reservation system for balls and dances

A ball is an event people look forward to all year-and organizers know this better than anyone. Hundreds of guests, carefully arranged tables, a band, a raffle, a program, and tickets sold weeks in advance-all of this requires logistics that go far beyond an Excel spreadsheet and phone reservations. A modern online booking system is transforming the way balls and social dances are organized-ticket sales, seat selection, and guest check-in are all handled clearly, digitally, and without unnecessary stress. And it is not just for elegant balls, but also lively village dances, parties, and New Year’s Eve celebrations.

What needs to be handled ...
  • Advance ticket sales with different price categories (individual, couple, VIP table).
  • Allowing guests to select a specific seat or table on the venue map when purchasing a ticket.
  • Monitoring the venue’s total capacity and the occupancy of individual seats.
  • Quickly checking in hundreds of guests by scanning QR codes, without queues or paper lists.
  • Automatically emailing tickets and saving them to mobile wallets.
  • Managing multiple events in a single system (municipal ball, firefighters’ ball, corporate party).

Organizing a ball is challenging even for experienced organizers-and traditional ticket sales methods only make things more complicated. Box-office sales, phone reservations, and sharing information on social media lead to errors, duplicate bookings, and unnecessary administrative work. Online ticket sales with seat selection on a seating map dramatically simplify the entire process. Each guest can choose where they want to sit, pay by bank transfer, and receive a ticket with a QR code, which they can save to their phone or directly to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet. Meanwhile, the system continuously updates seat availability and monitors venue capacity, eliminating the risk of overselling or confusion at the entrance. For smaller organizing teams that hold a ball once a year, this provides enormous relief and simplification.

Digital tickets and automated communication also benefit the guests themselves. An event reminder a few days in advance, a QR code always readily available on their phone, and an easy way to share information about parking or the dress code-all of this improves convenience and creates a professional impression of the entire event. At the entrance to the venue, staff can quickly check guests in by scanning their codes with a mobile app, keeping everything moving smoothly even when the cloakroom and entrance are crowded. Different pricing options and gift vouchers-from discounted advance tickets to tables for corporate clients-give organizers the tools to fill the event while maximizing revenue. And if you organize several balls or dances during the season each year, you can manage all your events conveniently under one roof.

Key features for balls and dances

A successful ball rests on three pillars: seamless advance ticket sales, clear guest seating arrangements, and smooth check-in at the entrance. The features selected below cover this entire cycle-from the moment a guest chooses a seat at a table to the moment a green check mark flashes on the staff member’s screen at the door.

Event: Seat reservation

Even though the name of this event type sounds limited, the opposite is true. It's a type with a wide range of possible uses, where the customer visually chooses specific spots on a map, either as a one-off or within a time interval.

Event: Seat reservation

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Give customers the ability to choose a specific spot directly on a map of a hall, restaurant, or car park – whether for the entire event, or just a selected time period.

This event type lets you create a map of specific places and other elements, from which the customer chooses for themselves where they want to sit, stand, park a car, and so on. There are then two ways to book: either for the whole event at once (a classic ticket sale for an event with a specific seat), or for any time period, where the customer chooses a specific time from and to together with a place (e.g. booking a table in a restaurant or a parking spot). It's suitable for concerts, balls, theatres, cinemas, restaurants, room rentals, shared offices, or parking spaces.

A strong feature of this event type is also its pricing, where the price depends on the category of the place on the map, to which price variants or conditional prices can also be added. Combined with generating a separate reservation code for each booked place, a separate ticket is then always created for each place, labelled with its specific location on the map, so individual attendees can easily be checked in separately.

Tickets

Even though the reservation system works with the concept of a "reservation", it can just as well handle everything related to tickets. A ticket is simply a specific form of what a reservation means within a particular business.

Tickets

A reservation in the reenio system doesn't have to mean just a booked slot in a calendar – it can also mean a ticket. It's just a different way of looking at what you're offering customers, what they're buying, and how the whole process then unfolds.

Every reservation carries everything you'd expect from a ticket – a unique code, a QR code for quick check-in, and information about the time and exactly what it can be used for. From this perspective, selling tickets is a fundamental way of using the reservation system. A ticket is often understood as a document that, for example, matches the visual identity of an event and also contains additional information. All of this can also be provided in the reenio system, where you can create your own design for the reservation confirmation = the look and content of the ticket.

