# Hold back tickets for later | Ticket Fairy Guides 1. [Ticket Fairy](https://www.ticketfairy.com/) 2. [Guides](https://www.ticketfairy.com/guides) 3. Hold back tickets for later Setting up an event # Hold back tickets for later Promoters rarely sell every ticket to the open market. An artist wants forty on the door, a radio station is giving twenty-five away, a sponsor has a number written into the contract. A hold keeps that many tickets inside the ticket type and out of reach of buyers, with a name on each one so you remember whose they are. Set aside part of a ticket type for a guest list, a competition or a partner, so those tickets stay out of the public on-sale until you hand them out. For: Keeping part of a release for guests, competitions and partners Takes: 4 minutes - [Open the ticket type](#step-1) - [Turn on Hold tickets](#step-2) - [Name the reserve and set how many](#step-3) - [Save the ticket type](#step-4) ## Before you start - You're an owner or an admin for the event. - The ticket type the reserve comes out of already exists. A hold takes tickets from that type's own allocation, so the type needs enough left to cover it. - You know how many tickets each reserve needs and who it is for. The name you give a hold is what you pick it by later, and it cannot be changed once the hold is saved. 1. ## Open the ticket type Open your event, select **Tickets**, then open the ticket type the reserve should come out of. Hold a ticket type that buyers already understand rather than making a separate one, so the reserve returns to the on-sale if you never use it. 2. ## Turn on Hold tickets Turn on **Hold tickets**. Held tickets come out of this type's own allocation, so buyers see fewer left from the moment you save. **Note:** A ticket type on a sliding scale has no hold, because its price is chosen at checkout rather than fixed against an allocation. ![Ticket Fairy ticket type options with Hold tickets on and two named reserves](https://www.ticketfairy.com/embeds/posters/marketing-tickets--hold-tickets.png) Event, Tickets, ticket type. 3. ## Name the reserve and set how many Enter who the tickets are for in **Hold for**, then the number in **Quantity of tickets**. The name is how you pick this reserve out of the list when you send the tickets, so name it after the guest list or the partner rather than the ticket. **Note:** A reserve holds at least one ticket, and the reserves you add in one sitting cannot ask for more than the ticket type has left. 4. ## Save the ticket type Select **Save**. The tickets are out of the public on-sale from that moment, and the type reads sold out to buyers once what has sold plus what you are holding reaches its maximum. ## Or have it done for you Fai, the assistant inside your dashboard, reads your ticket types and can tell you what each one has left. Setting a hold is yours to do on the page. ### In your dashboard, with Fai For \, how many tickets are left on \ and how many have sold ## Keep a second reserve on the same ticket Select **+ Add hold** for another name and number on the same ticket type. A partner with their own reserve is one you can send to by name, where a shared reserve tells you nothing about who took what. Fai reads what each ticket type has left, which is the number a second reserve has to fit inside. Adding it is yours to do on the page. ### In your dashboard, with Fai For \, list my ticket types with how many of each are left ## Give the held tickets out Open **Invitations** and pick the reserve under **Hold Tickets (optional)**, where it is listed as the ticket type and the name you gave it. The people you invite buy out of that reserve, and it shrinks by what they take rather than by how many you invited. Fai can tell you who has been invited and which of them bought. Choosing the reserve an invitation draws on is yours to do on the page. ### In your dashboard, with Fai For \, who has been invited and how many of them have bought ## Put a reserve back on sale Open the ticket type, select the bin beside the reserve you no longer need, then save. Whatever that reserve was still holding goes back to buyers, and anything already bought out of it stays with the people who bought it. Fai reads the ticket type afterwards and can confirm what buyers can now reach. Removing the reserve is yours to do on the page. ### In your dashboard, with Fai For \, how many of \ are available to buyers now ## Questions you might have Do held tickets count as sales?: No. They come off what buyers can