting when you finish.
A table or a booth has a Sell as whole table only / Sell as whole booth only switch. Turn it on and buyers must take every seat — the right behaviour for a six-top you don't want half-sold.
Select a table, booth, row, section, GA area or stage and click Save as Template under Actions to reuse it later from the Custom Objects tab. Custom objects belong to your venue, so every layout can use them.
Remove Selected under Actions deletes whatever is selected.
Pricing each section
- Click + next to Pricing Tiers to add a tier. Set its name, colour and price.
- Click a seat, row, table, booth or GA area to select it.
- Under Properties, choose a Pricing Tier from the dropdown. The object changes to that tier's colour.
- Repeat for every object you want to sell.
Saving
There is a single save button — Save New Layout for a layout you have not saved yet, Save Changes afterwards. There is no separate publish step: as soon as you save, the layout is selectable on a show's edit page.
To throw away what you have changed since the last save, click Discard changes above the canvas and confirm with Discard changes (or Keep editing to back out). The layout goes back to how it was last saved. The button is greyed out when there is nothing unsaved.
A show gets its own copy of the layout it was created from. Editing that show's seating chart never changes the original template, or any other show. Editing the original template later does not change shows that already have a copy.
Attaching a seating chart to a show
On the show's edit page, in Event Details, set the Seating Layout field to your layout. Each pricing tier defined in the layout becomes a tier on the show, and you set the price there. See Editing a show.
To open the seating chart for one particular show, use Edit seat layout in the Setup group of that show's page — it opens this editor on that show's own copy.
Changing a show's seating chart
A show can be moved onto a different chart after it is created, as long as no seats have gone yet.
- Open AdminEvents, click the show, then click Edit details.
- In Event Details, open the Seating Layout dropdown. It lists every seating chart you have saved for this venue, plus General admission (no seats).
- Pick the chart you want and click Save Changes.
The show gets a brand-new copy of the chart you picked: its seats, its sections and its pricing tiers, with prices you then set on the show. Only the date you are editing changes — other dates of the same show keep the chart they have, and the chart you picked (your venue's template) is not touched at all.
Once a seat is sold or on hold, the chart is locked. The dropdown is greyed out and says "Seats are sold or held for this show, so its seating chart can't be changed." That is deliberate: a different chart is a different set of seats, so a ticket already sold for "Table 4, seat 2" would stop pointing at anything real.
The chart is also locked while a box-office sale for the show is still open — one that has been started, perhaps part-paid, but not finished. The dropdown then says "A box-office sale for this show is in progress. Finish or cancel it, then change the seating chart." Finish or cancel that sale at the box office (part-paid sales are listed under Box Office → Incomplete Orders) and reload this page.
To change the chart anyway you have to clear the show first — refund or release every ticket and hold — and then the dropdown unlocks. If you only need to adjust a few seats, edit the show's own seating chart instead (Edit seat layout, above); that keeps sold seats exactly as they are.
Only the chart is locked. Everything else about the show — its title, dates, description, prices, promo codes — still saves normally; leave the greyed-out dropdown alone and click Save Changes as usual.
Choosing General admission (no seats) takes the seat map off the show and gives you the GA Ticket Pricing card instead (a capacity plus tier rows). The same sold-or-held rule applies.
Moving a show to another venue
If you change the Venue field, the chart is cleared and Save Changes stays greyed out until you pick one of the new venue's charts (or General admission). A show cannot keep a chart that belongs to a room it is no longer in, and it will never quietly become general admission because you did not notice the field. A show with sold or held seats cannot be moved to another venue at all.
Editing the seat layout of one event
Your venue's layouts and an event's seat layout are edited in two different places:
- Your venue's layouts (the templates new events start from) — AdminVenues[venue]Layouts, as described above.
- One event's seat layout — open the event at AdminEvents[event] and click Edit seat layout in the Setup card.
When you open the editor from an event, the top of the page says so: the path reads Events › [event name] › Seat layout, Manage Events is highlighted in the admin menu, and a banner names the event and its date — "You are editing the seat layout for [event name] on [date]. Changes affect only this event." The Layout box shows the name of that event's layout and cannot be switched here — swapping a show onto a different chart is done on its edit page (see Changing a show's seating chart above).
What you save there changes that one event and nothing else:
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Your venue's layouts and every other event keep their seats exactly as they are.
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If the event was still using a layout shared with other events, saving gives it its own copy first. You will see "Saved to this event's own copy".
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Seats that are already sold or on hold for the event are protected. A save that would remove one, rename or renumber it, move it to another pricing tier, or change the price of its tier is not saved at all — nothing from that save is kept. A red box above the layout lists each seat by section, row and seat number and says what would have changed, and gives you two buttons:
- Put the sold seats back returns only the listed seats to how they were last saved — a deleted seat comes back, a renamed one gets its name back, a GA area gets its capacity back — and keeps your other changes. Click Save Changes again to keep them. If a listed seat was taken out of its row, the whole row comes back as it was last saved.
- Discard all changes throws away everything you have not saved and shows the last saved layout.
Seats that are still free can be changed as usual.
If an event has no seat layout yet, the Setup card shows Choose a layout instead. It opens the event edit page, where you pick a layout in the Seating Layout field and click Save Changes.
Click the ? button at the top of the editor for a one-page reference covering keyboard shortcuts, custom objects, pricing tiers, and how layouts relate to shows.
Create a layout, add a room, then add a simple three-row seating block with two tiers (Orchestra and Balcony). Save it, then create a show, attach this layout, and set a price for each tier.