A school books 60 students, pays in full, and arrives with 48. The chaperone checks in, the group tours the galleries, and two days later the district’s business office asks for a refund on the twelve no-shows. Now someone in your group sales office has to change money on a reservation that Altru already considers complete.
That’s the situation this guide covers: adjusting prices or refunding part of a group sales payment after the reservation has been checked in. It’s one of the more awkward corners of Altru group sales, and the right answer depends partly on how your organization has set things up. Below is how to think about it, the options that usually work, and how to set policy so you face it less often.
Why post-check-in changes feel so hard
In Altru, a group sales reservation ties together several things at once: the itinerary and its program events, the capacity it holds, the price list, and the payments applied against it. Check-in tells Altru the visit happened. After that point, many organizations find that editing the reservation’s line items or quantities is restricted, or that the available path to change pricing also reopens the itinerary and its capacity.
That second part is what causes trouble. You want to change what the group owes, not rewrite history about how many seats a past event used. Touching capacity on an event that already happened can affect attendance reporting and, depending on your setup, may not be possible at all.
Exactly which actions are locked after check-in, and in what order Altru wants them done, can vary with your version, security rights, and configuration. Before you write a procedure, test the full sequence in a sandbox or a training environment, or ask Blackbaud support to confirm the supported path for your site. Don’t let staff discover the rules on a live reservation with a waiting customer.
Options that usually work
1. Refund against the original payment, not the reservation
Often the cleanest route is to leave the reservation itself alone and handle the money as a refund on the payment that was received. The reservation still shows what was booked and what was checked in, and the refund records what went back to the customer. Add a note on the reservation that explains the refund, the head count that actually arrived, and who approved it.
Check how this lands in your revenue batches and in any reports your finance team uses for group sales. A refund that isn’t tied clearly to the reservation can make the reservation look overpaid or underpaid later.
2. Adjust before you check in
The simplest fix is upstream. If staff confirm the final head count and settle the balance before marking the group checked in, the price change happens before the visit is recorded as complete, which is generally when the reservation is easiest to edit. Confirm in a test reservation that your setup allows quantity changes at arrival. For school groups, that might mean the desk counts the bus, updates quantities, then checks in. It adds a minute at arrival and saves a week of follow-up.
3. Issue a credit instead of cash back
Some organizations prefer to keep the money and offer the group a credit toward a future visit. That avoids reopening anything in the current reservation, but it moves the work elsewhere: you need a reliable way to track and apply the credit next year. If you go this way, decide where the credit lives (a note on the constituent record, an open balance, a tracked list) and who is responsible for applying it.
4. Escalate the unusual cases
Partial refunds across multiple payments, changes to a deposit that was already reconciled, or reservations spanning several dates can get complicated quickly. Keep a short list of who on your team has the security rights and the experience to handle those, rather than letting every coordinator try.
Set the policy before the next school season
Most post-visit adjustments come from the same few situations: fewer people showed up than were booked, a program was cancelled on the day, or the group was charged the wrong rate. A written policy settles most of them before anyone opens Altru.
- Head count changes. State a deadline for final numbers (for example, a set number of days before the visit) and whether you refund for no-shows after that deadline. Billing on the confirmed number rather than the arrival count is a common, defensible approach.
- Day-of changes. If the group is smaller at the door, decide whether staff adjust before check-in or whether you hold the original charge.
- Pricing errors. These are your mistake, so make the correction path fast and clear, and name who approves it.
- Refund method. Refund to the original payment method where possible; use checks or credits only when that isn’t available.
Put the head count and refund terms in your booking confirmation so the customer has seen them before they arrive.
Keep the records consistent
Whatever path you use, the goal is that anyone looking at the reservation six months later can tell what happened. A few habits help:
- Note the booked count, the arrival count, the amount refunded or credited, and the approver on the reservation.
- Use a consistent reason or comment so you can find these cases in a query later.
- Have finance review group sales refunds alongside the batch they were posted in, at least until the process is stable.
- Once a quarter, pull a list of group sales reservations that had money returned after the visit (a query or a finance report, whichever your data supports). If the same cause keeps appearing, fix the policy or the arrival process rather than the individual reservations.
Quick answers
Can I undo a check-in to edit the reservation?
Whether that’s possible, and whether it affects capacity or attendance figures, depends on your configuration and rights. Test it in a sandbox or confirm with Blackbaud support before using it as a standard practice.
Should the refund change the event’s attendance?
Usually not. Attendance should reflect who came. Keep the money correction separate from the head count history wherever you can.
