“I tried to sign up for the summer camp and it wouldn’t let me.” When a message like that reaches your inbox, it could be any of five problems. In Altru, a registration web form sits on top of program or event setup, pricing, capacity, constituent matching and the payment processor. A break in any one of those looks the same to the person filling out the form.
The fastest fix is to stop guessing and pin down which layer failed. Below are the problems we see most often, grouped by what the registrant reports, with what to check for each.
First, reproduce it yourself
Before you change any settings, go through the form the way a member of the public would:
- Use a private or incognito browser window so you aren’t logged in as staff.
- Try it on a phone as well as a desktop. Many registration complaints only happen on mobile.
- Pick the same program, date and price type the registrant picked. Ask them if you don’t know.
- Write down exactly where it fails: the event doesn’t show up, you can’t add a registrant, the total is wrong, payment is declined, or it completes but no confirmation arrives.
Where it fails points you to the right part of Altru. If you can’t reproduce it, the problem is probably on the registrant’s side (browser extensions, an old saved page, autofill putting bad data in required fields). Even so, check the next sections before you close the ticket.
“The event or session isn’t showing up”
This is almost always a setup problem, not a web form problem. Check:
- Is the program or event available for online sales? A program can be set up correctly for the desk and still not be offered on the web.
- Is it inside its sales window? Look for advance sales or on-sale dates that haven’t started yet or have already passed.
- Is capacity used up? A session that is full, or that has capacity held for group sales, may simply drop off the list.
- Does the price type allow web sales? If the only price types on the event are staff-only or member-only, the public won’t see anything they can buy.
- Is the form pointed at the right program? When forms get copied from last season, they sometimes still reference last year’s event.
“It won’t let me add another child (or guest)”
Multi-registrant forms are where people get the most confused. A parent registering two kids may run into a per-order limit, a required field that has to be filled in again for each registrant, or an age or membership rule tied to one price type. Read the form’s instructions as a first-time visitor would. If the form doesn’t say plainly how to add a second registrant, assume people will miss it.
Whether a web form can collect different custom fields for each registrant (allergies, T-shirt size, pickup contact, and so on) depends on how the form and registration options are set up. If you aren’t sure Altru supports the setup you want, build it in a sandbox or test environment and submit a few test orders, or ask Blackbaud support, before you promise it to your education team.
“I registered, but now there are two of me”
Duplicate constituent records are a quiet registration problem. When a web registrant doesn’t sign in, Altru tries to match them to an existing constituent. If the match fails because of a typo, a new email address, or a parent registering under a child’s name, Altru creates a new record. That person’s history, membership discount or household link then belongs to the wrong record.
To keep it in check:
- Encourage members to sign in before registering, and say on the form why it matters (member pricing).
- Run a regular query for constituents created by web transactions in the past week and look for obvious matches.
- Merge duplicates on a schedule rather than whenever someone happens to notice. A weekly review is easier than cleaning up a season’s worth at once.
“Member pricing didn’t apply”
Check the membership record first. Is the membership active as of the event date, and not just today? Then check whether the registrant was signed in and matched to the constituent who actually holds the membership. A spouse or another household member who registers under their own record may not get the discount. That depends on how your membership program defines who is covered.
“My card was declined” or “I was charged but didn’t get a confirmation”
- Declines: look at the payment processor’s logs, not just Altru. Address verification and security code mismatches are common reasons, especially when the browser autofills an old billing address.
- Charged with no record: find the transaction in your processor, then search Altru revenue for the same amount and date. If the payment went through but nothing posted, don’t run the card again. Take it to Blackbaud support with the processor transaction ID.
- No confirmation email: check the email address on the constituent record for typos, check whether the form’s confirmation email is turned on, and ask the registrant to look in spam. Gmail and school or work email filters often catch these messages.
Prevent the next round
- Test every registration form end to end before it goes live, on a phone, with a real low-dollar payment you refund afterward.
- Give front-line staff a one-page sheet listing the questions above, so they collect the device, program, date and failure point on the first call.
- Check registrations against capacity daily during the first week of a popular launch.
- Keep a short log of each issue and its cause. After a season, patterns show up. Usually one or two setup habits cause most of the trouble.
When the form itself is the bottleneck
Many registration problems are setup issues you can fix inside Altru with the checks above. If your recurring complaints are about the form experience itself (how it looks on a phone, how hard it is to follow, missing Apple Pay or Google Pay), Social Good Checkouts replaces Altru web forms for tickets, memberships and donations with a branded, mobile-friendly checkout that writes the data back to Altru.
