You have several tools available for providing discounted registrations and full comps into events.
Preferred priced based on access level or date are easy to set up in your pricing tables. Just specify the access level and/or date windows during which the special pricing applies, and those prices will automatically take effect when appropriate.
An alternative way of doing early bird discounts is not by setting a cut-off date, but rather by a cut-off number. For example, "First ten registrations are 30% off".
To set this up, create a special discounted fee, and set its ticketing method to "special". Then set up its discounted prices. Special tickets have limited quantities, so go to your ticketing tools, and issue that number of tickets. Once they are gone, your special discounted fee will be sold out and only regular priced tickets will remain.
The built-in comp feature is described in the article on Bundles, Comps, and Multi-ticket purchases. This method of comping is best for cases where a main registration category should receive complimentary access to selected activities. For example, an exhibitor could receive two complimentary tickets to a wine & cheese reception. The comps in this case are automatic, although the registrant can opt-out by removing the free items from their cart.
For a more opt-in approach, you can offer free or discounted fees to selected registration types. Set up a special discounted fee for the event or activity in question, and hide it from regular registration flows by setting:
Then add just the main fees that should see this discounted fee option to the Hide from fees setting, by adding !FEE-ID to the setting, like this: *,!123,!124.
Registrants in those fees that you have listed will see both the normal fee option, and the special discounted fee. They are free to choose either.
If registrants can select multiple tickets, you may want to restrict how many they can take at the discounted price. Set the fee's Purchase limit to the maximum number that they can select. After they have added that many to their cart, they will not be able to add more, and will only have the option of choosing the full-price fee for further additions.
The e-commerce system has features for offering targeted discounts to buyers.
The Billing Adjustments module lets you configure conditional discounts and coupon codes.
Discounts can be fixed amounts (eg. $50 off) or percentages (eg. 100% off). To ensure that the discounts are correctly applied to appropriate purchases, make sure that the adjustment only applies to event registrations, or even better, to specific fees or events:
To give the discount to coupon code holders only, enter the discount code into the Coupon Code field.
If you want the discount to be applied automatically to certain registration types only, then go to the section This adjustment applies when certain ADDITIONAL items are bought: and set the Object ID to "fee" and the Object ID to the ID of the main registration fee that is entitled to this discount.
For example, if exhibitors are entitled to free wine and cheese reception tickets, you can set up the billing adjustment as follows:
Then the discount will be applied automatically at checkout. The tickets will initially be added to the invoice at their normal price, but a discount line will reverse the price after they check out.
In addition to billing adjustments and surcharges, gift cards can also be used to provide fixed amount discounts that can be applied to events. Although gift cards can be restricted to event registrations only, they cannot target specific events or fees. If you need your gift cards to be more targeted, they can target a specific accounting code, and you can set the specific prices you want to discount to that accounting code.
The above methods are useful for automatically giving discounts to users who qualify for them. Sometimes, however, you only want to give out comps at the administrator's discretion.
The easiest way to do this is to add a $0.00 price to your pricing table, but set it to administrator access. You can add a price description of "COMP" to provide a little extra clarity on invoices.
When administrators use the back-end registration tools, they can choose their own price point from among those that have been set up. Select your comp pricing here, and then proceed as usual for a back-end registration.
Note that you can also select retroactive early-bird discounts and other special prices the same way.
A slightly more complicated way of comping someone is to register them at the usual prices, but then go to the invoice in the Payments module and use the comp this purchase button. This will mark the registrations on that invoice as confirmed, but will also mark the invoice as not requiring payment. If you need to comp specific line items only, you will have to edit the invoice using the Point of Sale module to either change the pricing, or add discount lines. This is only advisable to do before payment has been received, otherwise the best practice is to issue a refund instead.