The workshop ran last Saturday. Half the participants paid at the door, a few never paid at all, and now finance wants every attendee recorded against the right program date. Someone suggests sending the stragglers a link to buy online, and that’s when you find out the date is gone from the web.
Short version: Altru’s online ticketing is built to sell upcoming program times. Once an event date has passed, you should expect it to drop off what the public can buy online. That’s usually the behavior you want, because nobody should be able to buy a ticket for yesterday by mistake. But it leaves you with a real gap when you need to collect money for, or record, attendance that already happened.
Below is how to think about the problem, plus the workarounds that hold up in practice.
First, figure out what you actually need
“Sell a past date online” usually covers one of three different jobs. Each one has a different fix.
- Collecting payment from people who attended but didn’t pay (late registrations, school groups, invoiced organizations).
- Recording attendance for reporting, so the program’s numbers and capacity history are accurate.
- Getting revenue into the right period so finance can reconcile it against the event.
Pinning this down matters, because the cleanest answer is rarely “reopen the date to the public.” Reopening a past date, if you can do it at all, risks confusing other buyers and creates orders you’ll have to explain later.
Can Altru sell a past date on a web form?
We don’t know of a dependable, supported way to make a past program time show up for purchase on a standard Altru web form. Some teams have tried stretching the date window or editing the event, but changing a completed event’s dates to get it back online can distort your attendance and capacity reporting for that program.
If you want a definitive answer for your setup, test it in a sandbox or a throwaway test program before touching a real event, or ask Blackbaud support directly. Don’t experiment on the live event that finance is trying to close out.
Workarounds that hold up
1. Record the sale in-house against the original date
For most cases, the simplest route is to have staff enter the order in Altru against the past program time, using whichever sales area you normally use for that kind of booking (advance sales for individual tickets, group sales for a reservation). Confirm in a test first that your sales area lets you choose a past event time and how it handles the transaction date, since that determines which period the revenue lands in.
To collect the money without staff taking card numbers over the phone, you can have the payer pay by whatever remote method your organization already uses, then have staff enter the order and apply the payment. Keep a short note on the order explaining why it was entered after the fact.
2. Use a group sales reservation for organizations
When the attendee is a school, camp, or company, a group sales reservation is often a better fit than individual tickets. It ties the visit to the organization’s constituent record, keeps the date and headcount together, and gives you something to invoice against. Many teams set these up before the visit and settle the balance afterward, which avoids the problem entirely next time.
3. Sell a separate “late payment” item on a future-dated form
If payers really must self-serve online, some organizations create a generic item, such as a program fee or registration balance, on an online form that stays open. Payers buy that, and staff reconcile it to the original event afterward.
Be honest with yourself about the tradeoff. This gets the money in, but the purchase won’t be connected to the original program time automatically, so attendance reports for that date won’t reflect it unless someone fixes it by hand. Use it only when the volume is small and you have a clear owner for the cleanup.
4. Record revenue only, without a ticket
Sometimes finance just needs the dollars, and the headcount is already right because people were scanned or counted on the day. In that case a plain payment or donation-style revenue record with the correct designation may be all you need. Check with whoever owns your chart of accounts before choosing this, because a ticket sale and a general revenue record usually post differently.
Preventing the next one
Most past-date sales come from the same few habits, and they’re easier to fix up front:
- Close online sales on purpose. Decide when each program’s online sales should end, and tell attendees. A clear “registration closes Thursday” cuts down on walk-ups who expect to pay later.
- Have a day-of process. If you allow walk-ins, sell them at the door against the live program time, not on a sign-up sheet that someone enters next week.
- Book groups before they arrive. Create the reservation when the group commits, even if payment comes later.
- Run a post-event check. A query of orders for the program time, compared with your headcount, shows gaps within a day or two, while the details are still fresh.
Quick answers
Will entering an order after the event change my reports?
It should add to that program time’s sales and attendance. Which revenue period it falls into depends on the transaction date your process uses, so check one test order in your revenue reports before entering a batch.
Is it safe to move an event’s date forward so it shows online?
We’d avoid it. Editing a completed event to reopen it can muddy the historical record for that program. A staff-entered order is cleaner and easier to explain later.
