How to Change the Patron on an Altru Group Reservation
A school books a field trip in February. In April the teacher who made the booking leaves, the district’s business office takes over billing, and someone asks you to “just move the reservation to the district.” It sounds like a one-field edit. In Altru it often isn’t, and how you handle it depends on what
How to Restrict Ticket Delivery Methods by Program in Altru
Some programs can’t be fulfilled every way a ticket can be delivered. A behind-the-scenes tour with a waiver and a check-in list shouldn’t go out by mail. A gala seat that comes with a printed packet shouldn’t be a print-at-home ticket. A school program that a teacher books in advance probably needs a street address,
How to Track Rental Items in Altru: Strollers, Wheelchairs, and More
Strollers, wheelchairs, wagons, audio guides, lockers, binoculars for the bird blind. Almost every visitor-serving organization lends or rents something, and sooner or later someone asks how to track it in Altru. The honest answer is that Altru is very good at recording the sale of a rental and much less suited to tracking the item
How to Count Individuals and Households by ZIP Code in Altru
“How many people do we have in each ZIP code?” sounds like a one-query job. It turns into two questions as soon as someone asks a follow-up: are we counting people or mailboxes? A grant report about community reach usually wants individuals. A postcard budget wants households, because two adults at one address get one
Interactions vs. Communications in Altru: Which One to Use When
Two staff members talk to the same donor in the same week. One logs a phone call. The other sends a renewal letter. A month later, someone pulls up the constituent record and can’t tell what was said, what was mailed, or whether anyone followed up. Usually the problem isn’t missing data. Each person put
How to Sell and Track Gift Cards and Gift Certificates in Altru
Every December somebody at the admissions desk gets asked, “Do you sell gift cards?” Altru doesn’t give you a clear answer. As far as we know it has no built-in gift card or gift certificate feature with a stored balance that a guest can spend down over several visits. So any organization that sells them
How to Print Barcode Labels for Altru Merchandise, Including Small Tags
A new shipment of plush animals, enamel pins, and exhibit catalogs arrives at the gift shop the week before a big opening. Every piece needs a price tag the register can scan, and the tags have to fit on a keychain as well as a coffee-table book. Getting there with Altru comes down to one
How to Track Which Letter Each Constituent Received in Altru
A donor calls and says, “I got two letters from you this month and they asked for different amounts.” Can you see which two? In a lot of Altru databases the honest answer is no. The mailing list went out of a query, someone did a mail merge in Word, the envelopes went to the
How to Get Alerts for Unresolved Online Sales in Altru
A member renews online on a Friday night. The payment goes through, but the transaction lands in the pile of online sales waiting for staff to match the buyer to a constituent record and finish processing. Nobody looks at that pile until Tuesday. By then the member has tried to use their card at the
Why Merchandise Margin and Markup Aren’t Updating in Altru
You raise the retail price on a plush toy in the gift shop, save it, and the margin figure next to it looks exactly the same as before. Or the markup reads zero on an item you know makes money. Before you assume Altru is miscalculating, it helps to know what those two numbers are
How to Import and Batch Update Constituents in Altru Without a Mess
A list of 400 new contacts from a gala, a vendor file of corrected mailing addresses, or a spreadsheet from the education department that flags which teachers now work at different schools: sooner or later every Altru database needs data loaded in bulk. Typing it in by hand is slow and error-prone. Importing it carelessly
How to Handle Program Category Colors on the Altru Event Calendar
The Altru event calendar color-codes events by program category, which is useful right up until two categories land on nearly the same shade, or you add a tenth category and run out of colors that are easy to tell apart. Then the calendar stops answering the one question staff open it for: “what kind of
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