A guest calls to say the timed tickets they bought yesterday are for the wrong Saturday. Or a cashier rang a family up under the grandmother’s constituent record instead of the parent’s. Or two adult admissions should have been one adult and one senior. The natural instinct is to open the order and fix it. In Altru, that usually isn’t how it works.
Once a sales order is completed, Altru treats it as a financial transaction, not a draft. The items, prices, and payments on it feed revenue, and eventually your general ledger. So instead of “editing” the order, you are almost always choosing between a handful of corrective moves. The trick is knowing which move fits which mistake.
First question: is the order finished?
The answer changes everything.
- Still in progress. If the order hasn’t been completed (the cashier hasn’t taken payment yet, or a group sales reservation is still open), you can generally add, remove, and change items freely. Group reservations in particular are built to be changed up until the event and final payment.
- Completed but not posted. The sale is done, but the revenue hasn’t been posted to your GL. You have more room here, and corrections are cleaner for your finance team.
- Completed and posted. Any correction will show up as a new transaction (a refund, an adjustment, a new sale) alongside the original. That’s by design: the audit trail stays intact.
If you’re not sure where an order stands, check its status and whether its revenue has been posted before you touch anything.
Match the fix to the mistake
Wrong date or time on a ticket
This is the most common one. Depending on your Altru setup and permissions, there may be an exchange option for tickets that lets you move a guest to a different program time without a full refund. If you don’t see one, or it doesn’t cover your case, the fallback is to refund the original tickets and sell new ones for the correct time, ideally applying the refund to the new sale so the guest isn’t charged twice. Before you do it for real, try it once in a sandbox or on a test order so you know exactly what lands in revenue.
Wrong quantity or price type
One adult should have been a senior, or a child ticket was left off. For a missing item, a separate new sale is often simplest. For an overcharge, refund the specific line rather than the whole order, so the rest of the visit stays intact. Watch capacity: if you refund and resell into a timed entry that is close to capacity, confirm the new slot has room before you release the original seats.
Wrong constituent on the order
This matters more than it looks, because it affects who gets credit for the visit, who receives the post-visit email, and membership benefit tracking. Whether you can reassign the patron on a completed order depends on your version and security settings, so confirm with Blackbaud support rather than assuming. If you can’t reassign it, a refund and resale under the right record is the reliable path. If the real problem is that the right person has two records, merge the duplicates first so this doesn’t keep happening.
Wrong payment method
Someone recorded a card as cash, or split tender went to the wrong method. How much you can change here depends on your setup and on whether the revenue has posted, so don’t assume the order screen is the right place to fix it. Talk to whoever reconciles your daily sales first: they would rather correct it before posting than discover a drawer that won’t balance. If you’re unsure what Altru allows, test the correction in a sandbox or ask Blackbaud support.
Notes, delivery method, or other non-financial details
Things that don’t touch money are the most likely to be directly editable. If a field that looks harmless is locked, that’s a sign Altru considers it part of the transaction.
Keep the cleanup from getting out of hand
Every refund-and-resell creates extra rows in revenue reports. A few are fine. Dozens a week will make your attendance and revenue numbers harder to trust. A few habits help:
- Decide who can refund. Limit refund and exchange rights to supervisors or a small group, and give frontline staff a clear way to flag a fix rather than improvising.
- Use a consistent reason. If your setup supports refund reasons or order notes, pick a short list (“wrong date,” “wrong patron,” “price type”) and use it every time. Later you can query them and see which mistake is most common.
- Fix the upstream cause. If wrong dates come mostly from online orders, look at how your web form shows times. If wrong patrons come from the desk, a better lookup habit (search by email or phone, not just last name) prevents most of them.
- Close the loop with finance. Agree on whether corrections should happen before or after posting, and stick to it.
Quick answers
Is there a way to just reopen a completed sales order?
Not as a general setting that we’re aware of. Altru keeps completed orders tied to their revenue. If you think your version offers more, test in a sandbox or ask Blackbaud support before relying on it.
Will a refund and resale double-count attendance?
It generally shouldn’t if the original tickets are refunded, but check how your attendance reports treat refunded tickets. It can if staff sell the new tickets but forget the refund, which is why a supervisor check is worth it.
Can I void an order instead of refunding it?
Ask your finance lead. Whether a void or a refund is appropriate usually depends on whether the revenue has posted and whether the card has settled.
