Barcoded Ticket Scanning

Understanding Barcoded Tickets & Scanners

For venues with a high number of fraudulent tickets, barcoded ticketing and real-time scanning offers security and guards against ticket duplication. Let’s examine barcode ticketing and why it helps prevent fraud.

Barcode scanning provides venues with an efficient method of moving crowds through the entrance gate by quickly scanning and receiving feedback on the tickets.

How Barcode Ticket Scanners Work

If you are old enough, you can remember shopping at the grocery store as clerks keyed in the price for every item in your shopping cart. Today, customers are funneled through the check out line quickly and accurately by using barcode technology. Standard barcodes, those familiar black lined images on our shopping cart purchases, represent numbers linked to a real item. For ThunderTix, these barcodes are printed on PDF or thermal tickets, and they represent a ticket purchased by your customers.

Each PDF ticket includes a unique barcode which identifies the customer and order associated with that ticket purchase. For example, a customer buys 3 tickets for “Willie Nelson” showing at 7pm on Friday night April 23, 2010. They then receive an email confirmation receipt of purchase which includes a single PDF attachment that is 3 pages long; Each page of the PDF is a separate ticket that includes a unique barcode and barcode ID number.

Scanning Tickets

When the ticket is presented for admittance to the show, the bar code is scanned to check validity for a match to the Willie Nelson event for that night (Friday at 7pm on 4-23-10). If the ticket is valid, ThunderTix will return a valid response in a large green box, displaying the buyer’s name and bar code ID.

If the ticket is not valid (maybe it is for Willie Nelson, but the Saturday night event), ThunderTix will return a response in a large red box, stating “Invalid”. Lastly, if an electronic PDF ticket has been duplicated fraudulently, the second attempt to enter the show with the same barcode ID will return a large red box with a response stating that the barcode is a “Duplicate” so that the appropriate measures can be taken by the venue agent.

Bar code Ticket Scanners

ThunderTix offers bar code scanners for purchase and also for 1 week rentals. There are 4 styles of Bar code scanners available — connected to a computer by USB or wireless/cordless. Scanners that are connected to a computer or netbook have no learning curve and are the most inexpensive solution.

If the entrance point or gate is does not have the room for a laptop or netbook, or it would simply not offer the mobility, the next option is a wireless barcode scanner. The wireless scanners are mini-mobile computers which include Windows using a Wireless Network for Internet access. Lastly, if there is no Internet access in the area, the barcode scanner can use a SIM card with the Edge/3G network for ticket scanning and event barcode validation.

Contact us at (877) 252-8369 for more information about buying or renting unit(s) for your next event using ThunderTix.