The school group coordinator calls in October wanting to lock in a field trip for next November. Your summer camp director wants next year’s sessions on the website before this year’s camp has even ended. Your gala committee wants to sell early tables fourteen months out. And when you go to schedule the program in Altru, the dates you need won’t take.
The short version: Altru is built around roughly a one-year scheduling horizon for program events, and administrators regularly run into a wall when they try to build events past about 365 days from today. Below is what that means in practice, how to confirm the exact behavior in your own database, and the workarounds that hold up when you really do need to plan further ahead.
What the limit actually affects
The constraint shows up when you generate or add scheduled events for a program. Dates inside the window behave normally. Dates beyond it either can’t be created or don’t show up where you expect them to, depending on how you’re adding them.
A few things are worth separating, because they get blurred together:
- Creating the program itself (the definition, prices, capacity defaults) isn’t the issue. You can set that up any time.
- Scheduling the events (the specific dates and times people can buy) is where the horizon applies.
- Selling those events through daily sales, advance sales, or web forms depends on the events existing first. No event, nothing to sell.
- Group sales reservations are tied to scheduled events or itineraries, so a group booking for a date you can’t schedule yet runs into the same problem.
Membership terms, pledges, and other revenue that isn’t tied to a program event aren’t part of this.
Confirm the behavior in your own database
Blackbaud adjusts Altru over time, and I’d rather you verify than take a number from any blog post, including this one. Two quick ways to check:
- Test with a throwaway program. Create a test program (in a sandbox if you have one, or with an obvious “TEST – delete” name in production), then try to schedule single events at 11, 12, 13, and 15 months out. Note exactly where it stops working and what message you get, if any.
- Ask Blackbaud support directly. Give them the program, the date you tried, and what happened. Ask whether the horizon is fixed or configurable, and whether it’s measured from today’s date or from something else. Get the answer in writing in your case notes so the next admin doesn’t repeat the experiment.
If support tells you it’s a fixed limit, plan around it instead of hunting for a hidden setting.
Workarounds that hold up
Schedule on a rolling basis
The cleanest approach is to treat the one-year window as a moving edge and extend it on a regular rhythm. Put a recurring monthly task on someone’s calendar: “Add next month’s events for all recurring programs.” Each month you push the horizon forward by one month, so you’re always about a year out without anyone scrambling. Write the steps down for each program, because the person who set up the original schedule may not be the one extending it.
Hold far-future dates outside the event schedule
For groups and private bookings that land beyond the window, capture the request now and convert it to a real reservation once the date becomes schedulable. Options, from most to least tied to Altru:
- Add the request to the group’s constituent record as an interaction or note with the requested date, headcount, and program. Then build a query of those notes so nothing gets lost.
- Keep a shared tentative-bookings sheet with a “convert by” date for each row (roughly a year before the visit).
- Block the capacity informally on your internal calendar so sales staff don’t promise the same slot twice.
Whichever you pick, assign one owner and review the list monthly alongside the rolling schedule task. Tentative bookings that never get converted are how a school shows up to a sold-out day.
Take deposits without an event
If a group wants to pay something now to secure next year’s date, you can record that as a separate payment (for example, a deposit or donation-style revenue with a clear designation and note) and apply or reconcile it once the reservation exists. Talk with your finance team first about how they want those deposits coded, since this affects how revenue lands in your reports. Don’t improvise this one at the desk.
Market before you can sell
For camps and annual events, you can announce next year’s dates on your website and in email well before they’re bookable. Pair it with an interest list (“Get notified when registration opens”) so demand is captured. When the dates enter the window, schedule them, open sales, and email the list.
Plan your calendar around it
A few habits make the horizon mostly invisible:
- Know which programs routinely book more than a year out. Usually it’s school groups, weddings and rentals, and annual signature events. Those are the ones that need the tentative-booking process.
- Line up your rolling schedule task with your season changes so new hours, prices, or capacity are reflected when you extend.
- Tell sales staff the rule in one sentence: “We can book directly up to about a year out; beyond that, log it as tentative and we’ll confirm it later.”
Quick answers
Can I change the limit in configuration?
I’m not aware of a setting that extends it. Confirm with Blackbaud support for your version before assuming either way.
Does the window move on its own?
The window is relative to the current date, so dates become schedulable as time passes. Your events don’t get created automatically, though. Someone still has to add them.
What about events I already scheduled near the edge?
Events you’ve already created stay in place. The limit concerns adding new dates, not keeping existing ones.
