You set up a scheduled program with a run of dated events, put it on your ticketing web form, and it works fine for the first week. Then the first event date passes, and the form still opens on that day, or on some other date that’s no longer bookable. Visitors see an empty or sold-out day, assume you have nothing available, and leave. Or they call the front desk.
We don’t know of a single documented setting that controls this, and Altru’s web form behavior can vary with how a program and its events are built. What we can do is walk through the usual causes, how to test each one, and what to do if none of them fix it.
How the first date usually gets picked
For a program with several events, the web form has to decide which date to show first. In practice, that comes down to which events it still considers eligible to sell. If an event the visitor can’t actually buy is still counted as eligible, the form can keep landing on it.
So the question to ask isn’t really “why is the date stuck?” It’s “which event is the form still treating as available, and why?” Almost every fix below follows from that.
Likely causes, in the order we’d check them
1. Past events are still active or on sale
If an event’s date has passed but the event itself is still active, or its online sales window hasn’t closed, it may still count as a candidate date. Open the program’s events and look at the oldest ones. Check whether they’re still active and whether the online sale dates extend past the event date. Deactivating or closing sales on a past event is often enough to move the first date forward.
2. Sold-out events still count as dates
An event with zero remaining capacity may still be shown as the first date, depending on how the form handles sold-out inventory. If your earliest upcoming event is full, the form may open on it rather than skipping ahead. You can confirm this by temporarily adding capacity to that event in a test environment and watching whether the default date changes.
3. Events built with inconsistent settings
When events in one program are created at different times, or copied from different originals, their pricing, online availability, or sale windows can drift. One odd event with a wide-open sale window or a missing price can throw off the default date. Compare an event that behaves correctly against the one the form keeps opening on, field by field.
4. Caching, not data
Before changing anything in Altru, rule out caching. Load the form in a private browser window, on a phone using mobile data, and with a cache-busting parameter added to the URL. If your website embeds the form inside a page, the page itself might be cached by your content management system or a CDN. If a fresh load shows the right date, the problem is on the website side, not in Altru.
5. Time zone and cut-off timing
If the stale date only shows up for part of a day, for example after closing time but before midnight, check whether event sale cut-offs line up with your local time. An event that’s still technically on sale until a late hour will keep showing until that cut-off passes.
How to confirm what Altru is doing
- Build a query of the program’s events showing date, active status, online sale window, and remaining capacity. Sort by date. The first row that looks “sellable” is usually the date the form lands on.
- Test in a sandbox or a duplicate program if you have one. Change one variable at a time so you know which change fixed it.
- Ask Blackbaud support if the data looks clean and the date still won’t move. Give them the program name, the date the form opens on, and the date you expect. That’s a specific, reproducible report, which gets a faster answer than “the calendar is wrong.”
A routine that keeps it from coming back
Even after you find the cause, this tends to recur on long-running programs because events age out every day. A small weekly habit helps:
- Run the events query every Monday.
- Close sales on, or deactivate, anything in the past.
- Note any upcoming events that are sold out and decide whether to add capacity or leave them.
- Load the public form once to confirm it opens on the right day.
It takes a few minutes and catches the problem before visitors do. If you build events in batches, set each one’s online sale window to end at or before the event start time at creation. Then nothing has to be cleaned up later.
When the form itself is the limit
Some organizations find that even with clean event data, the native form’s date picker doesn’t present a multi-event program the way they want. Visitors might need to see which days have openings at a glance instead of opening on one default date. That’s a presentation problem more than a data problem. Social Good’s Calendar Builder is an embeddable timed-ticketing calendar for your website that shows real-time availability from Altru, so visitors can see the open dates across the program before they pick one. Your events and inventory stay in Altru either way.
Quick answers
Is there a setting that tells the form which date to open on?
We’re not aware of one you can set directly. The default appears to follow which events are still eligible to sell, so cleaning up event status and sale windows is the practical lever. Confirm with Blackbaud support if you need a definitive answer for your version.
Will deactivating past events affect reporting?
Deactivating an event normally doesn’t remove its sales history, but test on one event first and check your usual attendance and revenue reports before doing it in bulk.
