Your website is where most people decide whether to buy a ticket, join, or give. For organizations on Blackbaud Altru, the last step of that decision usually happens on an Altru web form. Those forms work, but they often look and feel different from the rest of your site, and on a phone they can feel like a detour. Checkouts is our answer for organizations that want to keep Altru on the back end and give buyers a better Altru checkout on the front end.
What Checkouts is
Checkouts is a branded, mobile-friendly checkout that replaces Altru web forms for three things:
- Tickets for general admission and timed entry
- Memberships
- Donations
Buyers can pay with Apple Pay or Google Pay as well as a card, and the transaction data writes back to Altru. Your constituent records, revenue, and reporting stay in Altru. Your staff keep using the queries, reports, and processes they already know.
Who it’s for
Checkouts is built for museums, zoos, aquariums, gardens, and historic sites that have decided Altru is staying. If you’re in the middle of replacing Altru entirely, this isn’t the right tool. If you’re happy with Altru on the back end but unhappy with what buyers see online, it is.
A few signs you’re a good fit:
- Most of your online traffic is on phones, and your current forms weren’t designed with phones first.
- Your marketing team has spent time trying to make Altru web forms match your brand and hasn’t gotten as far as they’d like.
- You sell tickets, memberships, and donations online and want them to feel like part of the same website, not three different experiences.
- You’ve heard from guests or members that buying online was confusing, or you see people starting to buy and not finishing.
Video walkthrough
This short video gives an overview of Checkouts.
What stays the same in Altru
For an Altru administrator, this is usually the first concern, and it should be. Checkouts changes what the buyer sees. It’s not meant to change how you run Altru.
- Altru remains where the data lives. Sales, memberships, and gifts write back so your constituent records and revenue reflect what happened online.
- Your membership programs, price types, and events are still set up and maintained in Altru.
- Your reports and queries keep working against Altru data.
Before switching any sales channel, we’d recommend the same thing you’d do with any change to online sales: run test transactions, then confirm in Altru that the constituent, revenue, and membership records look the way your finance and membership staff expect. Check how the records land in your daily reconciliation, not just whether they appear.
Questions to ask before you switch
Whether you choose Checkouts or not, these are worth working through with your team before replacing any part of your online checkout:
- Which flows matter most? For many organizations it’s timed tickets during the busy season, followed by membership renewals. Start where the volume is.
- What does reconciliation look like today? Know how online sales currently show up for finance, so you can compare before and after.
- Who owns the page design? Decide whether marketing or the Altru admin signs off on how the checkout looks and what it says.
- What happens to existing links? Make a list of every place your current web form URLs live: your website, email templates, social bios, printed QR codes. They’ll all need updating.
- How will you handle questions at the desk? Front-line staff should see the new checkout before guests do, so they can answer “I bought online, now what?”
Add-ons that work inside the checkout
Two optional features sit inside the same checkout:
- Upsells let you offer a membership or add-ons in the cart, which is a natural moment to suggest membership to someone buying several admission tickets.
- Cover the Credit Card Fee gives guests and donors the option to cover processing fees at checkout.
If you sell timed tickets, Checkouts pairs with Calendar Builder, which puts an embeddable ticketing calendar with real-time Altru availability on your website.
Quick answers
Do we have to stop using Altru?
No. Checkouts is designed for organizations keeping Altru. Transaction data writes back to it.
Can we move one flow at a time?
Ask us about your specific setup. Starting with one high-traffic flow, testing it thoroughly, and then expanding is usually the lower-risk path.
Does it support digital wallets?
Yes. Buyers can pay with Apple Pay or Google Pay.
To see how it would look with your branding and your Altru setup, visit the Checkouts page.
