Payment compliance obligation register for the ticket office
Problem
PCI-DSS obligations, card terminal certifications and payment gateway contract renewal dates live in whichever inbox first received them, sometimes copied into a compliance spreadsheet nobody has opened since the last audit. No single person's job is to watch the calendar. The first sign that something has lapsed is usually the card acquirer flagging an overdue requirement or a terminal refusing to authorise, and it tends to surface during a renewal push when the box office can least afford a payment outage. Direct debit mandate renewals slip the same way: a batch that should have gone out gets missed and nobody notices until failed collections show up weeks later.
Product idea
An obligation register purpose-built for payment and card-handling compliance rather than general facilities compliance. Each entry records an obligation type such as a PCI-DSS obligation, a terminal certification, a payment gateway contract renewal or a direct debit mandate renewal, together with an expiry date, a named owner and a slot for the evidence document itself. The register sends reminders at fixed intervals before expiry and escalates to a second named person if the first has not acted. A single dashboard sorted by days to expiry replaces the search through inboxes. It does not run PCI-DSS scans, assess compliance status or talk to the payment processor directly. It tracks the obligation and the paper trail that shows someone dealt with it.
Who it is for
Box office supervisors who track terminal and payment renewals day to day, and the head of ticketing who sponsors it and would need to show an auditor the record exists.
Possible first version
A single register: manual entry of obligation type, expiry date, owner and an uploaded evidence file, with a dashboard listing everything ordered by days remaining and colour banding for overdue, due soon and current. Automated email reminders fire at set intervals before expiry, with escalation to a second named owner if the first has not confirmed action. A CSV export supports an audit request. Version one has no connection to the payment gateway, card terminal provider or ticketing platform: every date is entered by hand, and nothing here confirms actual PCI-DSS compliance status.
- Build classification
- Workflow application
- Rough effort
- 4-6 week first release
- Roles involved
- Head of ticketing, Box office supervisor, Membership manager
- Relevant to
- Professional club, Venue & stadium operator, League office, Collegiate athletics
- Systems in play
- Payment and direct debit providers, Ticketing and access control platforms, Spreadsheets
- Product framing
- Manage compliance
Questions we get asked
What do we need to have ready before this is useful?
A list of your current payment-related obligations and their expiry dates: your PCI-DSS obligation, terminal certification dates, payment gateway contract renewals and when direct debit mandate renewals are due. Most of that already exists somewhere, in a contract folder or an email from the acquirer or processor. The register is only as good as that first list, so the useful first step is pulling it together once, by hand, before anyone logs in.
Does this replace our finance and ERP system or the payment processor's own compliance portal?
No. Your finance and ERP system stays the system of record for contracts and payments, and the payment processor's own portal is still where any actual PCI-DSS submission happens. This sits alongside both as the calendar that tells someone an obligation is coming due, before the processor's own reminder gets buried in an inbox nobody reads closely enough.
We already have a compliance spreadsheet that covers this. Why change?
Most box offices do, and it usually works until the person who built it moves on or a renewal date changes and nobody updates the cell. The difference here is ownership and escalation built in rather than assumed: a missed reminder goes to a second named person automatically, which a spreadsheet cannot do on its own. If your spreadsheet is genuinely kept current by someone accountable for it, this saves you little.
Who ends up owning this day to day, and what does it cost them?
Typically the box office supervisor owns the day-to-day entries and the head of ticketing owns the escalation list. The ongoing time cost is small: updating a date when a contract renews, uploading new evidence once a year, confirming a reminder rather than ignoring it. It only earns its keep if someone actually acts on the escalation; a register nobody responds to is just a second place for the deadline to be missed.
Is this your workflow?
Tell us one sports workflow that still runs on paper, spreadsheets, WhatsApp or an outdated system. We will map it and show you what a simpler product looks like.
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