A guest brings a mug with a chipped handle to the register and asks for a few dollars off. Or a local artist drops off ten hand-thrown bowls, each priced differently. Or the gift shop manager wants to clear last season’s T-shirts at whatever price moves them. In each case the cashier needs to charge something other than the price on the merchandise item, and Altru doesn’t make that as obvious as staff expect.
The short version: Altru merchandise items are built around a set price, and you shouldn’t count on cashiers being able to retype it at the register. The workable options are discounts, extra items or price points set up ahead of time, and a clear policy for what the desk does when none of those fit. Which one you use depends on why the price is changing.
First, sort out which problem you actually have
“I need to change the price at the register” usually covers four different situations, and each has a different fix.
- One-off markdowns (damaged item, display model, manager’s call).
- Planned sales (clearance, holiday promotion, member pricing).
- Items that genuinely vary in price (consignment, artist work, used books, plants priced by size).
- A price that’s simply wrong in Altru and needs to be corrected everywhere.
One-off markdowns: use a discount, not a price edit
Discounts are the cleanest way to reduce a single sale. You can set up discounts in Altru and make them available in daily sales, and the sale records the discount separately from the item’s price. That matters later: reporting can show what sold and how much was given away, instead of a mysterious lower price. Run a test sale and check your reports to confirm the discount shows up the way your finance team expects.
A few practical setups that work well:
- A small set of percentage discounts for common markdowns (for example, 10%, 25%, 50%) named so staff know when to use them, such as “Damaged – 25%.”
- A fixed-amount discount or two for the round-number markdowns managers tend to give.
- Limiting who can apply them through security, so markdowns stay a supervisor decision.
Whether Altru lets a cashier type in an arbitrary discount amount at the moment of sale depends on how discounts are configured and on your version, and we’d rather not guess. Test it in your sandbox or ask Blackbaud support before you train staff on it. If it isn’t available, a short menu of preset discounts covers most real markdowns anyway.
Planned sales: change the setup, not the transaction
If the whole shelf of T-shirts is half off for the month, don’t ask cashiers to apply a discount to every sale. Either create a discount that applies to that group of items for the sale period, or update the item’s price before the sale starts and change it back afterward. Put the end date on a calendar; a sale price nobody remembered to reverse is an easy way to end up with merchandise revenue that doesn’t match expectations.
For member pricing, check whether your membership program benefits already include a merchandise discount. If they do, staff shouldn’t be applying a separate one by hand.
Items that really do vary: build the prices in ahead of time
This is where the absence of an open-price item hurts most. Unless you’ve confirmed your setup supports one, these are the common workarounds:
- Price tiers as separate items. Create items like “Artist ceramics – $25,” “- $40,” “- $60.” Tag the physical pieces with the matching tier. This is easy for cashiers and keeps reporting usable by tier.
- One item per consignor or artist, with variations or price points where your configuration supports them. This makes paying out consignors much easier, because you can report sales by item.
- A low-value “unit” item sold by quantity (for example, a $1 item rung up 37 times for a $37 piece). It works mechanically, but it wrecks inventory counts and confuses anyone reading reports later. Treat it as a last resort and keep it to one clearly named item.
Whichever you pick, decide it with whoever reconciles the shop. Your finance team cares much more about how these sales land in revenue and your general ledger mapping than about what’s convenient at the counter.
Wrong prices: fix the item, then the history
If the price in Altru is simply wrong, correct it on the merchandise item so every future sale is right. Sales that already went through keep the old price. For a handful of transactions, a refund-and-resell or an adjustment may be cleaner than leaving it; for anything larger, talk to finance before touching posted revenue or batches.
What to tell the front desk
Whatever setup you land on, give cashiers a one-page rule they can follow without calling a manager:
- Damaged or display item: apply the named markdown discount, with supervisor approval.
- Consignment or artist piece: ring up the tier on the tag.
- Price looks wrong: sell at the system price or hold the item, and report it, rather than improvising.
- Never give a markdown by underpaying a different item. It throws off inventory for both.
Quick answers
Can a cashier just overwrite the price on a merchandise item during the sale?
Don’t plan on it. Altru merchandise works from preset prices and discounts. If you think your setup allows a manual override, confirm it in a sandbox first and decide who should be allowed to use it.
Will discounts show up in reports?
That’s the main reason to use them: discounts are recorded as discounts, so markdowns can be tracked separately from full-price sales, which a quietly lowered price would hide. Confirm which of your reports surface them before you rely on that.
