Why Altru Daily Sales Notifications Lose Their Formatting

You write a careful note for cashiers: a bold warning about the closed parking lot, a short bulleted list of today’s sold-out times, a line break between each item. You save it, open Daily Sales, and what shows up is one run-on paragraph. The bold is gone, the bullets are gone, and sometimes a stray symbol has appeared where a dash or quotation mark used to be.

This catches a lot of Altru admins off guard, because the place where you type the message can look more flexible than the place where staff read it. Below is what is likely going on, what you can do about it today, and when to stop fighting it and put the information somewhere else.

What is actually happening

Notifications that appear in Daily Sales are designed to be quick alerts, and in practice they tend to display as plain text. Whatever styling you add while writing the message (bold, italics, bullet characters, extra spacing) is not guaranteed to survive the trip to the sales screen. Depending on where the text came from and how it is displayed, line breaks may be collapsed, list markers may be stripped, and characters that look fine in your editor may render oddly.

We can’t tell you exactly which formatting your version of Altru preserves and which it drops, and you shouldn’t take anyone’s word for it without testing. Blackbaud updates the product, and behavior can differ between where a message is entered and where it is shown. The reliable approach is to assume plain text and confirm anything beyond that yourself.

The copy-and-paste problem

A second cause is often hiding inside the first. When a message is drafted in Word, Outlook, or a Google Doc and pasted into Altru, it brings along characters you can’t see: curly quotes, long dashes, non-breaking spaces, automatic bullet symbols, and sometimes hidden formatting codes. Some of those display as boxes or question marks, and some simply vanish, taking your layout with them.

How to confirm what your setup does

1. Write a test notification by hand. Type it directly into Altru rather than pasting it. Include a line break, a hyphen-style list, a word in all caps, and an apostrophe.
2. View it the way staff will. Open Daily Sales on an actual front-desk workstation, not just your admin machine, and look at what appears.
3. Repeat with pasted text. Paste the same message from your usual drafting tool and compare. If the typed version looks right and the pasted version doesn’t, the problem is the source, not Altru.
4. Use a sandbox if you have one. Testing notifications in your live database means cashiers may see your experiments. If you don’t have a test environment, schedule the test before opening or clear it right after.
5. Ask Blackbaud support if you need a definitive answer about what the notification display supports in your version. Describe what you entered and what appeared; a screenshot of each helps.

Writing notifications that survive plain text

Once you accept that styling won’t carry through, the goal is a message that’s still easy to scan without it. A few habits help:

• Lead with the action. “Upsell membership on every 4+ ticket order” is more useful than a paragraph explaining the new campaign.
• Use capitals sparingly for emphasis. One capitalized word like “TODAY” or “CASH ONLY” stands out. A whole message in caps reads as noise.
• Separate items with plain characters. Numbers (“1)”, “2)”) or a simple pipe ( | ) between items hold up better than bullets or line breaks that may be collapsed.
• Keep each notification to one topic. If you have three things to say, consider whether three short notifications are clearer than one long one. Test how multiple notifications display together before committing to this.
• Type, don’t paste. If you must draft elsewhere, paste into a plain text editor first (Notepad or TextEdit in plain text mode) to strip hidden characters, then copy into Altru.
• Swap fancy punctuation for plain. Straight quotes, regular hyphens, and “and” instead of an ampersand avoid most of the odd-character problems.
• Set an end date or remove it promptly. A stale notification trains staff to ignore all of them, which is a bigger problem than formatting.

When a notification is the wrong tool

If you find yourself wanting headings, tables, or a step-by-step procedure in a Daily Sales notification, that’s usually a sign the content belongs somewhere else. Notifications work best as short prompts that point to something. Longer material does better in:

• A one-page desk reference printed and kept at each register, updated when procedures change.
• A shared document or intranet page staff can open on the workstation, with the notification simply saying where to look (“New group policy: see Desk Guide p. 2”).
• Your pre-shift huddle. Anything time-sensitive and nuanced (a VIP arriving, a gallery closure) is often better said out loud and reinforced with a one-line notification.

For alerts tied to a specific person, such as a member with an accessibility need or a donor who should be greeted by development staff, look at what Altru offers on the constituent record itself rather than a general sales notification. Those details travel with the person, and staff see them when that constituent is pulled up.

Quick answers

Is there a setting that turns rich text on for Daily Sales notifications?
We’re not aware of one, and it’s not something to assume. Test in your environment and confirm with Blackbaud support if formatting matters for your use.

Why did an apostrophe turn into a strange symbol?
Almost always because the text was pasted from a word processor that converted it to a curly quote. Retype it directly in Altru.

Will editing an existing notification fix the formatting?
Editing won’t add styling the display doesn’t support, but retyping pasted text by hand usually clears up stray characters.