A family buys general admission online, arrives, and finds out the new special exhibition or the 2:00 planetarium show costs extra. They’re happy to pay the difference. The question is how to take that payment in Altru without voiding their order and starting from scratch.
The short answer: Altru doesn’t really have a single “upgrade this ticket” action that swaps one ticket for a pricier one and charges only the difference. At least, we haven’t seen one that works cleanly across daily sales, advance sales, and web orders. If you’re unsure about your version or setup, test it in a sandbox or ask Blackbaud support before you commit to a process. What you can do is set things up so an upgrade is either a small add-on sale or a tidy exchange. Which one fits depends on when the guest decides to upgrade.
First, decide what “upgrade” means at your site
“Upgrade” usually means one of four things, and each one gets handled differently:
- Add-on at purchase. The guest buys general admission plus an exhibit, show, or tour in the same order.
- Add-on after purchase. They already have a ticket and want to add something before or during the visit.
- Swap to a higher tier. They want to replace a standard ticket with a premium one, for example a timed entry that includes a guided tour.
- Ticket to membership. They want what they paid today to count toward a membership.
Pin down which of these you actually sell. Most sites only need two of them, and the setup gets much simpler once you stop trying to cover all four.
Option 1: Price the upgrade as its own item
For add-ons, the cleanest method is to build the extra experience as a separate program or ticket item instead of a second, more expensive version of admission. Then “upgrading” is just selling one more item:
- Create the add-on (special exhibit, show, behind-the-scenes tour) as its own program with its own price types. If capacity matters, give it its own events or time slots.
- Price it as the difference you want to charge, not the full combined price.
- Decide whether the add-on can be bought on its own or only with admission. If it’s add-on only, train staff to check for an admission ticket, because the system may not enforce that rule for you.
- Make the add-on visible on the website and at the desk, so guests see it while they’re still choosing.
The upside is that the original order stays untouched. Your revenue reporting shows exactly how many guests added the upgrade, and the desk never has to refund anything. The downside is that the guest ends up with two tickets or barcodes instead of one. That’s usually fine, but tell your door staff to expect it.
Option 2: Exchange for a higher tier
When the premium experience really is a different ticket (a different time slot, a capacity-controlled tour, or a bundled price you don’t want to split up), you’re doing an exchange. In practice that usually means refunding or reversing the original ticket and selling the new one, with the guest paying the difference.
A few things to settle before staff do this live:
- How the money moves. Check whether your setup lets staff apply the original payment toward the new ticket, or whether it has to be a refund plus a new charge. That affects card fees, deposit reconciliation, and how the transaction looks in your batches.
- Who can do it. Exchanges involve refunds, so many sites limit them to supervisors or a single cash drawer.
- Capacity. Releasing the old ticket should free that slot. After you test a few exchanges, look at the event’s availability to confirm it actually did.
- Web orders. Online purchases often settle through a different payment path than the desk. Test a web order exchange on its own, not just a desk sale.
Write the steps on one page and keep it at the register. Exchanges are rare enough that staff forget how to do them between occurrences.
Option 3: Ticket price toward membership
Crediting today’s admission toward a membership is one of the most common upgrade offers, and it’s mostly a policy question. Many sites handle it with a time-limited discount on the membership that equals the admission paid, honored at the desk the same day. Before you promote it, confirm how your membership programs and discounts behave, decide how you’ll verify the original purchase (a lookup on the constituent record or the receipt), and decide whether the offer works for web tickets, desk tickets, or both.
Sell the upgrade before they arrive
Every option above gets easier when fewer guests need it. An upgrade after purchase means a second transaction and sometimes a refund. An add-on at purchase is just one more line in the cart. So the most useful thing you can do is put add-ons and membership in front of buyers while they’re checking out, and say clearly on the ticketing page what general admission includes and what it doesn’t.
That’s where our Upsells feature fits. It works inside Social Good Checkouts and offers membership and add-ons in the cart, so guests can choose the better experience before they pay. The order still writes back to Altru. It doesn’t change a ticket after the purchase is finished. For that, you’d still use the add-on or exchange process above.
Quick answers
Can Altru charge only the price difference automatically?
Not as a built-in upgrade feature that we know of. Pricing the add-on as its own item at the difference gets you the same result without a refund.
How do we report on upgrades?
If upgrades are separate items, a simple query or sales report on that program shows the count and revenue. Exchanges are harder to track, so add a consistent note or reason on each one.
