A sponsor commits to a table at your gala in August. Their accounts payable department won’t release a check until it gets an invoice with your tax ID, an invoice number, and a due date. You go looking in Altru for a “create invoice” option on the event registration and come up empty-handed, or with something that doesn’t look like what the sponsor’s finance office needs.
That gap is common. Altru records event registrations and the money attached to them well, but sending a formal bill to a company or attendee before payment is a separate job. Below is how to think about it, the options that work with Altru as it stands, and the details that keep your revenue records clean.
Start by separating three things
Most invoicing headaches come from treating these as one step:
- The registration. Who is coming, under which event and registration option, and how many seats.
- The obligation. What the sponsor or attendee owes, and by when.
- The payment. The actual check, card, or transfer, which should post to Altru as revenue against the right constituent and event.
Altru is built around the first and third. The middle piece, a document that says “you owe us this amount,” is where you will likely need a process of your own. Whether your version of Altru can record an unpaid balance on an event registration, or produce a printable invoice from it, depends on your configuration and how your event is set up. If you aren’t sure, test it in a sandbox or ask Blackbaud support before you promise a sponsor a particular format.
Option 1: Record the commitment, then generate the invoice outside Altru
This is the approach many development offices fall back on, and it holds up well for a handful of sponsors.
- Register the sponsor’s constituent record for the event, including the sponsorship level and the guest names you have (or placeholders you’ll fill in later).
- Decide how you track the amount owed. Some organizations record sponsorship commitments as pledges on the organization’s constituent record so the open balance shows up in revenue reporting. Others keep it as a registration with payment pending. Pick one approach for the whole event and talk it through with your finance team, because it affects how the money shows up on reports.
- Build a query that returns the event, the registrant (organization and contact), the amount, and the address. That query is your source for invoices.
- Produce the invoice from the query output, typically with a mail merge in a word processor or a template in your accounting system. Include an invoice number you assign, the event name and date, what’s included in the sponsorship, the amount, the due date, payment instructions, and the deductible portion if you’re stating one.
- Post payment in Altru when it arrives, applied to that registration or pledge, so the open amount is cleared and the revenue lands on the right event.
The weak point is step 5. If the person opening the mail doesn’t know which registration a check belongs to, it gets posted as a general gift and the event report looks short. Put the invoice number in the reference or notes field when you record payment.
Option 2: Let finance issue the invoice
Some organizations already invoice from their accounting system for rentals or facility use. If yours does, sponsorship invoices can go through the same channel. Development keeps the registration in Altru; finance issues the bill and tells you when it’s paid.
This keeps invoice numbering in one place, which auditors like. The cost is a handoff: someone has to reconcile the accounting system’s paid invoices with the Altru registrations, usually monthly. Agree up front on who does that and how often, or you’ll find out in December that three sponsors look unpaid in Altru but paid months ago.
Option 3: Collect payment at registration instead
For individual attendees, an invoice is often more process than the situation needs. If people are buying a $150 ticket, it’s usually simpler to have them pay when they register online and skip billing altogether. Save invoicing for sponsors, corporate tables, and anyone whose payment has to go through an approval step on their end.
Details that save cleanup later
- Bill the organization, register the people. The sponsor’s company is who pays; the guests are who attend. Keep the financial link on the organization record and add guests as they’re named, so the company gets credit and you still know who sat at the table.
- Agree on the fair market value before invoices go out. Sponsors often ask how much is deductible. Settle the benefit value per level with finance first and put it on the invoice the same way every time.
- Keep a simple aging list. A saved query of open sponsorship balances, sorted by due date, tells you who to follow up with. Run it weekly in the month before the event.
- Don’t let invoice numbers drift. If you assign them yourself, keep a running log (even a shared spreadsheet) so two people don’t issue the same number.
Where Social Good fits
Everything above works with Altru and a word processor. The part that tends to drag is getting the payment back in and matched to the right record. Link2Pay sends a branded pay-by-link for things like sponsorships, deposits, and invoices, and the payment posts to Altru, so you can send the sponsor a link alongside your invoice and skip waiting for a check to arrive.
Quick answers
Can Altru email an invoice for an event registration on its own?
We haven’t seen a reliable built-in way to do this for fundraising events, and setups vary. Confirm with Blackbaud support or in a sandbox before you design your process around it.
Should a sponsorship be a pledge or a registration?
Often both: a registration for the guests and the event benefits, plus a financial record for the commitment. How you split it should follow your finance team’s revenue recognition rules, so decide that together before the first invoice goes out.
