How to Sell Event Passes Online and Check Guests In with a QR Code (Garba Nights, Concerts & Fests)
A simple way for event organisers in India to sell passes by UPI, price them for men, women, couples and kids, and let the whole group in with one QR scan at the gate — no app, no ticketing platform fee.
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Chat with usIf you organise a garba night, a college fest or a local concert, the ticketing usually looks like this: a Google Form for names, a UPI number on a poster, and a volunteer at the gate scrolling through WhatsApp screenshots to check who actually paid. It works — until the crowd shows up at 8 pm and the line stops moving.
Big ticketing platforms fix the gate, but they take a cut of every pass, and they're built for concerts in arenas, not a six-night Navratri event on a community ground.
There's a simpler way: sell passes from one link, collect payment by UPI, and let people in with one QR scan.
Where the Google-Form-and-UPI setup breaks
- Payments don't match names. A UPI screenshot says ₹1,999 but not which booking it was for. Someone has to match them by hand, usually the night before the event.
- Pricing gets complicated fast. Different prices for men and women, a couple rate, kids free under a certain age, a day pass versus a pass for all six nights — a form can't calculate that, so people pay the wrong amount.
- The gate becomes the bottleneck. Checking names against a sheet, one person at a time, while a family of five waits behind the one person who can't find their screenshot.
- Anyone can share a screenshot. Without a check-in record, the same "ticket" can walk in twice.
What selling passes with a QR entry looks like
- Set up your event once. Dates, time, venue and city. Add passes — a pass for any one day, or a pass for fixed days like the whole festival — each with its own price for adult men, adult women, couples and children. Choose the child age range; kids below it enter free.
- Share one link or QR poster. Put it on Instagram, WhatsApp groups, or print the QR at the venue and nearby shops.
- Attendees book from their phone. They pick a pass (and a day, if it's a day pass), add everyone in their group with name, gender and age, and take a selfie for the first person. The price is calculated for them as they add people — no one pays the wrong amount.
- They pay by UPI, and the booking confirms itself. Payment goes through Razorpay (UPI, cards or netbanking). The moment it succeeds, the ticket appears — nobody has to approve it.
- One QR lets the whole group in. Every booking gets one QR code and a 6-digit entry code as a backup. At the gate, your staff scan it, see everyone in the booking with the first person's selfie, and admit the whole group in one tap — or only the people who've arrived, with the rest coming later on the same QR.
Running the gate with volunteers
Gate volunteers don't need an app or a login you create for them. You add their Google email to your gate staff list; they open the scanner link on their phone and sign in with that Google account. If someone leaves the team, removing their email cuts their access immediately.
Every admission is recorded per person, per day — so on a multi-day pass, each guest can come in once each night, and a second scan of the same ticket on the same night shows exactly who is already inside and when they came in.
A couple of questions organisers usually ask
Do attendees need to install anything? No. Booking, payment and the ticket all open in the phone's browser. They can save the ticket link or share it with their group on WhatsApp.
How do I get the money? Payments are collected securely through Razorpay, and your payout is sent to your verified bank account two days after the event ends. You see a simple statement — tickets sold, minus Razorpay's payment fee and GST on it — before it's paid.
Can local restaurants and shops help promote the event? Yes — if a café or shop in the same city uses a ReplyDost Digital Menu, you can ask them to show your event on their menu page, so their customers see "Happening in your city" with a link to book.
What if a QR code won't scan in bad light? The 6-digit entry code on every ticket works as a fallback — the volunteer types it in instead.
Who this is actually for
This works best for organisers who sell a few hundred to a few thousand passes — garba and dandiya nights, college fests, community concerts, workshops — and want payments that match bookings, pricing that calculates itself, and a gate that doesn't jam at peak hour.
If that's your event, this is exactly what Event Desk was built for — see how it works, or message the team to get your first event set up.
Want Event Desk for your business?
Message the ReplyDost team — we'll set it up with you and answer any questions. No app to install.