An early-bird price that's still on sale a week later is money you gave away by being asleep. Scheduled sale windows let each ticket type on a BrightStar event carry its own opening and closing time, so the change happens whether or not you're at a computer.
Each ticket type is independent. Early bird can close while general admission opens, a member presale can run before the public window begins, and door tickets can appear only on the day. That's the real shift a scheduled window makes: instead of remembering to flip a switch three or four times before doors open, you set the whole calendar once, in advance, and each tier moves through its own life cycle on its own.
When the window is checked
BrightStar checks the window when a ticket is added to the cart, and again when the payment is taken. That second check matters: someone who puts the early-bird ticket in their cart an hour before it closes, gets distracted, and comes back to pay twenty minutes after the close is told that sales for it have ended — a stale tab or a cart left open can't undo the schedule you set.
The times are read in your event's timezone. A ticket type set to close at 9:00 PM on a Los Angeles event closes at 9:00 PM Pacific for everyone, wherever the buyer is browsing from.
What buyers see outside the sale window
Before its window opens, a ticket type is hidden from your event page — buyers see only what they can buy right now. After it closes, it disappears and the next ticket type takes its place: someone arriving the morning general admission opens sees general admission, not a grayed-out early bird.
If every ticket type is outside its window at once, the page shows no tickets. To a buyer that looks the same as sold out, which is why the times between ticket types should meet exactly.
Building a full sequence across ticket types
Working out a schedule across several tiers is mostly a matter of checking each boundary against its neighbor before you save it.
- 1Decide the tiers you need — early bird, general admission, member presale, door tickets — and which ones actually apply to your event.
- 2Set the early bird closing time to match the exact moment general admission should open.
- 3If you're running a member presale, give it a window that ends before the public window begins.
- 4Reserve door tickets for a window that only starts on the day of the event, if that's part of your plan.
- 5Check each tier against the ones on either side of it, so no closing time and opening time leave a gap — or overlap in a way you didn't intend.
Why this matters when you can't be at the computer
The whole reason to schedule a window instead of watching the clock yourself is that early-bird pricing left open by accident is a cost with no upside — you didn't sell more tickets by leaving it open, you just sold the same tickets for less. A scheduled window removes the dependency on you being logged in at the right minute, whatever that minute happens to be.
You can still close a ticket type by hand at any point if plans change. The schedule is a default that runs on its own, not a lock that takes the decision away from you.