The caterer for your spring gala, the bus company that brings in school groups, the AV crew for the members’ lecture series, the pest control contractor. None of them sell you anything you’ll put on a shelf, but every one of them is a business you deal with all year. Sooner or later someone asks where they live in Altru.
The short version: Altru’s built-in idea of a “vendor” belongs to merchandise. For service businesses, most organizations get better results by storing them as organization constituent records with a clear label, and leaving bills and payments in the accounting system. Below is why, and how to set it up so the records stay useful.
Why the merchandise vendor isn’t the right home
In Altru, vendors are tied to the merchandise side of the house: the shop’s products, purchasing, and inventory. That design assumes a vendor supplies items you stock and resell. A caterer or an electrician doesn’t fit that model.
Forcing service businesses into the merchandise vendor list tends to cause three problems:
- Cluttered shop work. Store staff picking a supplier for a product or purchase order now scroll past landscapers and sound engineers.
- Muddy reporting. Anything that reports on merchandise vendors picks up businesses that never supplied a product.
- No real benefit. Altru isn’t an accounts payable system. Even if the caterer is in the vendor list, you still won’t be paying their invoices from Altru.
Exactly how your merchandise vendor list behaves depends on how your shop was configured, so if you’re unsure, try adding a test vendor in a sandbox or ask Blackbaud support before deciding. For most teams, though, the conclusion is the same: keep that list for merchandise suppliers only.
A setup that works for service vendors
1. Add each business as an organization constituent
Search first, because many service businesses are already in your database as a sponsor, a donor, or the employer of a member. Create a duplicate and you’ll split their history across two records. If no record exists, add a new organization with the business name, main address, phone, and a general email.
2. Label them consistently
Give every service vendor the same marker so you can find them in one query. Common choices are a constituency (for example, “Service Vendor”) or an attribute. An attribute is handy if you also want a category such as catering, transportation, facilities, AV, or performers. Pick one approach, document it, and use it the same way every time. Check with whoever manages your code tables before adding new values, since those lists are shared across the whole database.
3. Add the people you actually call
The business record is rarely who you talk to. Add the event coordinator, the dispatcher, or the account rep as individual constituents and connect them to the organization with a relationship. When that contact moves on, end the relationship rather than deleting anyone, so the history stays intact.
4. Keep notes and interactions on the record
Use notes or interactions for the things staff need to know next time: insurance certificate on file, delivery entrance instructions, cancellation terms, who signed the last contract. That’s the information that usually lives in one person’s inbox and vanishes when they leave.
5. Keep them out of your marketing
This step gets skipped most often. A vendor’s contact shouldn’t land on your membership renewal list or a year-end appeal by accident. Set the appropriate solicit codes or communication preferences on the vendor contacts, and make sure your mailing queries exclude your service vendor constituency or attribute. Run one of your regular appeal queries after setup to confirm the vendors drop out.
What about vendors who also give?
Plenty of service businesses are also donors or sponsors. A restaurant caters your gala at cost and sponsors a table. In that case, one organization record carries both roles. The vendor label tells staff you buy from them, and their gifts and sponsorships stay in revenue history as usual. Your appeal exclusions need some judgment here: you may want to exclude vendors from general mailings but still include them in sponsor stewardship. Build the query logic to match, rather than splitting them into two records.
Where payments and contracts belong
Invoices, purchase orders for services, and vendor payments belong in your finance system. That system is built for 1099s, approvals, and payables, and Altru isn’t. A light link between the two helps, though. Some teams store the accounting system’s vendor ID as an attribute or alternate lookup ID on the Altru organization, so staff can match records without guessing. If your organization does that, decide who keeps the IDs current.
Quick answers
Can I pull a list of all our service vendors?
Yes, if you labeled them consistently. A constituent query filtered on your vendor constituency or attribute, with relationship fields for the main contact, gives you a working vendor directory you can export.
Should vendor contacts be able to buy tickets or memberships?
Of course. They’re ordinary constituents. If a caterer’s coordinator joins as a member, that person’s individual record handles the membership. The organization record doesn’t change.
We already put service vendors in the merchandise vendor list. Now what?
Create or find the organization constituent for each one, move the useful details over, and stop using the merchandise vendor entry for new work. Before removing or deactivating anything, check whether it’s referenced on products or purchase orders, and test the change in a sandbox if you have one.
