From volunteer ticket spreadsheets to a calmer front of house.
The Christian Academy of Performing Arts Austin is a volunteer-powered program. CAPA Tickets brought its ticket inventory, orders, seats, payments, QR codes, check-in and admin controls into one operational flow.
CAPA's production of Disney's Frozen: The Broadway Musical, July 2026
Three performances drew an unusually strong house. That demand belongs to the show and the families behind it. What changed was how much of it volunteers had to carry by hand.
The operational problem
Ticketing had grown into a second production.
Sales ran through spreadsheets, Square payments, checks, deposits, paper tickets and a lot of volunteer coordination. By CAPA's own estimate, the busiest stretch of the old process took about five volunteer hours a day.
- Ticket sales, payments, deposits and check-in were spread across multiple manual records.
- Guests sometimes needed help understanding how the old ticketing process worked.
- Volunteers had to reconcile payments and prepare door materials under time pressure.
- A busy production could need extra people just to keep ticket operations moving.
The system response
One flow, from seat to scan.
Shows, seats, orders, tickets, payment status and check-in live in one place.
Families buy online through a clear seat-picking and confirmation path.
The door team scans QR tickets, with manual lookup as a backup.
Admins can see ticket status, seats, refunds, comps and a full audit history.
What changed
Less reconciling. More rehearsing.
The measured evidence
Families arrived with tickets already in hand.
791 of the 836 paid tickets were bought more than two hours before curtain. Only 35 came in during that final window, which kept the door team focused on welcoming people and scanning tickets rather than taking payments.
| Performance | Paid early | Final 2 hrs | Paid total | All tickets |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thursday | 221 | 10 | 237 | 272 |
| Friday | 282 | 18 | 303 | 347 |
| Saturday | 288 | 7 | 296 | 354 |
| Combined | 791 | 35 | 836 | 973 |
Paid total is the full count in the ticket portal, not an attendance count at curtain. All tickets includes 836 paid, 134 comp and 3 refunded records.
The system did not replace the work. It gave it back.
CAPA Tickets gave volunteers a clearer system, so they could spend less time reconciling tickets and more time supporting the production. That is the durable story: software built around the realities of a volunteer-run performing arts program.