Events

Creating an event

If you don't already have a Dandelion account

Check out the video below, which does assume you have a Stripe account.

Show transcript

Hi, I'm going to show you how easy it is to set up an event on Dandelion. Start by clicking 'List an event'.

First you'll need to create an account. Fill in some personal details and click 'Sign up'.

OK, you're in! All events on Dandelion are listed under an organisation. Fill in some details of the organisation and click 'Save and continue'.

Connect your Stripe account and click 'Update organisation'.

OK, your organisation is ready! Now let's create an event. Provide an event title, and start and end time.

Click 'Description and confirmation email', and provide an event description and any extra info for the order confirmation email.

Click 'Tickets', and add some ticket types.

Fill in the ticket type name, price and quantity.

That'll do for now - click the final tab and then 'Create event'.

You're done!

List an event

If you already have a Dandelion account

Events in Dandelion must be created under an Organisation. (See Organisations for details on how to create an Organisation.)

• Go to your organisation's page
• Click the organisation dropdown at the top of the main window and select Create an event
• Provide the required details and click Create event. You will then notice a new dropdown containing further admin options for your event at the top of the main window.

While you are creating an event, Dandelion autosaves a draft. If you leave and come back via Drafts on the create-event page, the form is restored including ticket types and ticket groups. (You still need to save the event before you can assign ticket types to new ticket groups.)

Customising the thank you page

After someone books, they see a thank you page on Dandelion (unless you've set a redirect URL under Everything else). Under Appearance, you can add Thank you text to show a custom message on that page—for example a welcome note or a link to a community group. Leave it blank to keep the default thank you page.

Meta and Google Ads purchase conversions also fire on this page (see Organisations). You can also set a pixel or Google Ads conversion on an individual event under Everything else; if both organisation and event values are set and different, events are sent to both.

Let attendees choose how much to pay

To let your attendees choose how much to pay for a ticket type:

• Leave the 'Price or range' field of a ticket type blank to allow attendees to pay any amount
• Enter two numbers separated by a dash to create a slider e.g. 5-50 creates a slider where attendees can choose to pay any amount between £5–50 ($/€/etc)

Ticket slots and capacity

Each ticket type has a Quantity (how many of that ticket you want to sell) and Slots (how many places each of those tickets takes from the event's total capacity and any ticket group capacity).

Slots defaults to 1. Set it to:

• 0 for add-on tickets that should not count towards venue capacity, such as meals
• 2 for a couples ticket
• 1 (the default) for a standard ticket

If you set a total capacity on the event or on a ticket group, Dandelion uses slots rather than the raw number of tickets sold.

Role balance (linked ticket type quantity)

To release tickets of one type based on sales of another, put a formula at the end of the ticket type Description:

[=Leader*1.1:15]

That means: sell at most max(matching tickets sold × 1.1, 15), and never more than this type's Quantity.

• Leader is matched as a case-insensitive substring of other ticket type names on the same event (not this type). Sold counts of all matches are added together.
• 1.1 is the multiplier. :15 is an optional minimum to release even if nothing matching has sold yet.
• The formula is stripped from the description buyers see.

Example: ticket types named Leader and Follower, with the follower description [=Leader*1.1:15] and quantity 80. Up to 15 follower tickets are available immediately; more are released as leader tickets sell, up to 80.

If you have several follower types each with the same formula, each gets its own cap. Put them in a ticket group if they should share a pool.

Allowing people to pay in instalments

You can collect ticket payments as a fixed number of monthly Direct Debit instalments via GoCardless.

1. In your organisation settings under Payments, click Set up GoCardless, add an access token and webhook secret, then check Enable Instalments.
2. Set the webhook to send billing request events. Include payments as well if you also use Instant Bank Pay.
3. Edit the event and, under Everything else, set GoCardless instalments to the number of monthly payments (2–24). This field appears once instalments are enabled on the organisation.

At checkout, buyers see a Pay in X instalments button on GBP and EUR events. They need a bank account in the event currency (a UK account for GBP, a Eurozone account for EUR). Tickets are emailed when the payment schedule is set up (i.e. straight away/not at the final instalment). You can refund collected instalments from the GoCardless dashboard. Note that Dandelion does not cancel orders if later instalments fail — you need to remove orders with unpaid instalments yourself. If a ticket paid this way is later resold, Dandelion emails you that a refund is required (see Ticket resales).

