A school pays for a field trip, then cancels two days out. A member pays twice for the same renewal. A family buys timed tickets, can’t come, and asks if the money can “sit on their account” for a later visit. Each time, someone at the desk asks the same thing: how do I put a credit on this person’s account in Altru?
The honest answer is that it depends on what the money is attached to. Altru is built around transactions such as orders, memberships, reservations, pledges, and gifts, rather than around a running customer balance. Some of those have a real “balance due” you can pay against. A general-purpose wallet or store credit on a constituent record is a different thing, and as far as we know Altru doesn’t offer one as a standard feature. Before you build a process around that assumption, confirm it for your own setup by testing in a sandbox or asking Blackbaud support, since configuration and add-ons vary.
Here’s how to think through each situation and keep the books clean.
Start with one question: what is the money for?
“Credit” means different things to different people. Pin it down before anyone touches the record.
- Money toward something that already exists with an amount owed, like a group sales reservation or a pledge. This is the easy case.
- Money that’s already been paid and needs to move to something else, like a cancelled visit being rebooked.
- Extra money paid by mistake, like a duplicate charge or an overpayment.
- Money the guest wants held for some future, undefined purchase.
The first three map to things Altru handles. The last one is where most of the trouble starts.
Paying against an existing balance
Group sales deposits and balances
Group sales reservations are the closest thing Altru has to an account with a balance. A reservation has a total, and you can record a deposit and later payments against it until it’s paid off. If a school sends a check before the trip, apply it to that reservation rather than recording it as a standalone payment. The reservation then shows what’s still owed, and your group sales reports stay accurate.
If the group is coming back later in the year, it’s usually cleaner to apply payments to each reservation separately than to try to carry a surplus from one to the next.
Pledges
For donors, a pledge works the same way. Record the commitment as a pledge, then apply each payment to it as revenue. The constituent record shows the remaining balance, and your acknowledgment letters stay tied to real payments. Don’t log a pledge payment as a new gift; that inflates giving totals and leaves the pledge looking unpaid.
Moving money that’s already been paid
When a guest wants to switch dates on an advance sales order, look first at whether your setup lets staff exchange or reschedule the tickets on the existing order. If it does, use that. The revenue stays on the original transaction and nothing needs to be “credited.”
If an exchange isn’t possible (a different program, a membership instead of tickets, a cross-year move), the usual pattern is two clean transactions: refund the original, then process the new purchase. It’s an extra step, but each record says exactly what happened, and your finance team can reconcile it against the batch without guessing.
Overpayments and duplicate charges
Duplicate charges should almost always be refunded to the original payment method, and promptly. Holding a guest’s money because they “might come back” creates a liability your finance office probably doesn’t want, and it’s an easy way to end up with a chargeback.
Some guests, especially members, will say “just keep it.” If they want it to be a donation, record it as a donation, with their clear agreement, and send an acknowledgment. Write down who agreed and when, in a note on the constituent record. Don’t quietly convert overpayments to gifts.
When the guest wants a balance held for later
This is the request Altru isn’t really designed for. Before reaching for a workaround, talk to finance. Many organizations decide they simply won’t hold open-ended credits: they refund, or they sell a gift certificate or gift membership if they offer one. That’s often the best answer for everyone.
If your organization does allow held credits, keep them visible and auditable:
- Agree on where the money lives in accounting. Finance should decide which account holds unapplied funds. Don’t let the desk invent a revenue category.
- Flag the constituent. Use a constituent attribute or a consistent note format with the amount, date, reason, and staff initials, so anyone pulling up the record sees it.
- Build a query of open credits. A query on that attribute gives you a live list to review monthly. Without it, credits get forgotten.
- Set an expiration policy. Decide how long a credit stays open, and what happens after. Check your state’s unclaimed property rules with finance before you pick a number.
- Close the loop when it’s used. When the guest returns, process the new purchase, record the payment against the held funds per finance’s instructions, and update or remove the attribute.
A short checklist for the desk
- Is there an existing reservation or pledge? Apply the payment there.
- Is it a date change on tickets? Exchange if you can; otherwise refund and rebook.
- Was the guest charged twice? Refund to the original card.
- Do they want it held? Follow the written policy, flag the record, and tell a supervisor.
Post that next to the register. Most “credit” questions get settled at the counter, and seasonal staff will make it up on the spot unless the answer is written down.
Quick answers
Can I give a constituent a negative balance or store credit in Altru?
Not that we’re aware of as a built-in option. Confirm with Blackbaud support or in a sandbox, and plan on a tracked workaround or a refund if it isn’t available in your setup.
Should a cancelled group trip’s deposit roll to next year?
That’s a policy decision more than a software one. Many teams refund it or apply it to a new reservation once it’s booked, rather than leaving it unattached.