The customer receives their ticket by e-mail right after payment, can save it to their Apple or Google Wallet, and you simply scan it with the mobile app at the entrance. If you want to sell tickets for events, it's really nothing more than a reservation with online payment and a custom confirmation design.

Event: One single event

The easiest event type to set up and use, offering a booking for a specific, fixed time from and to, including an optional capacity limit. A customer always books the entire listed event.

Event: One single event

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Offer customers a reservation for a fixed time slot with a limited capacity – ideal wherever more than one person needs to be able to attend an event, but not more than you're able to serve.

With the Full single event type, a customer always books the whole event as set, i.e. a fixed time slot from – to, with no option to choose a custom time. This is typically an event with a higher capacity, taking place at a fixed time – suitable for sports events and lessons, seminars, lectures, concerts, exhibition openings, one-off courses, workshops, or tours.

For this type you can also enable a so-called waiting list, where a customer can still express interest in booking even after all available capacity has been used up. This event type also supports creating recurring reservations and supports online events.

Online payments

Being able to pay for a reserved service through an online payment gateway is now the standard. Customers today are used to paying quickly and securely in online shops and expect the same comfort when booking or ordering services online.

Online payments

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Let customers pay for their reservation or tickets online right away, before the service is provided – faster, more convenient, and with the certainty that the reservation will be paid, and therefore used.

The reenio system allows you to require prepayment as part of the booking process, so a customer's reservation only becomes valid once paid. You decide yourself whether online payment is mandatory, or whether you leave it up to the customer to pay on site. With mandatory payment, you can set a deadline by which a new reservation must be paid, otherwise it is automatically cancelled and the slot is released for another customer.

For online payments you can choose from several supported payment gateways. The reservation system then handles the technical connection and communication with the chosen gateway, but all business and formal matters are handled directly with the payment gateway provider – you keep the money you receive under your own control, in your own merchant account.

  • GoPay

    An online payment gateway offering a wide range of payment methods, from card payments to fast bank transfers, Apple Pay, or Google Pay.

  • Comgate

    Another Czech payment gateway that also operates in other European countries. Its payment methods vary and cover common needs.

  • Stripe

    A global payment gateway that is becoming increasingly popular. It offers fast integration and approval, so you can start accepting payments within minutes.

  • Bank transfer

    A special type of payment method where the reservation system itself can generate a QR code for payment and then automatically verify and match received payments.

After a successful payment, the system automatically marks the reservation as paid and generates and sends the customer a payment document. The reenio system offers a wide range of options and features for working with payments, including exports, refunds, and more. However, it should be noted that reenio itself is not an accounting system.

Mobile check-in app

The mobile app for Android and iOS is a significant addition for running your business efficiently and making full use of the reservation system – especially if you're using QR codes for reservations and tickets. Checking and checking in a reservation then becomes a matter of seconds.

Mobile check-in app

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The reenio mobile app (Android and iOS) is mainly used for quick and easy on-the-spot online check-in of individual reservations and tickets. It also includes an overview calendar of reservations and a customer list, so a reservation can be found even without knowing the specific code.

The app is therefore intended for administrators or other users (e.g. temp staff, front-of-house staff, receptionists) who need fast, hands-on access to data and information. This also means that a user doesn't need access to the full system administration to log into the app – a special authorization QR code can be used to log in instead.

A reservation code is primarily scanned as a QR code using the mobile device's camera, but it can also be entered manually or looked up. For larger numbers of visitors, it's a good idea to get a mobile device with a hardware laser code scanner – scanning is significantly faster and more reliable. Combined with automatic check-in mode, where, if everything about the reservation/ticket is in order, the code is automatically marked as checked in a moment after scanning, this becomes a very fast helper.

The app can also check in individual places within a single reservation (e.g. specific seats), and besides reservations it can also handle redeeming coupons or punch cards by scanning their code.

Google and Apple Wallet

Today's customers are used to having everything quickly available at hand. Thanks to support for Google and Apple Wallet, they can save a ticket, reservation QR code, or coupon directly to their phone without needing to print a document or search for an e-mail.

Google and Apple Wallet

Offer customers the option to save their ticket, reservation, or coupon directly to their phone, in an app they already know and use – Apple Wallet or Google Wallet.

The reenio system lets customers add the QR code for a reservation or ticket directly to their Apple or Google system wallet, so the customer doesn't need to look up a confirmation e-mail or print a document – the code is saved right on their phone, where they can easily find it when they arrive.

