How sales channels and visibility work
How sales channels and visibility work
Use this when an event, admission, product, voucher, price, or time slot appears in one place but not another.
A sales channel controls where an offer can be sold. Visibility controls whether people can find the offer in that place. Both must be correct before customers or staff can sell reliably.
Main sales channels
| Sales channel | What it is used for |
|---|---|
| Online shop | Customer-facing purchases through the ToucanTix shop. |
| POS | Staff sales at the counter or during live operations. |
| Back-office | Staff-created orders, reservations, requests, corrections, or manual workflows. |
| External channel | A connected partner, external POS, entry system, or integration where configured. |
Your account may show only the channels enabled for your setup.
The visibility cascade
For an offer to be sellable in a channel, these checks must line up:
| Check | What must be true |
|---|---|
| Offer state | The offer is published, active, and not archived. |
| Hidden state | Hide from shop is off when the offer should be listed publicly in the online shop. |
| Sales channel | The offer has a sales channel rule for the place where it should be sold. |
| Price visibility | At least one active price is visible on the same sales channel. |
| Channel capacity | The channel has enough allocation or uses the event capacity. |
| Sales period | The channel is inside its configured sales start and sales end window. |
| Shop page | The online shop has an active page, offer list, category, or direct link that can expose the offer. |
| POS setup | The POS can access the event, date, prices, and channel configuration. |
If a price is missing from a channel, the offer can appear but still be impossible to buy for the expected ticket type.
Hidden from shop is not access control
Use Hide from shop when an offer should not appear in shop listings or search. A hidden offer may still be reachable through a direct link depending on setup.
For invitation-only or restricted registration, use a deliberate private flow such as a controlled link, coupon-code gate, allowlist, or customer-account requirement where supported.
Common decisions
| Goal | Typical setup |
|---|---|
| Sell publicly online | Online shop channel, active public shop page, visible prices, capacity, and checkout setup. |
| Reserve tickets for counter sales | Separate POS allocation or channel capacity. |
| Let staff create manual orders | Back-office channel and prices visible to staff. |
| Keep a setup private while testing | Keep it unpublished, hidden, or restricted until checkout and payment are tested. |
| Make only selected dates unavailable | Adjust the occurrence, time slot, sales period, capacity, or resources instead of hiding all sales. |