You can also enable an instalment payment method on your Stripe account, such as Klarna or Clearpay/Afterpay. Customers will then be able to pay for the purchase in instalments at checkout, and receive tickets immediately.

Alternatively, you can create a secret ticket type with a quantity equal to the number of instalments and send a link to the attendee. (Make sure you check that they actually end up purchasing all the tickets of this ticket type!)

Including sales taxes (VAT/MOMS)

First, add a tax rate on Stripe (for the UK, VAT/20%/Inclusive; for Sweden, VAT/25%/Inclusive – leave Region blank to apply to all purchases). Then copy the tax rate ID, and enter it in your event settings under Everything else (or in your organisation settings under Everything else to apply to all events in the organisation).

Sending payment receipts

To enable automated receipts for Stripe payments, toggle 'Successful payments' on in your customer emails settings.

Taking payments with Open Collective

If your organisation has an Open Collective account, you can accept payments through it:

1. Go to the Payments tab in your organisation's settings, click Set up Open Collective, and enter your Open Collective organisation slug (e.g. if your Open Collective URL is https://opencollective.com/mystica, the slug is mystica)
2. Create an event on Open Collective under your organisation
3. Edit your Dandelion event and enter the Open Collective event slug under Everything else

Ticket buyers will then see a 'Pay with Open Collective' option at checkout. Dandelion only confirms the booking once Open Collective marks the contribution as paid.

Taking payments with Mollie

If your organisation has a Mollie account, you can accept payments through it:

1. Go to the Payments tab in your organisation's settings and click Set up Mollie
2. Paste your live API key from Developers > API keys in the Mollie Dashboard
3. Enable the payment methods you want on your website profile

Ticket buyers will then see a Pay with Mollie button at checkout on fiat-currency events. They are sent to Mollie's hosted checkout (iDEAL, cards, Bancontact, and other methods you have enabled). Dandelion confirms the booking when Mollie marks the payment as paid.

Taking payments with PayPal

If your organisation has a PayPal business account, you can accept payments through it:

1. Go to the Payments tab in your organisation's settings and click Set up PayPal
2. Create an app under Apps & Credentials in the PayPal Developer Dashboard and paste the live client ID and secret
3. Add a webhook for your organisation's PayPal webhook URL (shown on the Payments tab) with Checkout order approved and Payment capture completed

Ticket buyers will then see a Pay with PayPal button at checkout on fiat-currency events. They are sent to PayPal to approve the payment. Dandelion captures the payment and confirms the booking when PayPal marks it as completed.

Get email notifications of orders

Make sure the 'Send email notifications of orders' checkbox is checked in the first tab 'Basics' when creating/editing your event.

Track how people discovered the event

Add ?via= to the end of your event URL and you will see the result on the Orders page e.g. https://dandelion.events/e123f?via=may-newsletter

Checking people in

Click the event dropdown and go to the Tickets page for the event. There you can find a check-in toggle for each ticket.

You can also access a check-in scanner by clicking the event dropdown and selecting 'Check-in scanner'. The scanner works well on mobile.

There you can also find a link you can share with assistants which allows them to check people in, without assistants gaining full admin access to the event.

Adding event facilitators

Go to your event (the main page, not the settings page), click the plus icon next to Facilitators and search for the desired facilitator by name.

A facilitator becomes an event admin of that event: they can edit it, handle tickets and orders, check people in, and email attendees. They do not get organisation-wide access. See Roles and privileges for the full comparison.

Once a facilitator has received feedback on an event, they appear on the Facilitators page.

Adding co-hosts

Go to your event (the main page, not the settings page), click the plus icon next to Hosted by and search for the desired organisation by name.

Emailing attendees

• Click the event dropdown, select Mailer, and click New message.
• Once you've saved the message, you will have the option to send it.

You can also copy email addresses of attendees into your own email app from the Orders or Tickets pages.

Recurring events/Events across several dates

You have two options here:

1. Use a single event with multiple Ticket Groups: Create a single event with the start date as the start date of the first event in the series and the end date as the end date of the last event in the series; then use Ticket Groups to list the different dates (example here).
   
   Ticket groups are created on the Tickets tab when editing your event. To assign tickets to new ticket groups, save the event then return to the Tickets tab.

