What the sales and donations figures actually count
Three screens report money, and they answer three different questions. All three now compute their answer with the same shared rules, so once you know which question a screen is asking, the numbers reconcile.
**The question each screen asks**
• **/welcome** — "how are we doing THIS MONTH?" Sales month-to-date, from the first of the current month to now.
• **/metrics** — the same month, with the individual payments behind it listed underneath. The payments table covers the same month as the cards above it.
• **Events > Analytics** — "what have these events taken, EVER?" All time, tickets only. The Upcoming/Past pills filter which events are included, not which dates.
A different window is not a disagreement. If /welcome shows less than Events > Analytics, that is usually because the event sold tickets before this month.
**What counts as a sale**
• Refunds are subtracted. A fully refunded ticket contributes nothing; a partial refund subtracts exactly the amount refunded, never more.
• Free tickets count as a sale of $0 — they show in the ticket count, not in the money.
• A sale at the door counts the same as a sale online. A ticket taken on a card reader, and a gift taken on that same reader, land on the same ledger as a web checkout — so a busy box-office night shows up in these figures on the night, not only in your Stripe payouts.
• Cash, cheque, folio room-charges and wallet spend never touched a card network, so they are not part of "collected through Turtini". They are still in your books: a cash or cheque sale is recorded in the drawer ledger and posted to the general ledger by the daily rollup, which is why the figure "from the books" can be larger than the payment-rail one.
**Donations are counted separately, on purpose**
A gift is not a sale. If your organization takes donations, they appear on their own line rather than inside "sales" — a board reading "sales" that quietly contained gifts would be told you earned money you were given. The two places gifts come from:
• **Added at checkout** — a donor tops up a ticket or invoice. That money arrives on the same card charge as the purchase, so it is taken back OUT of the sales figure and reported as a donation. It is never counted twice.
• **Taken at a kiosk or reader** — a standalone gift. That is new money and is added on top.
The only figure that combines the two is labelled **Total collected**. If a screen says "sales", gifts are not in it.
**If you see a dash instead of a number**
A dash means we could not measure it — not that it is zero. A confident $0 for something we failed to read is worse than saying so.
**If your books are on**
When Accounting has posted journal entries for the month, /welcome switches the top tile to "Gross sales (MTD, from the books)" and reads your general ledger instead. That is deliberate: the ledger also captures invoiced and cash sales that never touched the payment rail. The label tells you which source is on screen.