Opening a new gift shop line, switching POS vendors, or converting to Altru from another system all lead to the same job: hundreds or thousands of merchandise items that need to exist in Altru before anything can be rung up. Keying them one at a time is slow and error-prone, so the first question is whether you can load them in bulk.
The honest answer is that it depends on your Altru environment, and you should confirm it before you plan around it. Below is how to find out, what your options look like either way, and how to prepare the data so the load (or the typing) goes cleanly.
Step one: confirm what your Altru can import
Altru has batch and import tools for several record types, such as constituents and revenue. Whether merchandise items are one of the supported import types in your database is something we can’t promise from the outside, and it has not historically been a standard self-service option for many organizations. Don’t assume either way. Check it directly:
- Look at the import options available to you in Altru’s administration and import areas, and note whether anything covers merchandise items, departments, or inventory.
- Ask Blackbaud support a specific question: “Can we bulk-create new merchandise items, and if so, what template and required fields does it use?” Ask the same question about updating existing items (prices, costs, reorder levels), because the answer may differ.
- If you are mid-conversion, ask your Blackbaud conversion contact whether merchandise items are in scope for the data conversion. A conversion team can sometimes load data that staff can’t load themselves afterward, so it matters to get items into that window if you can.
- Test in a sandbox if you have one. Load ten items, ring them up, run a sales report, and make sure they behave like hand-entered items before you load the rest.
If bulk loading is available
Treat it like any other import: small test first, then the full file. A few practical habits help:
- Load departments and categories (whatever structure your shop uses) before items, so every item has somewhere valid to land.
- Keep the import file you used, unchanged, as your record of what went in. If something goes wrong, you’ll want to compare against exactly what was loaded.
- Spot-check a handful of items at the register afterward, especially ones with barcodes, and confirm the scanned item, price, and tax treatment are right.
If it isn’t available
You’re left with manual entry, but there are ways to make it much less painful:
- Cut the list down first. Old catalogs are full of discontinued and zero-stock items. Load only what you’ll actually sell in the next season. Retired items can stay in your old system or an archived spreadsheet for reference.
- Enter by department in focused sessions. One person doing all the plush toys, then all the books, makes fewer mistakes than several people working through a random list.
- Use a finished spreadsheet as the source of truth. Staff should copy values, not make decisions, while they type. Every naming, pricing, and categorization question gets settled in the sheet beforehand.
- Split the work between two people where possible: one enters, the other checks a sample of each batch against the sheet.
- Escalate if the volume is large. If you are facing thousands of items, ask Blackbaud whether paid services or a partner can load them. It may cost less than the staff time.
Prepare the item data the same way regardless
Whether the items go in by import or by hand, the cleanup work is identical, and it’s where most of the time goes. Build one spreadsheet with a row per sellable item and decide on these before anyone loads anything:
- Item names. Pick a consistent pattern (for example, product, then variant) so items sort sensibly in lists and reports. Short, readable names matter on receipts.
- Item codes and barcodes. Check for duplicates. Two items sharing one barcode is a problem you’ll discover at the register, not in the spreadsheet.
- Variants. Decide how sizes and colors are handled. Confirm how your Altru setup represents them before you structure the sheet, because the answer changes how many rows you need.
- Department and category. Use the exact names that exist (or will exist) in Altru. These drive your sales reporting, so agree on them with whoever reads the reports.
- Price, cost, and tax. Fill in cost if you track margin. Flag items with unusual tax treatment so they get extra review.
- Vendor and starting inventory. If you track stock in Altru, plan for an inventory count close to go-live, since quantities from an old system drift quickly.
Spreadsheet tools do the heavy lifting here: sort by barcode to find duplicates, filter for blank prices, and use a pivot by department to sanity-check counts against what’s actually on the shelves.
Timing around go-live
Freeze new item additions in the old system a week or two before cutover, or keep a short “added after export” list that you enter manually at the end. Then run a test sale of a few items from each department in Altru before the shop opens on the first day. Catching a missing department or wrong price then is far easier than voiding transactions later.
Quick answers
Can I update prices in bulk the same way?
Ask that as a separate question. Bulk updates and bulk creation aren’t always supported equally, and a seasonal price change is a common reason to need one.
Should merchandise be part of our Altru conversion?
If your conversion team can include it, yes. It’s usually the easiest point to load a full catalog, so raise it early rather than after go-live.