2. Create multiple events under a single Activity: Create an Activity under your Organisation (see the Organisations page for details on how to do this), and then create multiple events under this activity. Share the link to the Activity for people to view all available dates.

(If the events are the same/very similar, you can create the first event, then duplicate it for all the dates the event occurs by selecting 'Duplicate event' in the event dropdown of the initial event.)

Cancelling/deleting an event

Click the event dropdown and select Delete event. If the event has orders, email ticketholders first to let them know.

You can then Delete event and attempt to refund all orders, or Delete event without refunding orders if you have already refunded people (or don't intend to). See Refunds for refunding individual tickets or orders instead of deleting the event.

Where did my secret/locked event go?

You can see all events under an organisation (including events marked secret or locked) by clicking the organisation dropdown and going to Event stats.

Locked events are hidden from the public. Anyone who can view the event page (event admins) can still purchase tickets, so you can test checkout before unlocking.

Reminders

Dandelion can send event attendees a reminder email before the event starts. Set Hours before the event to send the reminder email in the event's Emails tab (default: 24). Leave blank to skip the reminder. You can also customise the reminder subject and body in your organisation or event settings.

Feedback

Attendees receive an email with a request for feedback after the event ends. Set Hours after the event to send the feedback request email in the event's Emails tab (maximum: 720 hours, or 30 days). Leave blank to send when the event ends.

You can resend these emails by going to the Orders page for your event and clicking 'Resend feedback email' next to an order.

Alternatively, attendees can provide feedback by logging in to Dandelion, going to the event page and clicking 'Give feedback'.

Event recordings

After a scheduled event has finished, you can sell or give access to a recording of it. The event stays tied to its original date; buyers see that they are getting access to a recording of that session.

• Save the event with a start and end time and run it as usual.
• Once the event is in the past, edit it again: a Recording tab appears. Open it and add to Extra info for order confirmation email—usually the link to the recording (Vimeo, YouTube, etc.) and any password or viewing instructions. This content is included in the order confirmation email sent to people who book from that point on.
• Optionally, further customise the Order confirmation email for the recording of the event in the Emails tab.

Recordings are distinct from evergreen/on-demand events, which never had a fixed date (see below).

Evergreen (on-demand) events

Evergreen events are for selling access to something that has no fixed start time, end time, or location—for example an on-demand course or pre-recorded content.

• When creating or editing an event, use the link Mark as evergreen/on-demand, with no dates or location on the Basics tab. That reveals the evergreen option; once enabled, date, time, and location fields are hidden.
• Enter the link to the video/course etc on the Description and confirmation tab under Extra info for order confirmation email (similar to where you'd enter a Zoom link for a live, online event).
• In listings and carousels, evergreen events show first, as On-demand instead of under a date.
• Reminder emails and automated feedback request emails are not sent for evergreen events. You can still use the Mailer to email attendees manually.
• PDF tickets are not issued, and the order confirmation refers to access as a link rather than tickets.

Evergreen events are different from recordings of dated live events (see above): recordings keep the original event date for context.

Displaying feedback publicly

Click the dropdown for your event (/activity/local group/organisation), and select Feedback.

• If someone allows their written answers to be quoted publicly and the form has a single question, an extract is suggested (AI picks one or two sentences, or nothing if the answer is not suitable to quote). You can edit it in the box, or click Show an extract if none has appeared yet.
• If a piece of feedback has no extract control, it means the person that submitted the feedback doesn't want it shown publicly.

Discount codes

To create a discount code, click the dropdown for your event (or organisation, activity or local group if you want the discount code to apply across several events), and select 'Discount codes'.

Waitlists

If your event sells out, a waitlist will be activated automatically. You can view people on the waitlist by selecting Waitlist in the event dropdown.

If Send email notifications of orders and waitlist registrations is turned on, event facilitators are emailed when someone joins the waitlist.

Dandelion automatically emails people on your waitlist if tickets become available again (either by you releasing more tickets, cancelling existing orders, or someone marking a ticket for resale with resales enabled).

You can email your waitlist via Dandelion by going to Mailer in the event dropdown, creating a new message and selecting the waitlist under the To field. Alternatively, you can simply copy and paste the email addresses from the waitlist page into your own email app.

Waitlists for individual ticket types

This is optional and separate from the event-wide waitlist above.

