A member logs in, buys two adult tickets, and the total comes out lower than the price on your admissions page. Good news for them, but they can’t tell why. Was the member discount applied? Did the promo code work? Is the lower number a mistake that will get corrected later? When the cart shows only a final total, people email or call to ask, and some abandon the purchase to “check with the front desk first.”
Showing the discount clearly online is a small detail that saves real staff time. Below is what to look at in Altru, the limits you may run into, and some practical ways to make savings visible even when the web form itself is quiet about them.
Start by seeing what your form shows today
Before changing anything, run a test purchase the way a guest would. Use a test member account (or a sandbox if you have one) and go through each scenario your organization actually offers:
- A logged-in member buying admission at member pricing
- A guest entering a promo or discount code
- A membership purchase or renewal with a seasonal discount
- An event registration with an early-bird or member rate
For each one, note three things: what the cart displays before payment, what the confirmation page displays, and what the confirmation email or eTicket says. Screenshot them. You will often find the discount is visible in one place and invisible in another, and that tells you where to focus.
What Altru controls, and where it gets fuzzy
Discounts in Altru are set up centrally and then made available to sales channels, including web forms. How much detail a guest sees about an applied discount depends on the form type, how the discount is configured, and how your web forms have been customized over the years. We have seen organizations get quite different results from what look like similar setups.
Because of that, we won’t promise a specific setting that adds a “You saved $X” line to every Altru web form. If your test purchases don’t show the discount amount, confirm with Blackbaud support whether your form type can display it natively before spending hours on workarounds. Ask a specific question: “Can the cart on our ticketing (or membership) web form display the discount name and amount as a separate line before checkout?” A precise question gets a precise answer.
Workarounds that help right away
Give discounts guest-friendly names
Internal discount names tend to look like “MBR-ADM-10” or “Fall promo 2 (web).” If any part of the discount name surfaces to guests anywhere, in the cart, on a receipt, or in an email, it should read as plain language: “Member price: 10% off admission.” Review the names of every discount that is available online and rewrite the ones a guest might see.
Show both prices on the page around the form
Even if the form only shows a total, the web page that hosts it is yours to edit. A short pricing table above the form (“Adult: $24, Members: $18”) lets people check their own math. For promo codes, a line like “Your code takes 15% off tickets; the discount appears in your total” sets the expectation before checkout.
Put the savings in the confirmation email
Confirmation and acknowledgment emails are often easier to customize than the cart itself. If your email template can pull the discount or the original price, include it. If it can’t, a plain sentence such as “Member pricing was applied to this order” still answers the question most people are asking.
Train the people who take the calls
Whoever answers the phone or the general inbox should know how to look up a web order on the constituent record and see which discount was applied. A two-minute answer beats a refund-and-rebuy because someone thought they were overcharged.
Check the reporting side too
Visibility for guests and visibility for staff are related problems. If your finance or membership team can’t easily report on which discounts were used online and how much revenue they reduced, build a query on web orders that includes the discount applied and the amount. That report is also the quickest way to spot a discount that was accidentally left active on the web, or one that isn’t applying when it should.
A short checklist
- Run a test purchase for every discount scenario offered online.
- Record what the cart, confirmation page, and email show.
- Rename any discount a guest could see into plain language.
- Add member and standard pricing to the page that hosts the form.
- Mention the applied discount in confirmation emails.
- Ask Blackbaud support whether your form type can show the discount line natively.
- Build a query of online orders with discounts for finance and spot checks.
If you want more control over the cart
Some organizations decide they need a checkout where they decide what appears on screen. Social Good’s Checkouts is a branded, mobile-friendly checkout that replaces Altru web forms for tickets, memberships, and donations, with the transaction data written back to Altru. If cart presentation is a recurring frustration, it’s worth a look alongside the steps above.
Quick answers
Will a guest see the discount if they apply a promo code?
The total will reflect it if the code is valid. Whether a separate discount line appears depends on your form and configuration, so test it with a real code before a campaign launches.
Does renaming a discount affect past transactions or reports?
It changes the label you see going forward. Test in a sandbox or on a low-traffic discount first, and let your finance team know before you rename anything they report on.
