Month-end close comes around and finance asks a simple question about the gift shop: what was on the shelf on the first of the month, what sold, and what’s left? You open the Altru inventory report, look for a start date and an end date, and find that the report mostly tells you what’s on hand right now. There’s no obvious way to point it at last month.
Running the report on a past date range, rather than as of today, is a common need for merchandise managers and finance staff. Here’s how to think about the gap and the workarounds that hold up at audit time.
Why the inventory report behaves like a snapshot
On-hand inventory is a running balance. Every sale, receipt, transfer, and adjustment moves it, and the inventory report reads the balance as it stands when you run it. A date range doesn’t fit that model cleanly, because “inventory between March 1 and March 31” really means two different things:
- A point-in-time balance on a past date (how many mugs did we have on March 31?).
- Movement over a period (how many mugs did we sell, receive, and write off in March?).
Altru handles the second one better than the first. Sales are dated transactions, so they can be filtered by date in queries and reports. Rebuilding a historical balance is harder, and whether your Altru setup exposes enough dated adjustment history to do it reliably is worth confirming with Blackbaud support or by testing in a sandbox before you build a process around it.
Step 1: Capture the snapshot when it happens
The most dependable fix is also the least clever. Run the inventory report on the last day of each period and keep the export.
- Pick a fixed time, such as after the shop closes on the last business day of the month.
- Run the inventory report and export it to Excel or PDF.
- Save it to a shared folder with a consistent name, for example Shop inventory 2026-10-31.
- Put the task on someone’s calendar, with a named backup for vacations.
Last month’s ending file becomes this month’s beginning inventory. It’s manual, but it gives finance a number that matches what Altru actually showed on that date, and nobody has to reconstruct anything later. If you only start doing this today, you’ll have clean history from today forward.
Step 2: Report on movement with a query
For the “what happened during the period” side, build a query over merchandise sales rather than relying on the inventory report.
- Filter on the transaction date, using a date range or a prompt so the same query works every month.
- Include the item, category, quantity sold, and amount.
- Group or summarize by item so the output lines up with your inventory export.
- If returns and refunds are processed in Altru, make sure they’re included or reported separately so quantities net correctly.
Save the query with a clear name and share it with the people who close the books. Once it’s built, the monthly run takes a minute.
Step 3: Reconcile the snapshots against the movement
With a beginning snapshot, an ending snapshot, and a sales query for the period, you can check that the numbers agree:
Beginning on hand + received − sold ± adjustments = ending on hand
When an item doesn’t balance, the difference is usually a receipt entered late, a count adjustment, damaged stock written off, or an item sold at the register under the wrong SKU. Those are exactly the issues you want to find before the auditors do.
Receipts and adjustments are the piece to verify. If you can query them by date in your Altru setup, add them to the reconciliation. If you can’t, keep a simple log of receiving and write-offs outside Altru for the period, or ask Blackbaud support whether a standard report covers that history.
A few habits that make this easier
- Do physical counts on the same day you export. A count adjustment entered three days after the snapshot muddies both periods.
- Enter receipts when stock arrives, not when the invoice is paid. Otherwise, inventory looks short in one month and long in the next.
- Keep item setup consistent. Duplicate or near-duplicate items (the same tote under two names) make every reconciliation harder.
- Write down the routine. Which report, which query, which folder, and who runs it. The process breaks when the one person who knows it leaves.
If you meant ticket inventory
Some teams say “inventory” when they mean event or timed-ticket capacity. That’s a different question. Capacity and sold counts for past dates are usually easier to get because each event has its own date. Event reports or a query on ticket sales filtered by event date will typically answer it, with no snapshot routine needed.
Quick answers
Can I just change the report’s parameters to a past date?
Look at the parameters the report offers in your database first. If there’s no as-of date option, the report reflects current balances, and the snapshot routine above is the reliable substitute.
Can a custom report do it?
Possibly, if the underlying adjustment and receipt history is available. That usually takes someone comfortable with Altru’s reporting tools, so test the results against a period where you already have a saved snapshot before you trust it.