When Waitlists for ticket types is turned on (under Everything else while editing your event), people can join a waitlist for each ticket type once that ticket type is sold out, as long as sales for that ticket type are still open (for example its per-ticket-type sales deadline has not passed, and the event is not treating sales as closed).

On the booking form, sold-out ticket types show a Join waitlist action for that row.

If Send email notifications of orders and waitlist registrations is turned on, event facilitators are emailed when someone joins a ticket type waitlist.

Dandelion automatically emails people on a ticket type waitlist if tickets for that ticket type become available again.

To see who joined: choose Ticket type waitlists in the event dropdown (the item appears once at least one person has joined). From there you can filter by ticket type and copy email addresses for outreach.

You can also email ticket type waitlists via Dandelion by going to Mailer in the event dropdown, creating a new message and selecting Ticket type waitlists (everyone waiting on any ticket type) or a specific ticket type waitlist under the To field.

Fees and payouts

Dandelion does not take any money from ticket sales. Your chosen payment processor, however, likely charges a fee. Read more on:

• Stripe fees and Stripe payout times (You may be able to change from weekly payouts to daily payouts here)
• GoCardless fees
• Mollie fees
• PayPal fees
• Open Collective fees

Alternatively, you can accept completely fee-free crypto payments via Gnosis, Celo or Base. Go to the Payments tab in your organisation's settings, click Set up Crypto, and enter an Ethereum-compatible wallet address.

About the suggested donation

Dandelion operates on a donation/gift economy basis. We ask for donations from organisations, and from ticket purchasers at checkout.

From organisations: We ask for a donation of 1% of ticket sales. (If an event has no ticket types listed and is simply an advertisement for an event where tickets are sold elsewhere, we ask for a fixed £25 promotion fee.) Click your organisation dropdown and select Contribute to make a contribution.

From ticket purchasers at checkout: By default, donations from ticket purchasers at checkout go to Dandelion. However, if your organisation meets the suggested contribution of 1% of ticket sales, we pass on future donations to your organisation instead.

The easiest way to ensure that donations always go to your organisation is to enable auto top-up on the Contribute page.

Sending confirmation to other ticketholders

By default, only the person who placed the order receives the order confirmation email. Under Everything else when editing an event, you can enable Send order confirmation to other ticketholders. When that is on, entering a ticketholder email on the order confirmation page (or via Edit ticketholders) also emails that person the order confirmation.

Transferring tickets

Event attendees: Log in to Dandelion, go to the event page, click 'Edit ticketholders' and enter the name and email address of the person you gifted/sold your ticket to.

The original ticket PDF will still work, so you can simply forward it to the new ticketholder. If the event has Send order confirmation to other ticketholders enabled, they will also receive the order confirmation automatically. Otherwise, if it's important that the PDF is reissued under the new name, you can get in touch with the event organiser and ask them to 'Resend single ticket' following the instructions below.

Event organisers that have received a request to transfer a ticket: Click the event dropdown, go to the Tickets page, and select 'Change name or email' in the Actions menu for the ticket(s).

If you want to resend the ticket PDF to the new email address, after entering the new email, select 'Resend single ticket' in the Actions menu.

Refunds

Refunds for Stripe, GoCardless, Mollie, and PayPal payments can be issued from the event's Tickets or Orders pages. The money goes back to the original payment method.

1. Click the event dropdown and go to Tickets or Orders.
2. Open Actions next to the ticket or order.
3. Choose:
   • Remove and refund ticket — refunds that ticket's price and removes it. The rest of the order stays in place.
   • Remove and refund order — refunds the whole payment (including any donation on the order) and removes the order.
   • Remove ticket / Remove order — removes without refunding. Use this if you already refunded via Stripe, GoCardless, Mollie, or PayPal, or the payment was not taken through those processors.

You'll be asked to confirm. The refund options only appear for Stripe, GoCardless, Mollie, and PayPal payments. For Open Collective, crypto, complimentary, or cash tickets, remove the ticket or order here and refund via that platform if needed.

The attendee is emailed a confirmation when the refund succeeds. If a refund fails, you'll get an email with the error. You can retry from your Stripe, GoCardless, Mollie, or PayPal dashboard.

GoCardless instalment payments should be refunded from the GoCardless dashboard (see Allowing people to pay in instalments).