The same option can also be used with coupons – meaning QR codes for gift coupons, discount codes, and punch cards. For a coupon that's drawn down gradually, this solution has one huge advantage: the customer can see their current balance directly in their phone's wallet.

For the customer, this is primarily about convenience and a lower risk of losing or forgetting a ticket or coupon – for you, it means a somewhat smoother and faster check-in process for tickets and coupons.

Dynamic pricing

Conditional prices, price variants, discount codes, and so on – this is all part of the extensive options for how the price of a reservation is calculated. Combined with online payment, it's a significant business and marketing tool.

Dynamic pricing

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Set prices for customers exactly to match your offering – different customer categories, discounts for longer bookings or bookings made well in advance, discount coupons, and any combination of all of these.

The price of a reservation in the reenio system doesn't have to be just a single fixed number – the system provides tools to price your offering intelligently and precisely, in line with how your business works. You can set different pricing categories, for example admission for an individual or a family, which are then automatically factored into the reservation based on the customer's choice.

On top of that, you can tailor the price to the specific circumstances of the reservation – for example, giving a discount to customers who book well in advance, or setting a different rate for a longer stay or rental. Thanks to a custom booking form, you can then easily offer add-on services or a discount for a selected group of customers.

For marketing campaigns and controlled access to selected events, discount coupons are useful, with their own settings for validity and number of uses – whether it's a one-off promotion, a loyalty discount, or a closed group for whom you only open up an event when the corresponding code is used.

The power of this pricing approach lies in the fact that all these tools can be combined and used together as needed. The final price always reflects exactly how you want to offer your services and what the customer themselves chooses.

Bank transfer payments

If it doesn't matter how long a payment for a reservation takes, a system-generated bank transfer can be a suitable solution. The system generates the payment details itself, and the customer simply makes a standard transfer from their account.

Bank transfer payments

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Offer customers a classic bank transfer payment option too, for cases where you don't need instant confirmation – ideal for reservations made well in advance.

Bank transfer payment in the reenio system is especially useful where the deadline for mandatory payment of a reservation is three days or more, or where payment isn't a condition for the reservation to be created at all. The advantage of this approach is that everything happens purely within the reservation system and the bank, without needing an online payment gateway set up. Another advantage is lower costs for processing payments. The downside, on the other hand, is that checking, synchronizing, and the speed of payments is more complex.

The system provides the customer with the payment details (account number, amount, variable symbol – also in the form of a popular payment QR code) needed to send the payment, and based on the variable symbol, the payment can then be traced and matched to a specific reservation or, in the case of gift coupons, a purchase. Matching can be done manually directly in the administration, or automatically – you just need to set up your supported bank to send notifications of incoming payments to a unique e-mail address. As soon as such a notification arrives from the bank, the system matches the payment based on the variable symbol and marks the reservation as paid itself.

Bank transfer is usually also available as one of the methods within the online payment gateway, though in that case enabling it is more of a complication, since it combines completely different payment methods into a single solution. As with other payment methods, the system automatically issues and sends the customer the relevant accounting document the moment the payment is matched.

Gift coupons

A discount for new and loyal customers, a gift for using a specific service, or a gift of a certain value? The gift coupon feature can handle all of this, offering not only flexible coupon types but also direct online sales of them.

Offer your customers gift coupons for your services, and at the same time let them buy gift coupons online – the customer immediately receives their coupon by e-mail and can give it as a gift or use it right away.

Gift coupons are part of the broader discount coupon and punch card functionality, with a similar approach and possible uses for all these tools. You create a coupon with predefined parameters – a set validity period, discount amount, or value – and assign it to specific events it can be applied to (so you can have different coupons for different service offerings, or events that don't accept coupons at all). The customer then receives a coupon code, either directly from you or through an online purchase.

  • One-off redeemable amount

    A classic coupon with a fixed monetary value, typically for one-off use as a gift.

  • Percentage discount

    A discount coupon for a proportional amount, typically suitable for giving to new customers or as a punch card, etc.

  • Gradually redeemable amount

    The coupon has a certain monetary value which is used up gradually – a form of virtual wallet.

  • No discount

    A type of coupon that doesn't adjust the price at all, but can be used, for example, to restrict reservations to a limited group of customers.

For genuine gift coupons, the ability to create your own design (PDF) is important, reflecting not just your visual style and intended use, but also allowing space for a dedication and so on.