Your finance office opened accounts at a new bank and wants everything moved over by the first of the month. In Altru, “changing banks” isn’t one setting. Money touches at least three places: where card payments settle, how revenue is recorded and deposited inside Altru, and how it posts to your general ledger. Each one has its own owner, and missing any of them means deposits land in the wrong account or your reconciliation stops matching.
Below is the order we’d work through it, plus the things that tend to go wrong.
First, be clear about which “bank” you mean
The question usually means one of two things:
- Your organization is moving its operating or deposit account to a new bank. That’s most of this article.
- A constituent’s bank details changed, for example a donor or member paying by direct debit who switched banks. That’s a payment-method update on their record or recurring commitment, not an organization-level change. Handle it on the constituent’s side and confirm with Blackbaud support how stored account details are updated in your setup, since stored payment data is handled by Blackbaud’s payment service rather than kept as plain fields you edit.
1. Change where card payments settle
Card and digital wallet payments taken in Altru run through Blackbaud’s payment processing (Blackbaud Merchant Services for most Altru customers). The bank account that receives those settlements is attached to your merchant account, not to anything inside Altru itself. Changing it is a request to the processor, and it typically involves verification of the new account and an authorized signer.
A few things to settle before you submit it:
- Ask about timing. Find out how long the change takes and from which settlement date it applies. Plan for a few days where some deposits still go to the old bank.
- Ask about fees, refunds, and chargebacks. Processors often debit fees and disputes from the same account they deposit to. Confirm which account those will come from after the switch.
- Keep the old account open for a while. Don’t let finance close it the day the change goes live. Late settlements, a chargeback on an old sale, or a fee withdrawal can still hit it for weeks.
If you use more than one merchant account (say, one for admissions and one for development), each needs its own change.
2. Update bank accounts and deposits inside Altru
Altru keeps its own record of the bank accounts you deposit into, so staff can build deposits and finance can match them to bank statements. When you move banks:
- Add the new bank account rather than editing the old one. Past deposits are tied to the old account, and overwriting its details makes historical reconciliation confusing.
- Close out open deposits on the old account before the cutover date, so nothing is half in one bank and half in the other.
- Retire the old account once its last deposit is reconciled. Mark it inactive if your configuration allows it; don’t delete it.
- Tell the people who create deposits, usually the business office and whoever handles cash from the front desk and store, which account to pick starting on what date.
Exactly where bank accounts live and what you can edit depends on your Altru configuration and security role. If you don’t see these options, an administrator with full rights can check, or Blackbaud support can tell you what applies to your database.
3. Check your general ledger mapping
This is the step people forget. If the new bank means a new cash account number in your accounting system, Altru’s GL mapping has to point to it, or revenue will keep posting to the old cash account even though the money is going somewhere else.
- Get the new cash account number from finance, and confirm it already exists in your chart of accounts.
- Find every place in Altru’s GL setup that references the old cash account. Payment methods and deposit-related mappings are the usual suspects, but check all of them, since each organization maps differently.
- Post a final batch on the old mapping before you switch, so one batch doesn’t mix old and new accounts.
- After the change, run a small test: one transaction of each payment type, then review the batch before posting.
If your finance team keeps the same cash account in the ledger and only the bank behind it changes, you may not need to touch the GL mapping at all. Ask them before you start editing.
4. Pick a cutover date and write it down
A clean switch is mostly about timing. Choose a date, ideally at the start of a month or accounting period, and agree with finance on:
- The last day deposits are made to the old account.
- The date the merchant account change takes effect, and how you’ll handle overlap.
- Who reconciles the old account until it’s empty and closed.
- Where cash and checks from the front desk go during the transition.
Put this in a one-page note for the business office and front-of-house leads. Most problems after a bank change come from someone using the old process because no one told them the date.
Things to double-check afterward
- Refunds on older sales. Card refunds go back through the processor no matter where the original money was deposited. Make sure finance knows a refund on an old sale may come out of the new account.
- Recurring payments. Your bank change doesn’t affect donors’ or members’ stored payment methods. Those keep running through the processor, so there’s nothing to re-collect from constituents.
- Reports and queries that filter on a specific bank account or cash account. Update them, or next month’s deposit report will look empty.
- The first full statement from the new bank. Reconcile it against Altru deposits line by line once, so you catch anything still going to the old account.
Quick answers
Can I just edit the old bank account’s details in Altru?
You may be able to, but we wouldn’t. Historical deposits stay attached to that record, and changing its details makes past reconciliations hard to read. Add a new account and retire the old one.
Does Blackbaud have to be involved?
For the card settlement side, yes: the merchant account’s bank details are changed with the processor, not in Altru. The in-Altru steps and GL mapping are usually handled by your own administrator and finance team.
