A thunderstorm, a sick instructor, or a building repair pushes your Tuesday “Junior Zookeeper” week to the following Monday. Forty families are already registered and paid. Now someone has to get those registrations into the new session without losing what you collected, without double-counting revenue, and without overbooking the new date.
Altru doesn’t have one “move everyone” command built for camps, so the right approach depends on how your camps are built and how much of the session is moving. Decide that before anyone touches a record.
First question: is the whole session moving, or only some campers?
The whole session moves
If every registrant is going to the new date, the least disruptive option is often to change the date and time on the existing program event rather than creating a new one. The registrations stay attached to the same event, so payments, revenue, and any camper details you collected stay where they are.
Before you rely on this, confirm two things in a sandbox or with Blackbaud support:
- Whether Altru allows the edit on an event that already has sales, and whether anything (capacity, resources, or the ticket print layout) has to be adjusted alongside it.
- What already went out. Confirmation emails and printed tickets carry the old date. Editing the event does not resend them, so plan your own notice to families.
Only some campers move
This is the more common situation: you split an oversubscribed week, a few families can’t make the new date, or you’re merging two small sessions. Here you need a new event (or an existing one with room) and you move registrations order by order. Depending on how your organization sells camps, that means exchanging the item on each order, or refunding it and selling the new session. Test which one your setup supports before you start; the answer affects how revenue lands in your reports and batches.
Before you move anyone, pull a list
Build a query on the registrations for the affected session and save it. Include at least:
- The constituent (usually the parent or guardian) and contact details
- Camper name, if you track campers as separate constituents or in attributes
- Order number, price type, amount paid, and any discount or member pricing applied
- Any attributes, notes, or custom fields you use for allergies, pickup authorization, T-shirt sizes, or waivers
This list is your safety net. If something gets lost during an exchange or refund-and-resell, you can rebuild it. It’s also your mailing list for the reschedule notice.
Moving registrations without losing data
- Set capacity on the new session first. Make sure the new event has room for everyone you’re moving, plus any waitlist you plan to honor. Overbooking the new date is the easiest way to create a second problem.
- Keep the price the same. If the new session has a different price (a shorter week, for example), decide your policy up front: refund the difference, absorb it, or charge it. Don’t let each staff member decide per family.
- Move one order end to end, then check it. Look at the order, the constituent record, and your revenue view. Confirm the camper details came across and the money shows once, not twice.
- Work the rest of the list in a single sitting. Partial moves are where camps end up with families registered in both sessions.
- Re-run your query on both events. The old session should be empty (or contain only the families who stayed). The count on the new session should match your list.
Camper details are the part that goes missing
Payments are easy to trace. What tends to vanish is the extra information collected at registration: medical notes, pickup names, photo permissions. Where that data lives decides whether it survives a move:
- On the constituent record (attributes or notes on the camper or parent): it stays put no matter which event the registration sits on. This is the safest place for anything that should follow a camper between sessions.
- On the order or registration itself: it may not carry over through an exchange or refund-and-resell. Check your test order carefully, and re-enter from your saved query if needed.
If you’re rescheduling often, that’s a good reason to move durable camper information onto constituent records for future seasons.
Tell families before they hear it elsewhere
Use the saved query to send one clear message: the new date and time, what (if anything) changes about drop-off and pickup, what happens if the new date doesn’t work for them, and who to contact. Give a deadline for refund or transfer requests so you aren’t still moving registrations the morning camp starts.
Brief the front desk too. Parents will call, and staff should be able to see the change on the order and give the same answer you put in the email.
Reconcile afterward
Once the dust settles, compare revenue for the old and new sessions against what you expected. Refund-and-resell in particular can show as a refund in one period and a sale in another, which matters if the move crosses a month end. Your finance contact will appreciate a short note listing which orders were moved and why.
Quick answers
Can I bulk-move every registration from one camp event to another in Altru?
Not as a single built-in action that we can point to with confidence. For a full-session move, editing the event’s date is usually simpler. For partial moves, plan on handling orders individually, and confirm the options in your version with Blackbaud support.
Will the old confirmation emails still show the original date?
Yes. Anything already sent stays as it was, so send a separate reschedule notice.