Attendees cannot refund themselves. They need to contact you, or resell the ticket if you have enabled resales.

Ticket resales

The ticket resale feature allows event attendees to resell their tickets through the event page. (Technically, what happens is that the original ticket is refunded, and a new ticket is issued to the new buyer.)

Check 'enable resales' under 'Everything else' when editing an event to enable resales.

Attendees mark a ticket for resale by logging in to Dandelion, visiting the event page and selecting 'Mark for resale' next to a ticket.

This makes one more of that ticket type available. If the type is sold out and someone then purchases a ticket of this type, the original ticketholder gets a refund and a confirmation email, the new buyer gets a fresh ticket, and everyone gets an email notification.

If the original ticket was paid by GoCardless instalments (or another method Dandelion cannot refund automatically), organisers and Dandelion admins are emailed that a refund is required, and the original ticketholder is told the organiser will process the refund (not that they will receive one automatically). Refund collected instalments and cancel the remaining schedule from the GoCardless dashboard.

Gating events with an application form

You can make it so people must first be accepted to an Activity before being able to purchase tickets to events in the activity.

Click your organisation dropdown and select 'Activities' then 'Create an activity'. Under 'Access', select 'People must apply to join' and enter some application questions (answers in textboxes).

Edit your event(s) and assign them to this new activity. Now, people will have to apply and be accepted to the activity before they can purchase tickets to the event(s). This is enforced when tickets are bought, not only on the event page.

You'll be notified via email when people apply.

Event boosts

Dandelion has a 'boosted event' slot at the top of the event listings. If you'd like your event to show there, you can boost your event from the Boosts page in the event admin menu.

• Boosts are bought in whole-hour blocks.
• You choose a start time, a number of hours, and an amount per hour.
• Overlapping boosts for the same event stack together.

An event's share of the boost pool corresponds to the probability of the event being shown in the boost slot at the top of the unfiltered public events listing (the probability can be higher for filtered listings where the number of relevant events is smaller).

For example, if during one hour:

'Breathwork Journey' tagged 'breathwork' is boosted for £2
'Day Rave' tagged 'rave' is boosted for £8

Then the probability that 'Breathwork Journey' will be shown in the boosted slot when someone views the unfiltered public events listing is 2/(2+8) = 20%.

The probability that 'Breathwork Journey' will be shown in the boosted slot when someone views the public events listings, filtered for the tag 'breathwork' is 100% (as it's the only boosted event that matches the filters).

Likewise, the probability that 'Day Rave' will be shown in the boosted slot when someone views the public events listings, filtered for the tag 'rave' is 100%.

Using automated revenue sharing

Dandelion has a unique revenue sharing feature allowing organisations to share ticket revenue with their facilitators at the time of purchase. Please contact us if you'd like to try it.

What's the difference between an 'abundant' and 'standard' ticket?

Typically, nothing. Some organisations list the same ticket at different prices simply to give those who can afford to contribute more, an opportunity to do so.

Embedding event listings

Embed an iframe like this, replacing the-psychedelic-society with your organisation's slug:

<iframe style="overflow: scroll; border: 0; width:100%; height: 100vh;" class="dandelion-auto-height"  src="https://dandelion.events/o/the-psychedelic-society/events?minimal=1"></iframe>

You can also experiment with the parameters hide_featured_title, no_search, no_view_options, no_listings and first_carousel_only e.g. ?minimal=1&hide_featured_title=1&no_search=1&no_view_options=1&no_listings=1&first_carousel_only=1

Put this in your head to set the iframe to the correct height:

<script src="//code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js"></script>
<script src="//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/iframe-resizer/4.2.10/iframeResizer.min.js"></script>
<script>
  $(function () {
    $('.dandelion-auto-height').iFrameResize({log: true, checkOrigin: false, heightCalculationMethod : 'taggedElement'})
  })
</script>

Embedding ticket forms

Embed an iframe like this, replacing https://dandelion.events/e/my-event with your event URL. The ticket_form_only query parameter limits the embed to the ticket form:

<iframe style="overflow: scroll; border: 0; width:100%; height: 100vh" class="dandelion-auto-height" src="https://dandelion.events/e/my-event?ticket_form_only=1"></iframe>

Use the code in the second half of the previous section to set the iframe to the correct height.