Sell tickets on Classlist with PayPal

To take payment via PayPal for tickets on Classlist, you'll need a PayPal account for your Parents' Association, as this is where you will receive the proceeds from the sale of your tickets.

If you don't have a PayPal account already you can set one up at: https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/account-selection

However, we recommend if you are just getting going selling tickets on Classlist that you set up a Stripe account instead. 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. In addition Stripe's standard fee is much lower than PayPal's making it more cost effective for PTAs. 

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. Please check PayPal's website for the very latest on their fees. Please note Stripe's standard fee of 1.4% + £0.20 per transaction (plus 10p when funds are transferred to your account) is comparable to PayPal's charity fee making it less imperative for PTAs to apply for charity status with Stripe to get a good rate. 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. 

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.