add, not off your takings, so your sales figures do not move when you set one. What does move is availability: the ticket type reads sold out to buyers once what has sold plus what you are holding reaches its maximum. Can I change a reserve after saving it?: The name and the number are fixed once the reserve is saved, because invitations are already pointing at it. Remove that reserve and add a new one with the number you want. One of my reserves has no bin beside it. Why?: That reserve belongs to a bulk invoice, so it is held for a buyer who has been billed and the ticket type is not where it comes back from. Cancel the invoice to release it. My invited guests never bought. Are those tickets stuck?: They are still held, because a reserve shrinks as people buy rather than as you invite. Remove the reserve when you want the rest back on sale, which returns everything nobody took. ## Related guides - [More ways to use Ticket Fairy](https://www.ticketfairy.com/event-ticketing/features) - [Set up ticket types](https://www.ticketfairy.com/guides/set-up-ticket-types) - [Send free tickets to your guest list](https://www.ticketfairy.com/guides/issue-guest-tickets) - [Sell tickets by personal invitation](https://www.ticketfairy.com/guides/sell-tickets-by-personal-invitation) - [How do you keep a high-demand on-sale running smoothly?](https://www.ticketfairy.com/guides/keep-a-high-demand-on-sale-running-smoothly) - [Use Freefund to reduce no-shows at free and RSVP events](https://www.ticketfairy.com/guides/reduce-no-shows-at-free-rsvp-events) - [Run an A/B test for your event](https://www.ticketfairy.com/guides/run-an-ab-test-for-your-event) - [Make your event invitation-only](https://www.ticketfairy.com/guides/make-an-event-invitation-only) - [Password-protect your event](https://www.ticketfairy.com/guides/password-protect-your-event) - [Unlock hidden tickets with an access code](https://www.ticketfairy.com/guides/unlock-hidden-tickets-with-an-access-code) - [Approve orders before buyers receive tickets](https://www.ticketfairy.com/guides/approve-orders-before-buyers-receive-tickets) - [Schedule when your event goes live](https://www.ticketfairy.com/guides/schedule-when-your-event-goes-live) - [Postpone or reschedule an event](https://www.ticketfairy.com/guides/postpone-or-reschedule-an-event) - [Create a reusable event template](https://www.ticketfairy.com/guides/create-a-reusable-event-template) - [Set up ticketing for a multi-day festival](https://www.ticketfairy.com/guides/sell-a-multi-day-festival) - [Sell parking, camping and merchandise with your tickets](https://www.ticketfairy.com/guides/sell-add-ons-with-your-tickets) - [Group your tickets into categories](https://www.ticketfairy.com/guides/group-your-tickets-into-categories) - [Issue reusable event passes to crew and artists](https://www.ticketfairy.com/guides/issue-entry-passes-to-your-crew) - [Create an event](https://www.ticketfairy.com/guides/create-an-event) - [Sell timed-entry tickets for an attraction, exhibition or food event](https://www.ticketfairy.com/guides/sell-timed-entry-tickets) - [Duplicate an event](https://www.ticketfairy.com/guides/duplicate-an-event) - [Run a recurring event series](https://www.ticketfairy.com/guides/run-a-recurring-event-series) - [Sell VIP tables and bottle service through your promoters](https://www.ticketfairy.com/guides/sell-vip-tables-and-bottle-service) - [Run ticketing for a nightclub](https://www.ticketfairy.com/guides/run-a-nightclub) - [Run ticketing for a club night](https://www.ticketfairy.com/guides/run-a-club-night) - [Every Ticket Fairy guide](https://www.ticketfairy.com/guides) ## Do this on your own event Create your account, build your event and follow the steps in your own dashboard. You do not need to book a sales call. [Create a free account](https://manage.ticketfairy.com/welcome) [Book a demo](https://www.ticketfairy.com/event-ticketing/book-a-demo) --- This page is on Ticket Fairy, a ticketing, marketing and operations platform for live events and the venues that host them: festivals, club nights, concerts, conferences and tours, and night clubs, beach clubs and concert venues. It grows revenue with fan rewards that turn an audience into a sales channel, and runs the money side with payments and payouts, Vault business banking, and working capital advanced against ticket sales. [How Ticket Fairy ticketing works](https://www.ticketfairy.com/event-ticketing) ยท [Ticket Fairy for AI assistants](https://www.ticketfairy.com/llms.txt)