A school calls the morning of their field trip asking what time the planetarium show starts. The coordinator pulls up the signed contract and finds the program name and the date, but no time. The time was in someone’s email, or on a sticky note, or nowhere at all. If your group contracts don’t show when each scheduled event begins and ends, you get calls like this, plus late buses and some missed shows.
This article covers why event times often don’t make it onto Altru group sales contracts, how to confirm what your merge field list actually offers, and some workarounds that get times onto the page without retyping every contract.
Why the time is usually the missing piece
Group sales contracts in Altru come from a Word template that pulls merge fields from the group sales order: the group’s name and contact, the order date, the line items, prices, deposits, and balances. Most organizations build one contract template and reuse it for years.
The trouble is that a group visit isn’t one thing. A single order might include general admission, a 10:30 guided tour, and a 1:00 film. Each of those scheduled events has its own start and end time in Altru’s program and event setup. Whether those times can be pulled into the contract as merge fields depends on which fields Blackbaud exposes to the contract document for your version. Many administrators open the field list expecting a “start time” field and find only the event date or program name.
We can’t promise you what your field list contains, because it can change between releases. So check it before you rebuild anything.
Confirm what your merge fields actually include
- Download your current contract template from the group sales configuration area and open it in Word. Keep an untouched copy.
- Look at the full list of available merge fields that Altru provides for group sales documents, not just the ones your template already uses. Older templates often use a small subset, and a time field may already be there unused.
- Test in a sandbox or on a dummy order. Create a test group sales order with two scheduled events at different times, generate the contract, and see what each field produces. Watch how repeating line items behave. A field that works for one event may only print the first event’s value.
- If you can’t find it, ask Blackbaud support whether event start and end times are available as contract merge fields in your version, and if not, whether there’s a supported alternative. Write down the answer and the case number so the next administrator doesn’t have to ask again.
Workarounds if the fields aren’t available
Every one of these takes some effort. Pick the one that fits how many groups you book and who prepares the contracts.
Put the time in a field that does merge
Look at the text fields that do come through on your contract, such as an order-level comment or notes field, or a description attached to the line item. If one of those merges reliably, your group sales staff can enter the itinerary there (“Guided tour 10:30–11:15, Film 1:00–1:40”) when they book. It’s manual, but it happens at booking time in Altru instead of in Word afterward, and the times end up stored on the order where anyone can find them later.
The weak spot is drift. If the tour moves from 10:30 to 11:00, someone has to update both the scheduled event and the note. Make that part of your rescheduling checklist.
Name events so the time travels with them
If your event or program name merges onto the contract, some organizations put the time in the name, such as “Guided Tour – 10:30.” This only works when events run at fixed, recurring times. If your schedule varies a lot, you’ll end up with dozens of near-identical program names, which makes reporting messier. Try it with one program before rolling it out.
Attach an itinerary instead of forcing it into the contract
Sometimes the cleaner answer is to let the contract handle money and terms and send times on a separate itinerary. Check whether any of Altru’s existing group sales reports or a query on group sales orders and their scheduled events gives you start and end times. If it does, export it per group and send it with the contract. Many groups prefer a one-page schedule they can hand to chaperones anyway.
Edit the generated document before sending
For low volume, generating the contract and typing the times into the Word file before sending is honest and quick. Just remember that the edited Word file becomes the only record of those times unless they’re also in Altru. Save the final version to the constituent or order record so it isn’t stuck in someone’s downloads folder.
Pick one approach and write it down
Whichever workaround you choose, the real problem is usually inconsistency: one coordinator types times into Word, another puts them in notes, a third leaves them off. Write a short booking procedure that says where the times go, who updates them when a schedule changes, and what the group gets (contract only, or contract plus itinerary). Then pull a handful of recent contracts each season to check that it’s being followed.
Quick answers
Can I add my own custom merge field to the contract template?
You can rearrange and format the fields Altru provides, but adding a field that Altru doesn’t expose generally isn’t something the template can do on its own. Confirm with Blackbaud support for your version.
Will times show correctly for multi-day or multi-event orders?
Test it. Repeating line items are where merge fields most often surprise people, so build a test order with several events on different days before trusting any approach.
