Every gift shop builds up dead stock in Altru: last season’s exhibit tie-ins, a T-shirt run that sold out in two sizes, a vendor you stopped ordering from three years ago. None of it should be on the register, but it should stay in your history so last year’s sales reports still add up. Inactivating is the right tool. Doing it fifty times by hand is the hard part.
This guide covers two things that get mixed up: the difference between inactivating a whole merchandise item and inactivating a single SKU under it, and what your options really are when you need to retire a long list at once.
Item or SKU: decide which level you are retiring
In Altru, a merchandise item is the parent product (say, “Exhibit Logo Tee”), and the SKUs underneath it are the sellable variations, typically size and color combinations. That two-level structure is why “make it inactive” can mean two different things.
- Inactivate the item when the whole product is done. Nobody should be able to sell any version of it. This is the usual choice for discontinued lines, past exhibit merchandise, and seasonal goods you will not reorder.
- Retire a SKU when the product continues but one variation does not. You stopped carrying XXL, or the navy colorway was dropped. The item stays active and the other sizes keep selling.
Before you start, confirm how SKU-level status behaves in your version of Altru. Open a test item with several SKUs and check whether an individual SKU can be marked inactive on its own, and whether doing so removes just that variation from sales. Behavior in this area has not always matched what staff assume, so a five-minute test in a sandbox or on a throwaway item is worth more than any general advice. If SKU-level retirement turns out not to be available or not to behave the way you need, the fallback many shops use is to zero out the variation’s on-hand quantity and rename or flag it clearly so cashiers do not try to ring it up.
What inactivating does and does not do
- It keeps the item off the point of sale for new transactions.
- It does not delete sales history. Past revenue tied to the item stays put, which is the main reason to inactivate rather than delete.
- It does not automatically clear on-hand inventory. If the system still shows units in stock, decide whether to adjust them out first, or your inventory valuation will carry ghost stock.
Is there a true bulk inactivate?
Honestly, we are not aware of a dependable built-in way to select a list of merchandise items and flip them all to inactive in one action. Status is typically changed one item at a time from the item’s own record. Altru does have import tools, but whether merchandise item status can be updated through an import in your environment is something to verify before you plan around it. Ask Blackbaud support directly, or try an update import against one or two test items in a sandbox. Do not run an untested import against your live merchandise catalog.
If you are unsure, assume the work is manual and make the manual work as short as possible.
Making a manual cleanup fast and safe
- Build the list with a query. Create a merchandise query that pulls item name, SKUs, category or department, vendor, quantity on hand, and last sale date if your query view exposes it. Filter for what you want to retire: no sales in the past year, a specific vendor, a closed exhibit’s category. Export it so you have a checklist.
- Review it with the shop manager. The query will catch things that look dead but are not, like a book you only stock in December. Have a person who knows the shelves sign off on the list.
- Deal with remaining stock first. For anything showing units on hand, decide: mark down and sell through, write off, or return to vendor. Make the inventory adjustments before inactivating so counts and valuation stay clean.
- Split the list by level. Separate whole items to inactivate from individual SKUs to retire. Mixing them in one pass is how an active product ends up disappearing from the register.
- Work the list in one sitting. Keep the query results open, update each item, and mark it done on your checklist. Many staff find an hour of focused clicking goes further than they expected once the list is settled.
- Re-run the query as a check. Add item status as an output column. Anything still active that should not be shows up immediately.
- Test at the register. Search for a few retired items and SKUs at the point of sale to confirm they no longer come up.
Keep it from piling up again
Bulk cleanups usually happen because nobody owns retirement. A few habits help:
- Save the “no recent sales” query and run it quarterly, so the list stays at a dozen items instead of hundreds.
- When an exhibit closes, add “retire tie-in merchandise” to the closing checklist alongside the signage and the web page.
- Use a consistent naming or category convention for seasonal and limited-run items so they are easy to filter later.
- Note the date and reason when you inactivate something, so the next manager knows it was deliberate.
Quick answers
Should I delete old merchandise items instead?
Generally no. Deleting risks breaking the link to past sales, and Altru may block deletion of items that already have transactions. Inactivating keeps the history and cleans up the register.
Can I reactivate an item later?
Inactivation is meant to be reversible, which is another reason to prefer it over deletion. Confirm on a test item that pricing and SKUs come back the way you expect.
Will inactive items still appear in my merchandise reports?
Historical sales should still report. Whether inactive items appear in inventory or catalog-style reports depends on the report’s filters, so check the ones your shop and finance teams rely on after your first cleanup.
