Tempo Book It Box Office · Free WordPress plugin
Your own box office, on your own site.
Tempo Book It Box Office is a free WordPress plugin for venues, theatres, schools and community groups. Reserved seating with a visual seat picker, or general admission with a capacity limit. Stripe and PayPal checkout. PDF tickets with QR codes. No booking fees, and no third-party platform between you and your audience.
Requires WordPress 6.4+ and PHP 7.4+ · GPLv2 or later
Built for the people who actually run the show
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Theatres and drama groups
Numbered seats, price bands, restricted-view and accessible seats marked on the map.
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Schools and colleges
The annual production, the concert, the prize night. Parents pick seats on their phone and get a PDF ticket.
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Community groups and clubs
General admission with a capacity cap, for the karate competition, the quiz night, the fundraiser.
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Small venues and comedy clubs
Reusable venue maps, so setting up the next show takes minutes.
The 9am problem
Made for the on-sale rush
Most ticketing plugins fall over at the exact moment everyone arrives. Tempo Book It Box Office was designed around that moment. Event pages are fully cacheable and do no database writes. Live availability comes from one small cached endpoint. On-sale times flip themselves at the appointed second, so nobody has to press publish at 9am while the phone is ringing.
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Seats are held for ten minutes while people pay. Expiry is enforced by the server, not the browser.
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A unique database index makes it impossible to sell the same seat twice, however many people click at once. The loser of the race is told immediately and the map updates.
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Abandoned checkouts release their seats automatically.
"The database itself guarantees a seat can never be sold twice."
How it works
Set up in an afternoon
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Install the plugin and follow the setup wizard.
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Add your venue and draw the seat map: rows and seats, aisles, price bands, accessible and restricted-view seats. Skip this if you only sell general admission.
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Add ticket types (Adult, Child, Concession, whatever you sell).
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Paste in your Stripe or PayPal keys.
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Create the event, add performances with dates and prices, publish. Event pages appear on your site automatically.
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On show night, stewards log in on any phone and check people in.
We recommend an SMTP plugin so ticket emails always arrive.
Features
What you get, all of it free
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Seat picker
Buyers pick seats on a map or from a list; the list does everything the map does. Full keyboard support and WCAG 2.1 AA. Your colours, your logo.
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General admission too
Not every event has seats. Set a capacity, sell tickets, manage the attendee list. Same checkout, same tickets, same check-in.
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Seat map builder
Rows and seats, aisles, price bands, blocked seats. Mark seats accessible or restricted-view in bulk (A1 to A3, say). Live preview while you build.
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Reusable venues, safe edits
Save a venue once and use it for every show. Each performance sells against its own snapshot, so editing the venue next year never touches a show already on sale.
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Ten-minute holds
Seats are reserved while the buyer pays, with a courtesy countdown. The server decides when a hold expires, so a paused browser can't cheat it.
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Checkout with Stripe or PayPal
Guest checkout, no account needed. Card details go straight to Stripe and never touch your site. No booking fees from us; you pay only your payment provider's own charges.
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Tickets people can actually use
PDF tickets with QR codes, a single party pass for group bookings, and a calendar file. Rename anything: Performance, Seat, Attendee, Ticket, Venue, Section, Row and Event can all be your own words, and they carry through to emails and PDFs.
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Check-in with any phone
No app. A steward scans the ticket's QR code with the phone camera and the booking opens on the Door screen, ready to mark in. The party pass checks a whole group in at once.
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The Door screen
The attendee list for tonight's performance, with search, mark in and undo. Give stewards the Tempo door role and they see nothing else: no orders, no prices, no buyer emails.
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Orders and refunds
Resend tickets, refund in a click, check people in from the order itself. Cancel a performance and every buyer is refunded and emailed automatically.
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Reports
Revenue, tickets sold and capacity per performance. Enough to answer "how did we do?" without a spreadsheet.
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What's on, anywhere
Drop the [tempo_box_office_events] shortcode on any page for a what's-on grid. Event pages are created for you.
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Your data, your rules
Nothing is deleted on uninstall unless you opt in. Buyer data plugs into the WordPress privacy tools for export and erasure, and you can set a retention period after which attendee details are anonymised automatically. No tracking, no analytics, no phoning home.
What it costs
Free, with nothing held back
The free plugin sells tickets end to end: seat maps, checkout, PDF tickets, QR check-in on the door. There is no seat cap, no event cap and no time limit. We don't take a cut of your sales and we don't add a booking fee to your buyers. Stripe and PayPal charge their usual processing fees, which go to them, not us.
- Plugin price
- Free
- Booking fee to your buyers
- None
- Our cut of sales
- None
- Payment processing
- Stripe or PayPal's standard fees
Need more? There's Pro
Tempo Book It Box Office Pro is an optional add-on: a drag-and-drop seat designer with curved rows, tables and zones, a dedicated continuous scanner that works offline, walk-up sales from the admin for cash and card-on-the-door, promo codes, a soft queue for big on-sale days, and deeper reports with CSV export. The free plugin is complete on its own and stays that way; Pro never unlocks something already sitting in the free download.
Questions people ask before installing
Straight answers on seats, holds, the door and what free actually covers.
Can two people buy the same seat?
No. A unique database index makes a double sale impossible, however many people click at once. If two buyers race for the same seat, one wins, the other is told straight away and the map updates.
What happens if someone abandons a checkout?
Their seats are held for ten minutes while they pay. If they walk away, the hold expires on the server and the seats go back on sale automatically. Nobody has to tidy up.
Does it work on a busy on-sale day?
Yes; it was designed around that morning. Event pages are fully cacheable and do no database writes, live availability comes from one small cached endpoint, and on-sale times flip themselves at the appointed second.
How does check-in work on the door? Do I need an app?
No app. A steward scans the ticket's QR code with the phone camera and the booking opens on the Door screen, ready to mark in. The party pass checks a whole group in at once, and there's a searchable list for anyone who forgot their ticket.
Can I change the words it uses?
Yes. Performance, Seat, Attendee, Ticket, Venue, Section, Row and Event can all be renamed to your own words, and your words carry through to the buyer pages, emails and PDF tickets.
Does it work with my theme?
Yes; it's built to sit in any theme. It also picks up the Tempo Book It theme's colour palette and logo slot if you use that.
Can I run reserved seating and general admission in the same performance?
Not in one performance yet; each performance is one or the other. You can mix them across performances in the same event.
Do I need Pro?
The free plugin sells tickets end to end with no caps, so a straightforward show never needs it. Pro is for venues that want more: a drag-and-drop seat designer with curved rows, tables and zones, a continuous scanner that keeps working offline, walk-up sales for cash and card on the door, promo codes, a soft queue for big on-sale days and deeper reports with CSV export. If any of that sounds like show night at yours, see what's in Pro.
What happens to my data if I uninstall?
Nothing is deleted unless you opt in. Your events, orders and attendees stay in the database so you can come back or export them. Buyer data works with the WordPress privacy tools for export and erasure.
Which payment methods are supported?
Stripe card payments and PayPal; that's it for now.
From the people behind Tempo Book It
Tempo Book It Box Office is a separate plugin, but it shares the Tempo approach: your branding, your vocabulary, no lock-in, and one clear answer to "do I need the paid version?" If you already run Tempo Book It, the two sit side by side.
Put your next show on sale
Install Tempo Book It Box Office, draw your seat map, paste in your Stripe keys. Free on WordPress.org.
No booking fees No seat or event caps GPLv2 or later