A school group books a field trip with a classroom rental and a lunch package. The teacher asks whether the Title I discount you advertise covers the room fee too. You go to apply it in Altru and find the discount lands on the admission tickets but leaves the resource charge at full price.
That gap catches a lot of group sales staff. Altru’s discount tools are built mainly around tickets and price types. Resources, meaning the rooms, equipment, supplies, and add-on items you attach to an event or a group itinerary, often sit outside that logic. This article covers what to check, the workarounds organizations actually use, and how to keep the discount from turning into a mess at reconciliation time.
First, confirm what your Altru setup does today
Before building any workaround, find out exactly where the line falls in your own database. Discount behavior depends on how your discounts, programs, and resources are configured, and it can shift between releases. A ten-minute test is more reliable than anyone’s memory, including ours.
- Look at the discount’s scope. Open the discount in your configuration and note what it is allowed to apply to: specific programs, price types, or the whole order. If resources aren’t listed as something it can target, that’s your answer for that discount.
- Run a test group reservation. Use a sandbox if you have one, or a clearly labeled test reservation you’ll cancel. Add tickets plus one priced resource, apply the discount, and look at each line on the reservation before you take payment.
- Check how the resource is priced. A resource charged per person behaves differently from a flat fee. Test both if you use both.
- Ask Blackbaud support if the result is unclear. Tell them which discount and resource you tested and what you expected. That gets you a faster, more specific answer than “can I discount resources?”
Workarounds that hold up in practice
If your test confirms the discount won’t touch the resource line, these are the options organizations tend to fall back on. Each has a cost, so choose based on how often the situation comes up.
Create a discounted version of the resource
Set up a second resource at the reduced rate, named so nobody can miss it, for example “Classroom rental – school partner rate.” Staff pick that one when the group qualifies. This is the cleanest option for reporting, because the revenue posts at the price you actually charged and you can query it by resource name.
The downside is clutter. If you have six discount tiers and twenty resources, you do not want 120 resource records. Keep this approach for one or two common, stable discounts.
Adjust the price on the reservation
Depending on your security rights and configuration, staff may be able to change a resource’s price on an individual reservation. That’s flexible, but it hides the reason for the reduction. If you allow it, require a note on the reservation stating which discount was applied and who approved it, and limit the permission to the people who handle group sales.
Fold the resource into the program price
If a resource is nearly always booked with a particular program, such as a lunchroom with a school tour, consider pricing them together as a package. The discount then applies to the whole package through the normal ticket logic. This works well for structured school and camp programs and poorly for one-off rentals.
Apply the discount as a separate credit
Some teams calculate the resource discount by hand and handle it as an adjustment or credit outside the resource line. Use this only if your finance team agrees on how it should post. Otherwise you’ll spend month-end explaining why group revenue doesn’t match the resource rate card.
Keep the numbers explainable
Whatever you choose, your finance staff and your future self need to be able to see what happened. A few habits help:
- One documented rule per discount. Write down whether each discount covers tickets only or tickets plus resources, and give that sheet to everyone who books groups.
- Consistent naming. If you use discounted resources, give them all the same suffix so a single query can pull them.
- A periodic check. Run a query on group reservations with manually adjusted resource prices. If the list keeps growing, the manual route has become your real process, and it’s time to formalize it.
- Clear quotes and confirmations. Show the discount on the confirmation the group receives. A teacher who sees “partner rate applied” won’t call to ask why the room fee looks different from the website.
Quick answers
Can one discount cover both tickets and resources in Altru?
Don’t assume it can. Test your specific discount on a sample reservation. If the resource line stays at full price, use one of the workarounds above.
Which workaround is best for reporting?
A separate discounted resource, because the revenue posts at the real price and is easy to find in a query. Manual price changes are the hardest to audit.
Should front desk staff be able to change resource prices?
Usually not. Keep that permission with group sales or a supervisor, and require a note every time it’s used.
