A school group books a spring field trip, pays a non-refundable deposit, and cancels three weeks out. Your policy says you keep the deposit. Altru’s group sales cancellation, though, is built around giving money back, so the person handling it is left wondering how to cancel the visit without sending a refund.
Altru doesn’t give you a single “forfeit deposit” action. You can still record a kept deposit cleanly, as long as the money stays on the reservation as earned revenue instead of going back out. Below is how to think about it, a workaround many admins use, and what to check with finance before you make it standard practice.
Why canceling and keeping the money don’t fit together
In Altru, a group sales reservation holds the items (admission, programs, add-ons) and the payments applied to them. Canceling the reservation removes what was being sold, which leaves the deposit as an overpayment. The cancellation path then expects you to refund it.
Accounting sees it differently. A forfeited deposit isn’t an overpayment. It’s money the group agreed to pay in exchange for holding the date, and once they cancel, it’s earned. What you need is a way to show that in Altru: something on the reservation that the deposit pays for.
The common workaround: swap the visit for a cancellation fee
Many organizations handle this by changing what the reservation sells instead of canceling it outright. In practice:
- Create a dedicated item for forfeited deposits. This can be a fee or a miscellaneous item named something like “Group cancellation fee” or “Forfeited deposit.” Give it an open or adjustable price so it can match whatever the group paid. Map it to the revenue or GL account your finance team wants forfeitures to land in.
- Edit the reservation, not just its status. Remove the admission and program items the group won’t use, then add the cancellation fee item at the deposit amount. The deposit already on file now pays for the fee, and the balance due should be zero.
- Release the capacity. Once the original items are off the reservation, the time slot, program, or space the group was holding should free up for someone else. Confirm this in your scheduling view. A forfeited booking that still blocks a tour slot is a real cost.
- Close out the reservation. Use whichever status your team uses for finished bookings, or a custom status if you’ve set one up for cancellations. Add a note with the cancellation date, who asked for it, and a reference to the deposit terms in the contract.
The point of this approach is that no refund is ever created, so nothing goes back to the card or check, and the revenue shows up on a line you can report on.
Test it before you rely on it
Behavior can vary with how your fees, items, and reservation statuses are set up, and with which Altru release you’re on. Before you train staff, run the whole process in a sandbox or on a test reservation. Check what lands in your revenue batch and the GL distributions, and confirm the capacity actually frees up. If anything looks off, especially a refund being created automatically when items are removed, stop and ask Blackbaud support how your configuration handles it.
What not to do
- Don’t refund and then re-charge. Refunding the deposit and charging a new “fee” for the same amount moves money twice, can hit the group’s card twice in your processor, and leaves a messy trail for reconciliation.
- Don’t leave the reservation open with the original items. It shows a visit that will never happen, holds capacity, and can inflate attendance or advance sales reports.
- Don’t keep the money as an unexplained overpayment. A credit balance with no item behind it is easy to refund by mistake later, and finance will ask what it is at month-end.
Partial forfeits and rebookings
Not every cancellation is all or nothing. A few situations come up a lot:
- Partial forfeiture. If your policy keeps only part of the deposit (say, a flat processing amount), set the cancellation fee to that amount and refund only the difference. That’s one partial refund, not a full refund followed by a new charge.
- Rebooking instead of canceling. If the group moves to another date, change the date and items on the same reservation and leave the deposit applied. Don’t cancel and rebook, because that splits the history and the payment across two records.
- Size reductions. When a group of 80 shows up as 50, decide ahead of time whether the deposit covers the missing headcount. If it does, a fee line for the shortfall works the same way.
Get the policy and the reporting to agree
The Altru side is easier when the rules are already settled. Before you roll this out, agree with finance and your group sales lead on a few things:
- When a deposit becomes non-refundable (at booking, or a set number of days before the visit).
- Who can approve an exception, and how that gets noted on the reservation.
- Which revenue account forfeitures post to, so they don’t get mixed in with admission revenue.
- How forfeitures show up in reporting. A simple query on reservations that include the cancellation fee item gives you a running list of forfeited deposits and their total.
Put the deposit terms in your group confirmation and contract in plain words. If someone disputes a kept deposit, the reservation note and the signed terms are what you’ll point to.
Quick answers
Can Altru mark a deposit as forfeited directly?
Not as a dedicated action, as far as most admins have found. The usual method is to replace the reservation’s items with a cancellation fee item that the deposit pays for. Confirm on your own configuration.
Will the group get a refund notice?
Not if no refund is created. Send your own cancellation confirmation that states the deposit was kept under the agreed terms.
Does this count toward attendance?
It shouldn’t. Once the admission items are removed, the reservation should no longer show expected visitors. Check your attendance reports after your first test to make sure.
