A school calls the week before its field trip: the buses can’t arrive until 10:30, not 9:30. Every piece of that reservation in Altru was built around 9:30. The arrival, the gallery tour, the lunchroom slot, the planetarium show. Pushing it all back an hour sounds like a single edit. In practice it usually means touching each scheduled item on the itinerary, one at a time.
This article covers how to think about moving group reservation times in Altru: what has to change, what tends to break, and how to set reservations up so the next time change is less work.
What “changing the time” actually involves
A group reservation in Altru isn’t one appointment. It’s a reservation with an itinerary, and the itinerary holds separate items: program events, admission, resources such as rooms or buses, and sometimes staff or volunteer assignments. Each item carries its own start and end time. When a group’s day moves, you’re really changing several linked records, not one field.
Before you start editing, sort the change into one of three kinds, because each is handled a little differently:
- One item moves. The tour shifts from 11:00 to 11:30 but everything else stays. This is the easy case: edit that item and check its capacity.
- The whole day slides. Arrival, tour, lunch, and show all move by the same amount. This is the case people want a one-click “shift everything” for.
- The date changes. The group is coming Thursday instead of Tuesday. Treat this as a near rebuild of the schedule, since availability on the new day may be completely different.
Is there a way to shift a whole itinerary at once?
Honestly, we aren’t aware of a dependable built-in way to offset every item on an Altru itinerary by a fixed amount in one step. Behavior can vary with your version and configuration, so don’t take our word as final. Try it on a test reservation in a sandbox, or ask Blackbaud support whether your setup allows a bulk time change. Until you’ve confirmed one exists, plan on editing items individually.
That isn’t terrible for a single group with four or five items. It becomes painful when a weather delay or a building closure moves a dozen reservations on the same morning.
A sequence that keeps you from double-booking
- Check the destination before you leave the origin. Look at availability for each program event and resource at the new time first. If the 10:30 planetarium show is already full, you want to know that before you’ve moved the arrival and tour.
- Move the most constrained item first. Usually that’s a fixed-capacity program or a shared room. Build the rest of the day around wherever it lands.
- Edit the remaining items in time order. Working from first to last makes gaps and overlaps easy to spot.
- Revisit staff and resource assignments. A docent booked at 9:30 may not be free at 10:30. Moving the item doesn’t guarantee the person or room comes with it.
- Look at pricing. If any part of your group pricing depends on the event or time chosen, confirm the reservation total still matches what you quoted.
- Send an updated confirmation. The group leader is working from the old itinerary. A revised confirmation with the new times should go out the same day you make the change.
- Add a note on the reservation. Record who asked, when, and what moved. Anyone who opens that record later will know the change was intentional.
When many reservations move at once
Late openings and weather days cause the most work. A few habits help:
- Pull a list first. Run a query of group reservations on the affected date with their itinerary times and contact information. That list becomes your worklist and your call sheet.
- Triage by size and constraint. Large groups and groups booked into limited-capacity programs get moved first, while there’s still room.
- Split the work. One person edits reservations and another contacts group leaders. Then nobody is on the phone promising a time that hasn’t been checked yet.
- Re-run the query when you’re done. Compare the new times against capacity so a conflict doesn’t surface when two school buses pull in together.
Building reservations that are easier to move
You can’t stop groups from changing plans, but you can reduce how much breaks when they do:
- Keep itineraries lean. Every item you add is another item you’ll edit later. Don’t book a separate timed item for something that doesn’t need capacity control, like free time in the galleries. Mention it in the confirmation instead.
- Leave buffers. Fifteen minutes between items gives you room to absorb a small delay without moving anything.
- Standardize common day shapes. If most school groups follow one of three patterns, write those patterns down with typical durations. Staff can rebuild a day from a known template much faster than from memory.
- Set a change cutoff. A policy such as “time changes within 48 hours are subject to availability” gives your team permission to say no when the new slot isn’t there.
Quick answers
Will changing an item’s time release its old capacity?
It should free the original slot once the item is moved. Check availability on the old time afterward to confirm before you rebook it for another group.
Should I cancel and recreate the reservation instead?
Usually not. Recreating it can disconnect payments, deposits, notes, and history from the original booking. Editing items keeps that trail intact. Save a rebuild for a date change where almost nothing carries over, and even then check how deposits will be handled first.
