The inbound channel on a revenue record answers a simple question: how did this money reach us? Mail, phone, walk-up, online, an event table. It looks like a minor field until someone in development asks for “all mailed gifts this fiscal year” and the report comes back half empty because a third of last spring’s checks were entered with no channel, or with the wrong one.
When people search for how to edit the inbound channel in Altru, they usually mean one of two different things. It helps to separate them before touching anything.
Two different edits
- Changing the list of channels. The choices in the inbound channel dropdown come from a code table. Adding a new channel, renaming one, or retiring one you no longer use happens there, not on individual records.
- Changing the channel on a gift or payment that already exists. This is a record-level correction, and it is where most of the frustration lives.
Editing the channel list
Inbound channel values are maintained with Altru’s other code tables in the administration area. A few habits keep this list useful:
- Deactivate rather than delete. Old revenue still points at old values. Marking a value inactive hides it from new entry while keeping history intact. If you are unsure whether a value can be safely deleted, assume it cannot.
- Rename carefully. Renaming a value changes how every past record using it displays and reports. That is fine when you are fixing a typo. It is not fine when “Phone” quietly becomes “Phone and Text” and last year’s numbers now mean something different.
- Keep the list short. Channels describe how money arrived, not which appeal or campaign drove it. Appeals, sources, and campaigns already have their own fields. A channel list with twenty entries usually means those concepts have been mixed together.
Changing the channel on existing revenue
This is where it pays to be honest about what you can and cannot do. Whether the inbound channel is editable after the fact depends on the type of transaction, how it was entered, and whether it has already been posted to your general ledger. Some revenue edit screens expose the field; others do not, and posted revenue is generally more locked down than unposted revenue. Security roles also matter: a field your finance lead can edit may be read-only for front desk staff.
Before you plan a cleanup, confirm what your setup actually allows:
- Pick one sample record of each revenue type you need to fix: a donation, a membership payment, a daily sales order, an event registration payment.
- Open each one with an administrator account and try to edit it. Note whether the inbound channel appears on the edit form at all.
- Repeat with a typical staff account so you know who can do the fix.
- If the field is missing or locked on a type you care about, ask Blackbaud support whether there is a supported way to change it. Do not guess, and do not try to work around a posting lock without talking to your finance team.
If you have a sandbox or test environment, run these checks there first. If you do not, test on a single low-stakes record and write down exactly what you changed.
When the field will not budge
If Altru does not let you change the channel on a set of records, you still have options that do not involve rewriting financial history:
- Add an attribute or note recording the correct channel. Reporting can then use the attribute for those records.
- Handle it in reporting. Build your query to include revenue with a blank channel, and group it by payment method or batch so you can tell mailed checks from card payments taken at the desk.
- Accept the gap and document it. Sometimes the right answer is a one-line footnote: “Channel not tracked before July.” That is better than a cleanup that introduces new errors.
Finding the records to fix
Before editing anything, measure the problem. Build a revenue query that returns the date, amount, payment method, batch, the user who entered it, and the inbound channel, filtered to the date range you care about. Sort by channel. You will usually see two patterns:
- A block of blanks that all came through the same entry path, such as a batch template or a particular form that never asked for a channel.
- Values that are clearly wrong, such as online gifts tagged as “Mail” because someone picked the first item in the dropdown.
Both patterns point to the real fix, which is upstream.
Stopping it from happening again
- Set defaults where you can. If a batch template is used only for mailed gifts, default the channel to Mail. If your configuration supports a default for a given entry point, use it.
- Check your web forms. Online revenue should land with an online channel automatically. Run a test transaction on each public form and look at the resulting record to confirm what it actually stores.
- Train on one sentence. “Channel is how it arrived, not why they gave.” Most wrong values come from staff choosing a channel that matches the appeal.
- Review monthly. Save the query above and glance at it at month end. Ten blank records are easy to fix. Two thousand are a project.
Quick answers
Will renaming a channel change old reports?
Yes. Past records point to the value, so they display the new name. Create a new value instead if the meaning is changing.
Can I bulk update the channel on many gifts at once?
That depends on your Altru setup and the state of the revenue. Confirm with Blackbaud support before attempting it, and coordinate with finance if any of the revenue has been posted.
