A family bought general admission online for Saturday. At the gate they ask whether they can put that money toward the planetarium show instead. An hour later, someone else at the desk asks whether the admission they just paid can count toward a membership. Both are asking the same thing: can the value of a ticket move to a different program in Altru?
The short answer is that Altru doesn’t treat a ticket as a stored balance you can spend somewhere else. A ticket is a sale of a specific program (and, for scheduled programs, a specific event). To “apply” it elsewhere, you’re really undoing one sale and making another, and how cleanly that goes depends on how your revenue, discounts, and staff permissions are set up. Below are the approaches that work, with the trade-offs of each.
First, decide which situation you’re in
- Ticket to ticket. The guest wants a different program or a different time: admission swapped for a special exhibit, a sold-out show for a later one, a camp day for a tour.
- Ticket to membership. The guest wants today’s admission credited toward joining or upgrading.
- Ticket to “credit for later.” The guest can’t come and wants the value held for a future visit or a different program they haven’t picked yet.
Each one has a different best answer, and mixing them up is where reporting gets messy.
Ticket to ticket: exchange, or refund and resell
Altru handles changes to ticket orders through its sales and refund processes. Depending on your version and configuration, staff may be able to modify or exchange tickets within an order rather than refunding it outright. I’d confirm exactly what your database supports before writing a procedure around it: test an exchange in your sandbox (or ask Blackbaud support) for both an advance sales order and a daily sales transaction, because the options aren’t always the same for each.
Where a direct exchange isn’t available, the dependable fallback is:
- Refund the original ticket back to the original payment method, or to the same tender type if the payment was cash.
- Sell the new program ticket as a new transaction.
- Collect or refund the difference in price.
- Add a note to the order or constituent record that ties the two transactions together.
It takes a few more clicks, but revenue lands in the correct program and your attendance numbers stay accurate. The shortcut to avoid is letting someone in to Program B on a Program A ticket and “sorting it out later.” The scan or check-in records the wrong program, capacity for Program B is now off by one, and nobody sorts it out later.
When the price is different
If the new program costs more, the refund-and-resell route makes the math obvious. If it costs less, decide in advance whether you refund the difference or treat it as non-refundable. Put that in your ticketing policy so desk staff aren’t deciding it guest by guest.
Ticket to membership: use a discount, not a workaround
Crediting same-day admission toward a membership is a common and effective way to convert visitors. In Altru, the cleanest way to run it is usually one of these:
- Refund and join. Refund the admission, then sell the membership at full price. Revenue is clean: admission goes back to zero and the membership carries its full value. The downside is that your admission revenue reports will show refunds that look like lost sales.
- Membership discount. Keep the admission sale and apply a discount to the membership equal to what the guest paid. Create a dedicated discount for this (named something like “Admission credit toward membership”) so it shows up clearly in reports and you can measure how many conversions it drives.
Most organizations prefer the discount approach because the admission still counts as a visit and the conversion is easy to track. Whichever you choose, set a rule for how long the offer lasts (same day only is common) and require the receipt or order number. Restricting who can apply the discount is worth checking in your security settings, so it isn’t applied to every membership sale by mistake.
One accounting note: talk to your finance team before rolling this out. A discount and a refund post differently, and they’ll have opinions about which matches how they want membership revenue reported.
Ticket to “credit for later”
This is the hardest one to do well in Altru, because there’s no general-purpose ticket wallet. Options organizations use:
- Rebook to a specific future date now, even if the guest might change it again. A real order beats a vague promise.
- Refund the ticket and let the guest buy again when they’re ready. It’s the simplest for staff and finance.
- Use a gift or voucher product if your organization already sells one, refunding the ticket and issuing the voucher in its place. Whether this works well depends on how you’ve set up gift memberships, vouchers, or similar items in Altru, so test the full cycle (issue, redeem, report) before offering it widely.
Avoid tracking credits in a spreadsheet or in constituent notes alone. They get lost, staff can’t see them at the register, and there’s no reliable way to report on what’s still owed.
Make it repeatable at the desk
Whatever you choose, write a one-page procedure for each of the three situations and keep it at every register. Include:
- Which transaction type to use (exchange, refund plus new sale, or discount).
- Who is allowed to do it, and when a manager has to approve.
- How to handle a price difference.
- What to write in the order or constituent note.
Then build a simple query or report to review these transactions monthly: refunds followed by a new sale for the same constituent on the same day, and uses of your membership-credit discount. That check catches mistakes early and tells you whether the policy is actually being followed.
Quick answers
Can a ticket be converted directly into another program without a refund?
Sometimes, depending on what your Altru version supports for exchanges and whether it’s an advance or daily sale. Test it in a sandbox before relying on it. Refund and resell always works.
Will refunding and reselling hurt our attendance numbers?
No, as long as the guest is checked in on the new ticket. It’s more accurate than letting them in on the old one.
