Sell tickets on Classlist with PayPal

You can take payment via PayPal for tickets on Classlist if you have a PayPal account for your Parents' Association.

However, we recommend that you set up a Stripe account instead, which is quick and easy.

We've integrated Stripe payments into our event ticketing system which makes it quick and easy for parents to buy tickets on any device. Parents can pay directly using their card details on desktop or mobile. (Parents don't have to enter their name, email, home address, just their card details with Stripe.  However with Paypal they are taken to the Paypal payment screens outside the Classlist app, and they need to enter full details such as name, email, address to pay by card, which is slower and more difficult, particularly on a phone). 

In addition Stripe's fees are lower than PayPal's making it more cost effective for PTAs. 

In addition, we don't offer public event guest checkout with Stripe because the pending payment statuses offered by Paypal mean some payments may not clear before your event.  We believe that makes it inappropriate for use for selling to the public.

Paypal accounts can however be set up at: https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/account-selection

How to sell tickets on Classlist to your community event - PayPal

• When creating your community event on the green admin side, click on 'Add Tickets', choose the 'Paid' option and select 'Get Paid Using PayPal'.
• Enter details of your tickets e.g. School Disco, £5.00, and the number of tickets available.
• You can add multiple ticket types for your event if you wish - great if you want to offer family tickets, or tickets including food for example.
• You can also add group tickets (eg 1 table for 8 people) alongside individual tickets, click here for more info.
• You can also ask parents a question which will be added as a note to their ticket. For example, you might want to ask who will be picking up their child for safeguarding, or if they have any allergies you need to be aware of. 
• Enter the email of the PayPal account where you wish to receive payment.
• Then, invite guests by clicking on the 'invite' button and select to send the invite to the whole school, a particular class, year or group. Parents can then buy their tickets online saving you time handling the cash, printing tickets and hanging around at pick up/drop off to sell them. 
• If you want to buy your own tickets to the event - or to see how the event will appear on Classlist to other parents - switch to the blue parent side and go to the event.
• Please note PayPal's fee of 3.4% + 20p per transaction. (See below to find out more about how fees are calculated and applied.) Please check PayPal's website for the very latest on their fees. 

Tips

• Set up charity status to reduce your fee to PalPal

You can set up charity status with PayPal at: https://www.paypal.com/uk/charities/ This will reduce your fee to PayPal fee to 1.4% + 20p per transaction.  However it has been reported to us that Paypal are slow to implement this and it can take months to resolve.

Please check PayPal's website for the very latest on their fees. 

Underneath the ticket fields you will see the PayPal details section if you are setting paid tickets. You must have a PayPal account to sell tickets through Classlist Events. Add the email address for your PayPal account here.  

• Remember to set up a PayPal account with that email before you start selling tickets, and make sure you get the address correct, or you might find it difficult to get the money from PayPal (but see this page for what to do if this happens).
• Please use a PayPal account that is £ sterling if your ticket prices are in sterling, or there will be a delay in PayPal processing your payments!  

Allow for PayPal fees in your ticket pricing structure

PayPal deduct a transaction fee per person of 3.4% of the ticket price plus 20p per transaction (this is not a Classlist fee!). Include that when calculating your ticket price, so that you don't end up out of pocket compared to what you expect.

If your PTA is a registered charity you can set up a charity account with PayPal where the rate is only 1.4% + 20p per transaction, for community events.  This is still higher than Stripe's 1.2% + 20p.

Please note Stripe's standard fee of 1.4% + £0.20 per transaction is comparable to PayPal's charity fee, while Stripe's charity fee is 1.2% + £0.20 per transaction making it more cost effective.  In addition they will set up charitable status for you in a week. Find out more about selling tickets on Stripe.

• Once you've put your tickets on sale, don't forget to check out our 'manage event' features

From the green admin side if you go into your event you will see an option in the guest list section to send a message. The 3 dots next to each category also allow you to view the list of parents, download a list of who is going or resend the invite to those that haven't responded yet.

Make sure you add your PayPal email correctly.

If you have entered the email incorrectly then Classlist will send you an email alerting you to the error as soon as the first parent has purchased a ticket, and will mark your event as 'sold out' as a safety measure. If this happens you can find more advice here.

FAQs

How are the PayPal fees calculated? 

The PayPal fee is calculated on the sale price of your ticket. So if you are selling a ticket for £5.00 then you will be charged 3.4% + 20p on the price of this, working out at a cost of £0.37 for the ticket, or £0.27 if you are on the charitable fees of 1.4%.   

Classlist charges 1.5% platform fees as of May 28th 2022

How is the PayPal fee applied?

Parents will still only pay the ticket price e.g. £5.00. PayPal deduct the fee before the ticket proceeds are passed to your Parents' Association's PayPal account.

A parent says they have purchased a ticket but when they checked it is not showing on their Classlist. What's happened?

If the tickets are not showing on Classlist then no payment will have been taken by PayPal, so Classlist is the best place to double check if the payment has gone through. It can be fiddly for parents to buy tickets via PayPal on the mobile, which is often how this confusion arises. We have integrated a new payment provider, Stripe, into our event ticketing system to give parents a much better experience on mobile and would recommend you choose this option for your next event.

I have received a message saying a parent paid with echeque and that the payment won't reach me for 3 to 5 days

If the parent doesn't have a valid credit card attached to their Paypal account (eg it expired) then when they try to pay with their Paypal account Paypal offers them to take the money from their bank account to pay.  In that case, Paypal takes the money, but it takes several days to reach you.

We show the tickets as 'payment pending', so the tickets are reserved for that purchaser as they have paid - but in some cases the payment may not arrive until after the event and we are warning the event owner that may be the case by sending you a message. 

NOTES

When someone buys a ticket the funds are transferred from the purchaser to the Event Owner directly via PayPal. The event owner receives a statement from PayPal to show who has paid. PayPal issues several different 'payment status' notices. If your purchasers are unsure what a payment status message means please check the PayPal help site. 

Important: We are currently experiencing some issues with PayPal no longer processing credit card payments. To ensure your purchasers get their tickets, please ask them to checkout using a PayPal account. (If you don't have one it's quick to set one up!). We're sorry for the inconvenience and are working on finding a solution.

Troubleshooting 

NB: Previously PayPal would allow someone to use a credit card to pay for things via PayPal without setting up a PayPal account. If they paid several times across different websites in a short space of time, Paypal would try to force them to open a PayPal account by stopping showing 'pay by credit card' as an option. Recently Paypal has stopped accepting credit card payments altogether: all purchasers must have a PayPal account. We have no control over this unfortunately but we apologise and are trying hard to find a solution!

• If purchasers already have a PayPal account then PayPal won't always show them the 'pay by credit card' option (eg if PayPal recognises their email).  They may be offered 'Pay by PayPal' only.  This confuses a few purchasers if they don't read the info carefully!