Ticket Counts Seem Wrong

If your ticket availability numbers do not match what you expect -- for example, tickets showing as "sold out" when they should not be, or the available count seems too low -- here is what might be happening and how to fix it.

Common causes

Held inventory from abandoned checkouts

When a buyer starts checkout, Equaticket temporarily reserves their tickets for 35 minutes (matching the Stripe checkout session duration plus a buffer). If the buyer abandons checkout without completing payment, those tickets are held until the reservation expires.

What to do: Wait up to 35 minutes. A cleanup job runs every 5 minutes to release expired holds. The tickets will become available again automatically.

Counter drift

In rare cases, the internal counters that track quantity_sold and quantity_reserved can drift slightly from the actual number of valid tickets. This is a display issue -- no actual overselling has occurred.

What to do: The system runs a daily reconciliation job that automatically corrects counter drift. If you need it fixed immediately, contact support.

Refunded tickets not reflected

When a ticket is refunded, the inventory is released and should become available again. If this has not happened, the refund may still be processing.

What to do: Allow a few minutes after processing a refund for the inventory count to update.

How to check actual numbers

1. Go to Dashboard > Events > [Your Event] and look at the ticket type details.
2. Compare the sold count against your orders list.
3. If the numbers do not match, the daily reconciliation job will correct them.

Is this an actual oversell?

An actual oversell (more tickets sold than available) is extremely rare due to Equaticket's optimistic locking system, which prevents concurrent checkouts from exceeding inventory. If you believe a real oversell occurred:

1. Check your orders list to confirm more tickets were sold than the quantity you set.
2. Contact affected buyers and offer refunds for the excess tickets.
3. Reach out to support so we can investigate the root cause.

Prevention

Equaticket runs several automated safeguards:

• Optimistic locking prevents race conditions during concurrent checkouts
• Hold cleanup runs every 5 minutes to release expired reservations
• Daily counter reconciliation corrects any drift between counters and actual ticket records