Your finance office wants last month’s admissions, membership, and donation revenue in the general ledger, and they want it to tie to the bank deposits. Getting it out of Altru is not a single button. It’s a short cycle you repeat every period: clean up the revenue, preview what will post, run the post, then keep a report of what actually went out. When one of those steps gets skipped, month-end close turns into a hunt for missing dollars.
This guide covers that cycle at a level that applies to most Altru setups. Your screens and options depend on how your GL setup was configured, so treat this as a checklist for your own sandbox, not a click-by-click script.
What “posting” means in Altru
Altru records revenue as transactions: daily sales, advance sales, group sales, memberships, donations, and so on. Each transaction carries GL distributions, which are the debit and credit account numbers Altru builds from your account mappings. Each transaction also has a post status. Something that hasn’t posted yet is waiting to go out. Once posted, it’s locked in as sent to the ledger. Revenue marked “do not post” stays out of the run entirely.
Posting collects every unposted transaction up to a post date you choose and produces the summarized journal entries your accounting system needs. Depending on how your organization is set up, that output is either an export file that finance imports or an integration with your accounting package. Ask whoever set up your GL which one you have, because it changes what “done” looks like.
Before you post: get the revenue clean
Most posting problems start upstream. Before the run, check these:
- Uncommitted batches. Revenue still sitting in an open batch won’t post. Commit or delete outstanding batches for the period.
- Deposits. If your process ties payments to bank deposits, make sure each deposit for the period is complete and closed. Finance will reconcile the GL against these totals.
- Account mapping gaps. A new membership level, a new program, or a new merchandise item without a GL mapping will produce missing or invalid distributions. These usually show up as exceptions in the preview, but it’s faster to remember what you added this month and check it first.
- Back-dated adjustments. Refunds, write-offs, and edits to revenue that already posted generate adjustment entries. Make sure their dates land in the period you intend.
Run the pre-post review first
Altru gives you a way to preview what will post before anything is committed. Run it with the same post date and filters you plan to use for the real post. Read it for two things:
- Exceptions. Any transaction with a missing or invalid account will be flagged. Fix the mapping or the transaction, then run the preview again. Don’t post around exceptions unless you’re sure finance knows to expect a manual entry.
- Totals by account. Compare the debit and credit totals with your deposit totals and with any daily sales reconciliation you already do. If cash doesn’t match, find out why now. Untangling it after the post is much harder.
Save or print this preview. It’s your “before” picture if something looks off later.
Running the post
When the preview is clean, run the post process with the same post date. A few habits that save trouble:
- Pick one post date rule and keep it. Most organizations post through the last day of the month, or through the last full deposit. Mixing approaches causes revenue to slip between periods.
- Use a clear name. If your setup lets you name or describe the post instance, include the period (for example, “October revenue, posted through 10/31”). You’ll want to find it again at year-end audit time.
- One person, one run. Agree on who posts and when. Two people running overlapping posts is the most common way to end up with confused finance staff.
The post-process report is your audit trail
After the post runs, Altru records what was posted in that run. Open the results and pull a report of the posted transactions and journal totals. That report is what you hand to finance along with the export (or confirmation that the integration ran), and it’s what an auditor will ask for.
What to do with it:
- Confirm the posted totals match the preview you saved. If they differ, something changed between the preview and the post, usually a late batch or edit.
- Confirm the totals match what finance imported on their side. A mismatch here typically means the file was edited, imported twice, or only partly imported.
- File the report with that month’s close documents, named consistently.
The exact report options and export formats vary by Altru configuration and by which accounting package you use. If you can’t find a way to get the detail finance wants, build an Altru query on revenue filtered by post date and post status as a backup, and ask Blackbaud support whether a standard report covers it.
When something posted wrong
Don’t try to “un-post” by editing the ledger on one side only. The usual fix is to correct the transaction in Altru, which creates an adjustment that goes out in the next post, and have finance make an offsetting entry if the error can’t wait. Whether a full post can be reversed or reset in your environment depends on your version and setup. Test it in a sandbox or confirm with Blackbaud support before trying it in production.
Quick answers
How often should we post?
Monthly is typical and matches most close calendars. Some organizations post weekly during busy seasons so the reconciliation work stays small.
Why didn’t some revenue post?
Check for uncommitted batches, transactions marked “do not post,” dates after your post date, and missing GL mappings, in that order.
Can finance run the post instead of the Altru admin?
Yes, if they have the right security role. Many organizations prefer it, since finance owns the ledger. Either way, keep the preview and post-process report together.
