A guest hands over a phone at the gate, the barcode beeps, and they walk in. Later that afternoon someone in visitor services pulls up the same order in Altru and wants to know: did this ticket actually get used? It’s a fair question, and the answer is less obvious than it should be.
There usually isn’t a field you can flip by hand to “Scanned.” Whether a ticket shows as used depends on how it was scanned and what that scan wrote back to Altru. This guide covers what to check, why the status may not be what you expect, and how to answer “did they come in?” reliably.
A sale and a visit are different records
Altru records the sale of a ticket the moment it’s purchased, whether through daily sales, advance sales, group sales, or a web form. That sale record carries the ticket’s price, event, date, and the constituent if there is one.
The visit is a separate fact. Someone has to present the ticket and something has to record that it was presented. If your door process doesn’t send that event back to Altru, the ticket record looks the same whether the guest showed up or not. That’s the root of most “why doesn’t it say scanned?” confusion.
Find out what your scanning setup actually records
Before changing anything, work out which situation you’re in. The answer differs by organization, so test it instead of assuming.
- Identify every way tickets get checked at the door. Altru’s own scanning, a third-party scanner, a staff member eyeballing a printed ticket, or a mix. Each one behaves differently.
- Run a controlled test. Sell yourself a ticket (in a sandbox if you have one, or as a zero-dollar comp in production), scan it the way your gate staff would, then open the ticket and the order in Altru. Note exactly what changed, if anything: a status, a date, a user, an attendance count.
- Try to scan it a second time. If the second scan is rejected or flagged, something is tracking use. If it goes through cleanly, nothing is stopping a screenshot from being shared around.
- Check a query. Build a ticket query for that event and date and see which fields the scan populated. Whatever field changed is the one you’ll report on later.
If nothing changed in the test, your current scanning method isn’t writing a used state back to Altru. If you aren’t sure whether Altru can record redemption natively for your ticket types and configuration, ask Blackbaud support directly and describe your test. That’s faster than guessing from menus.
Why you probably shouldn’t edit the status by hand
Even where a ticket record can be edited, manually marking tickets as used after the fact causes more problems than it solves:
- It’s slow, so it only happens for the few tickets someone happens to look at, which makes your attendance numbers less reliable, not more.
- It can collide with refunds and exchanges. A ticket marked as used is one staff may refuse to refund, even when the guest never came.
- It hides the real gap. If scans aren’t writing back, the fix belongs at the door, not in back-office cleanup.
Getting a reliable “did they come in?” answer
Fix it at the scan
The cleanest answer is a scanning process that records each scan against the Altru ticket at the moment it happens and refuses a second use. Whatever tool you use, confirm in your test that the record changes and that a duplicate scan is caught.
Report on the field that changes
Once you know which field a scan populates, build a saved query for “sold but not scanned” by event and date. That list is useful for no-show follow-up, for checking timed-entry capacity, and for spotting gates where staff are waving people through without scanning.
Train the gate, not just the system
If one entrance scans and another doesn’t, your data will always be half right. Make scanning the only way in, including for members and comps, and give staff a clear instruction for a barcode that won’t read (look it up, don’t just wave it through).
A note on Social Good’s Ticket Scanner
Our Ticket Scanner scans Altru tickets and membership barcodes at the door on mobile devices, which can help gates that currently check tickets by eye or with mismatched hardware. As with any scanner, run the same test described above in your own environment to confirm exactly what each scan records in Altru before you rely on it for reporting.
Quick answers
Is there a button in Altru to mark a ticket as scanned?
Not one we’d point you to as a general fix. Whether a used state is recorded depends on your scanning method and configuration. Test it, and confirm with Blackbaud support if you’re unsure.
Why do some tickets show as used and others don’t?
Usually because different entrances or staff use different check-in methods. Compare which gate or device handled the tickets that did change.
