Ticket transfers

A ticket transfer reassigns a ticket to a new attendee without cancelling the original registration or processing a refund. The new recipient gets an email with a claim link; once they accept, the ticket is theirs and they complete any per-ticket questions in their portal.

Either side can start one. You can transfer a ticket from the registration, and the ticket holder can transfer it themselves from their portal.

When to use transfers

Use a transfer when an attendee can no longer attend and wants to hand their spot to someone else. It keeps your registration count stable, avoids a refund, and gives the new attendee a clean record with your per-ticket questions.

Starting a transfer as the operator

Open the registration, go to the Tickets tab, find the ticket you want to transfer, and open its three-dot menu. Select Transfer ticket to open the transfer dialog.

The form has four fields:

• Recipient email: required. The invitation is sent to this address.
• First name: optional. Pre-fills the recipient's name on the invite email.
• Last name: optional.
• Message: optional, up to 1,000 characters. Included in the invitation email.

Attendees can transfer their own tickets

Attendees don't need to come to you first. From their portal, the ticket holder can start the same transfer with the same fields, cancel their own pending transfer, and see everything they've sent or received on one page split into Incoming and Outgoing. See Transferring for the attendee-facing version of this article.

Attendee-initiated transfers behave exactly like operator-initiated ones: same 7-day expiry, same answer wipe on accept, same checked-in restriction. Your registration table can't tell which side started it.

What the recipient sees

The recipient gets an email showing the event name, date, and ticket type, along with a Claim ticket button. That link opens a page where they sign in and accept or decline the transfer.

If they accept, the ticket is reassigned to their name and they land in their portal to complete any per-ticket questions. If they decline, the ticket stays with the original registration and no changes are made.

The 7-day expiry

Every transfer invitation expires 7 days after it's sent. If the recipient opens the claim link after it has expired, they see a terminal error and can't accept. The ticket remains on the original registration.

To give the recipient a fresh 7-day window, cancel the expired transfer and start a new one.

Automatic follow-up nudges

You don't have to send a transfer and hope. If an invitation sits unaccepted, Mercleo emails the recipient a follow-up reminder automatically: by default, 24 hours after the invite, then one more follow-up 48 hours after that.

The org default lives in Reminders & nudges under Settings, as the Ticket transfer follow-up row. Each event can override the toggle and cadence on its own Reminders tab, under Communication in the sidebar.

Cancelling a pending transfer

While a transfer is pending, sent but not yet accepted or declined, the ticket's three-dot menu shows Cancel transfer in place of Transfer ticket. Selecting it immediately voids the invitation link. Any later attempt by the recipient to use the old link fails. The ticket holder can do the same from their portal.

Once cancelled, you can start a new transfer to the same or a different recipient.

How the Attendees table shows transfers

After a transfer is accepted, the Attendees table updates in two ways. The original buyer's row gains a struck-through Transferred sub-row under the affected ticket. A new row appears for the new ticket holder, carrying a Transferred in status pill and showing their name and registration details.

The original buyer's order is preserved for billing and audit purposes. Only the ticket assignment moves.