Calling off a show is two deliberate steps in this order: cancel it, which stops sales, then refund everyone, which gives the money back. They are separate on purpose — nothing is refunded until you ask for it, and nothing can be refunded until the show is cancelled.

Before you start

• Venue Admin required, and the Refunds permission (canRefund) on your account. If Process refunds refuses you, ask whoever manages your Team page to tick Refunds for you.
• Everything here is per performance. A three-night run has three show pages, each with its own cancel and its own refund. Cancelling Friday does not touch Saturday.
• Have your box office ready: some orders cannot be refunded electronically and have to be settled over the counter.

Step 1 — cancel the performance

1. 1Open AdminEvents and click the performance you are cancelling. Check the date in the header — on a multi-date run it is easy to open the wrong night.
2. 2In the Lifecycle group, click Cancel event. If the button is greyed out it tells you why underneath: Already cancelled, or Event has already happened.
3. 3The confirmation says it will mark the show cancelled, prevent further ticket sales, and cannot be undone. Click Cancel Event.

What that did, and only that:

• The show's status is Cancelled. Checkout now refuses it everywhere — online, at the box office, and at the door.
• Its page still opens for anyone with the link, with a cancelled banner, and it stays in the public listing. That is deliberate: ticket holders have to be able to see the cancellation.
• Nobody has been emailed, and no money has moved.

Step 2 — refund everyone

1. 1On the same performance's page, in the Money group, click Process refunds. Greyed out tells you why: Cancel the event first, or No refunds pending.
2. 2

   Read the dialog. Refund this performance? names the performance's own date and then counts exactly what is about to happen:

   • N orders · N tickets · $X.XX
   • how many of them are pass orders refunded for this performance only — those passes stay valid for the other nights
   • how many are already refunded or awaiting the payment processor and will be skipped
   • and the line No other performance in this series is touched

   If the count cannot be read, the dialog says so and the refund is blocked — nobody confirms a number Noctern could not produce.

3. 3

   Decide about the patron email. When Noctern is set up to email patrons, the dialog carries a tick-box — Email each patron when their refund is issued — already ticked, with one email per order naming the cancelled performance, the amount refunded, where it went, and anything the box office will hand back. Untick it only if you are announcing the refund another way.

   If instead the dialog reads Patrons are not emailed by this refund, your platform is on the older refund path and no patron email goes out at all. Tell your audience yourself. (Ask Noctern support if you want refund emails switched on.)

4. 4Type the performance's date into the confirmation box, exactly as the label shows it. The Process Refunds button stays dead until it matches — it is the guard against refunding the wrong night.
5. 5Click Process Refunds.

What gets refunded, and what does not

The refund returns what each order still holds, not what it originally cost — money already given back by an earlier single-ticket refund is not returned twice.

| How the order was paid | What happens | |---|---| | Card | Refunded through the payment processor. Every card on the order, not just the first — a second card at the window, a group sale's later deposits, a door sale taken offline | | Gift certificate or venue credit | Credited straight back onto the certificate that paid, automatically. The buyer is whole with no staff step | | Cash, check | Nothing automatic. Flagged for a human and listed for you (see below) | | Purchase order / settled outside Noctern | Flagged for staff to settle outside Noctern. Nothing is to be handed back from the drawer — the invoice may never have been paid. Card deposits on the same order are still refunded | | Paid in the ticketing system you used before Noctern | The tickets are voided here and the seats freed, but Noctern holds no money for them. Refund those in that system | | Comps, free orders, $0 tickets, transfer copies | Closed out with no payment call and no email. The seat is released |

Step 3 — settle what is left by hand

Two things appear on the performance's page once the refund has run.

The Cancellation refunds card shows progress and anything that needs a person: N of M orders processed, then N refunded · N already refunded · N need a human · N failed, plus whether patron emails are going out. Under it:

• a list of orders paid in your previous ticketing system, to refund there
• Cash owed back by hand — order reference and amount for each
• Failed refunds — the order, how many attempts, and the error, with a Retry failed button. A refund that failed because the admin who started it lost their refund permission is retried as you

The Cash owed card lists the same cash, check and gift-certificate money as a running total — Cash owed — $X.XX across N orders. Hand each one back at the venue, then click Mark paid back on that row.

What the box office gets

Noctern sends one email to the address in your venue's Event Email field listing everything the cancelled performance leaves to settle outside Noctern, in five groups, each with a total and one line per order (order reference, buyer name and email where known, tickets or seats, amount):

1. paid in your previous ticketing system — refund there, at face value
2. cash to hand back
3. checks to return
4. gift-certificate money that could not be credited, with the reason
5. purchase-order group sales — nothing is handed back from the drawer

The amounts are what Noctern recorded. Cash already handed back at the counter without being recorded on the order will still be listed, so check the order before paying anyone twice.

The email goes out once per run: a second Process refunds with nothing new to report sends nothing, and a retried failure that newly succeeds sends the list again.

What the box office does after

• Work the email and the Cash owed card: hand back the cash and checks, mark each one paid back.
• Refund the orders paid in your previous system, in that system.
• Nothing needs to be done to stop selling. A cancelled performance is already refused at every till.
• If a patron turns up having missed the announcement, the attendee list still shows their ticket and its Refunded status, so you can tell them what happened and when.

Then archive it

Once every order is settled you can tidy the show away with Archive event in the Lifecycle group. Archiving an upcoming show with live sales is blocked until it is cancelled and fully refunded — the dialog says so. See Archiving and finding old shows.

If something goes wrong

• A failed refund stays on the card with its error until it succeeds. Use Retry failed; it runs again under your own account.
• An order stuck waiting on the processor is normal for a few minutes. It completes on its own when the payment processor confirms.
• A refund the processor refuses (the card is closed, the charge is too old) has to be done from the payment processor's own dashboard. The order says so.
• One ticket, not the whole show — use the attendee list instead. See The attendee list.