“How many people can we let in right now?” sounds like a question your ticketing system should answer on its own. In Altru, the answer depends on how you sell admission. Altru can enforce a hard cap on some kinds of tickets. For others, it only reports what you have sold and leaves the stopping to your staff. Once you know which is which, you can set up admission so the limit you care about is the one the system actually enforces.
Two kinds of admission, two different behaviors
Altru generally sells admission in one of two ways.
- General admission (the everyday daily-sales price list: adult, child, senior, member). This is built for open-ended walk-up entry. It is not tied to a time slot, so there is no seat count for it to sell down against.
- Scheduled programs (events or programs with set dates and times). Each scheduled occurrence has a capacity, and Altru tracks sold and remaining tickets against it, both at the desk and in advance or online sales.
As far as we know, Altru has no single setting that puts a daily or hourly cap on general admission ticket types. Check your own version before you plan around that, though. Search the current Altru help documentation for capacity on programs and events, or ask Blackbaud support whether anything has changed for your environment. Configuration options shift over time, and your sandbox is the safest place to test.
If you need a hard limit, sell admission as timed entry
Many organizations that need an enforced cap rebuild general admission as a scheduled program with time slots, such as entry every 30 minutes or every hour. Each slot then has its own capacity, and once a slot sells out it should no longer be available (confirm this in a test sale in each channel you use). Timed entry was a common approach for reduced-capacity reopenings, and some sites kept it afterward because it spreads arrivals more evenly across the day.
Before you switch, think through these questions:
- What number are you actually protecting? There is the fire-code occupancy for the building, the comfortable number for a popular gallery, and the staffing your entry team can handle in a given hour. Timed entry controls arrivals per slot, not how many people are inside at once. To turn one into the other, you need a realistic guess at average visit length.
- How long is the slot, and how long do people stay? If guests stay about two hours and you release hourly slots, roughly two slots’ worth of visitors are in the building at any time. Set slot capacity with that overlap in mind.
- How much do you hold back for walk-ups? If online sales can use the whole slot, walk-up guests get turned away. Some sites set the bookable capacity below the true number and handle the remainder at the desk. Others build separate walk-up inventory. Choose one approach and make sure everyone at the desk knows it.
- Where do members fit? Decide whether members reserve a free timed ticket, count against the same capacity, or check in with their card with no slot at all. If members don’t reserve, your real attendance will run higher than what the slot counts show.
- What about groups and programs? Group sales, school visits and ticketed programs all draw on the same building. Either deduct them from the timed-entry capacity on the days they’re booked or give them their own window.
If you keep general admission open-ended
Plenty of sites don’t need a hard cap on most days, and timed entry adds friction for visitors. If that’s you, you can still manage capacity. You’ll just do it with information and procedure instead of a sales limit.
- Watch sales during the day. Run a daily sales or attendance report at set times, such as mid-morning and early afternoon, so the desk lead knows where the count stands before it becomes a problem.
- Agree on a trigger in advance. Decide the number at which you pause walk-up sales or start a line. Also decide who has the authority to make that call.
- Count exits as well as entries if occupancy matters. Ticket sales tell you how many people came in, not how many are still inside. On days when you’re near a legal limit, a simple door counter or headcount is more reliable than any sales report.
- Use timed entry only for your heavy days. Some organizations sell open general admission most of the year and switch to timed scheduled programs for holidays, special exhibitions or free days. This works, but each switch needs clear website messaging and a staff briefing.
Capacity on individual ticket types
A related question is how to limit just one item, such as 40 add-on tickets for a special exhibit or 200 discounted community tickets. When the item is tied to a specific time or occurrence, a scheduled program with its own capacity is the cleanest way to do it. When it’s an open-dated price type, assume Altru won’t stop selling at your number until you’ve tested it. Tracking the item with a query, or moving it into its own scheduled program, is the dependable route.
Make the online and desk numbers agree
When the website and the front desk both sell against the same scheduled capacity, the counts stay in sync, because both are drawing on the same inventory. Problems tend to start when one channel sells something the other can’t see: a separate third-party ticketing tool, a paper list of reserved group tickets, or a “we’ll squeeze them in” habit at the desk. If capacity matters to you, every ticket for that time slot needs to come from the same Altru program.
Quick answers
Can Altru cap total daily general admission?
Not as a simple setting, as far as we know. The usual approach is timed entry through scheduled programs. Confirm with Blackbaud support or in a sandbox for your version.
Does capacity on a scheduled program apply online and at the desk?
Yes, it should, as long as both channels sell the same program occurrence. Run a test sale in each channel before you go live.
Does scanning tickets tell me who is in the building?
It tells you who entered. Without some way of counting exits, it can’t tell you current occupancy.
