A parent calls to ask for a receipt for last month’s summer camp. You open her constituent record in Altru, and there’s nothing. The camp shows up in the program roster and in the day’s sales, but her record has no payment. Somewhere between the sale and the constituent, the payment ended up somewhere else.
In nearly every case we’ve seen, the money is in Altru. It’s attached to a different record, or it’s stored somewhere you aren’t looking. Below are the usual causes, roughly from most to least common, and how to check each one.
First, make sure you’re looking in the right place
Program registrations are sold the same way tickets are: as sales orders through daily sales, advance sales, or group sales. They aren’t entered as gifts or pledge payments. Depending on how your constituent record pages and tabs are set up, a ticket or registration sale may appear in a different spot than donations and membership dues. Before you assume anything is missing, check every revenue- and sales-related area on the record, and look up the order itself by date or order number.
If you can’t tell which tabs on your record pages show sales orders, test it. Sell a cheap registration to a test constituent in your sandbox (or to a staff record in production, then refund it) and see where it appears. Five minutes of testing answers the question for good.
The payment is on a different constituent
This is the most common cause. Look for these patterns:
- The payer isn’t the participant. A grandparent pays for a child’s class. The registrant on the program is the child, but the order (and the payment) belongs to whoever was the patron on the sale. If you search the child’s record, you won’t find the money.
- A duplicate record. Staff created a new constituent at the desk, or an online form couldn’t match the person and made a new one. Now there are two records for “Jennifer Ortiz,” and the payment sits on the one nobody checks. Search by email address and phone number, not only by name.
- A household or organization record. School and scout groups often pay through an organization or group contact. The individual teacher or leader won’t show the payment.
- No constituent at all. At the daily sales window, a registration can be completed without attaching a named patron. The sale is real, but it isn’t tied to anyone’s record.
How to confirm: find the order (by date, program, amount, or the last four digits of the card if your reports show them), open it, and see which constituent it’s attached to. That record is where the payment lives.
The order isn’t finished
Advance sales and group sales orders can hold a reservation with a balance still due. If a deposit was taken but the order was never completed, or the order is still sitting open, the payment may not appear where you expect, and reports may treat it differently from a finished sale. Group sales reservations deserve extra attention, since deposits and final payments are often taken on different days by different people.
Check the order’s status and its payment history. If it’s still open with a balance, the fix is to finish the order, not to re-enter the payment.
The payment came in online and needs review
Online registrations go through your web forms, and how they reach constituent records depends on your configuration. Some organizations review incoming web transactions before they’re fully matched to constituents. If yours does, a registration can sit unprocessed, or get matched to the wrong person, until someone works the queue.
We’re not going to tell you exactly how your online transactions are set to process, because it varies by setup. Ask whoever administers your Altru web forms, or contact Blackbaud support with a specific order number and ask where that transaction should appear on the constituent record.
Fixing it without making a mess
- Don’t re-enter the payment. Entering it again on the “right” record doubles your revenue and the card was only charged once. Find the original.
- If it’s a duplicate, merge the records. Merging moves the history, including the order, onto the record you keep. Check which record has the better address and email before you merge.
- If the wrong person is the patron, find out whether your security role can change the constituent on a completed order. If it can’t, ask someone who has that permission, or check with Blackbaud support before you refund and resell. A refund and resale changes your revenue reporting for both dates.
- Give the caller what they need now. A receipt can usually be reprinted from the order itself, wherever it’s attached, so the parent doesn’t have to wait for the cleanup.
Preventing the next one
- Decide who the patron should be for registrations. Most organizations want the payer on the order, with the participant recorded as the registrant. Write that rule down and train desk staff on it, especially seasonal staff.
- Require a named patron for program sales at the window, even when your process allows anonymous sales for general admission.
- Search before creating. Make email lookup the first step at the desk, before anyone clicks to add a new constituent.
- Run a weekly query of program registration orders with no constituent, or with constituents created in the last seven days. That gives you a short list of likely duplicates and orphaned sales while people still remember the details.
- Check open group sales orders before each program date so deposits don’t get stranded on unfinished reservations.
Quick answers
The roster shows the child as registered but there’s no payment. Is the registration valid?
Probably. The registrant and the paying patron are often different records. Find the order to see who paid.
Can I move a payment from one constituent to another?
It depends on the transaction type and your permissions. Merging handles duplicates cleanly. For a genuinely wrong patron, test the change in your sandbox or ask Blackbaud support before you edit a completed order.
