“Sat 10/4/2026 10:00:00 AM” is technically correct. It is also a little hard to read for a parent on a phone trying to pick a family workshop slot. Dates and times in program ticketing get read by visitors on the web, by staff at the desk, on printed or emailed tickets, and in reports. Each of those places has its own rules about formatting, and Altru gives you more control over some of them than others.
So before you change anything, figure out where the display bothers you. The fix depends on the answer.
Start by listing every place the date appears
Pick one program with timed events and follow a single ticket from start to finish. Note what the date and time look like at each step:
- The online event list or calendar where visitors choose a time
- The cart and the order confirmation screen
- The confirmation or eTicket email
- The printed ticket, if you print at the desk
- The screens staff use for daily sales and advance sales
- Any reports or queries you export for staff schedules
Usually only one or two of these are the real complaint. More often than not it’s the public-facing web display, because that is where visitors make decisions.
Online sales pages
This is where Altru gives you the least formatting control. The online ticketing pages render program and event dates in a set format, and as far as we know there is no admin setting to switch from, say, “10:00 AM” to “10am” or to drop the year. Some of what you see may also be shaped by the visitor’s browser and locale. If you need a definite answer for your version, test it in your sandbox or ask Blackbaud support directly. Do that before you spend time looking for a setting that may not exist.
What you can usually control is the text around the date:
- Program names. A name like “Tide Pool Walk (90 min, meets at the north gate)” helps more than any change to the timestamp, because it answers the question visitors actually have.
- Descriptions. Put the end time, arrival instructions, and the time zone, if you sell to travelers, in the program description. Then the visitor doesn’t have to work it out from a start time.
- Styling. If your web forms let you add custom styling, you may be able to change the font, size, or emphasis of the date. Treat that as cosmetic. CSS can’t reorder or reformat the date text itself, and changes made that way can break when Blackbaud updates the page.
Printed tickets and emails
You have more room here. Altru ticket layouts and email templates are built from fields you place on them, and depending on the field and template, you may get a choice of date or time format, or separate date and time fields you can arrange however you like. Open your current ticket layout and confirmation template in a test environment. Check which date fields are available and whether they offer format options. Print a sample, or send one to yourself, before you change anything in production.
Two habits help here:
- Show the day of the week. “Saturday, October 4” prevents more wrong-day arrivals than “10/4/26” does.
- Use the same format everywhere. If the email says “10:00 AM” and the ticket says “10:00,” someone will ask whether those are the same time.
Reports, queries, and exports
When the problem is a staff schedule or a spreadsheet, format the date at the output stage. Query output and exports usually carry a full date-time value. Excel or Google Sheets can show it any way you like with a custom number format, such as ddd m/d h:mm AM/PM. That’s faster and safer than trying to change how Altru stores the value.
When the real problem is the event list itself
Sometimes formatting is a symptom. A long, flat list of program events with full timestamps is hard to scan however the dates are written. Visitors really want to see a calendar, tap a day, and see which times still have space. If you hear that the online ticketing page is “confusing,” that’s often what people mean.
That’s the gap our Calendar Builder fills. It is an embeddable timed-ticketing calendar for your own website, showing real-time availability pulled from Altru. Because it lives on your site, it follows your site’s design rather than the default online sales pages. Your programs, events, and capacity stay managed in Altru as usual.
Quick answers
Can I change the time format on Altru’s online ticketing pages to 24-hour or “10am”?
We’re not aware of an admin setting for that. Confirm for your version with Blackbaud support or in your sandbox. In the meantime, use program names and descriptions to add clarity.
Will editing a program name change tickets already sold?
It may change how existing orders display, depending on where the name is pulled from. Test with a past order in your sandbox before you rename a program that is already on sale.
