A school bus was booked for 10:00, the education team set up a classroom, and nobody came. The next morning someone asks a reasonable question: how do we record that in Altru so we stop booking that school without a deposit?
The short answer is that Altru group sales doesn’t give you an obvious “No Show” status that sits alongside the statuses you already use for reservations. That’s worth confirming in your own database, since configuration varies and Blackbaud updates the product, but most organizations end up building their own way of flagging these groups. Below is how to choose a method that still holds up when you run reports six months from now.
Decide what a no-show means for your organization
Before touching any records, agree on a definition. “No-show” covers a few different situations, and each one has different consequences for revenue and follow-up:
- Full no-show: the group never arrived and never called.
- Late cancellation: they called the morning of, or after your cancellation cutoff.
- Partial arrival: 60 students were booked and 25 showed up.
Partial arrivals are usually handled by adjusting the counts on the reservation, so they don’t belong in a no-show flag. Late cancellations and full no-shows are the ones people want to track, and many teams treat them differently because one group communicated and the other didn’t.
Option 1: Cancel the reservation and record why
The cleanest approach for capacity and revenue is to cancel the reservation after the fact. That releases any held capacity and keeps the itinerary from inflating attendance numbers. The catch is that a plain cancellation looks exactly like a group that politely called two weeks ahead.
To keep the difference, record a reason. If your Altru setup offers cancellation reasons or a similar code table, add a “No-show” value and require staff to pick it. If you aren’t sure whether your version supports this for group sales, test a cancellation in a sandbox or ask Blackbaud support before you write the procedure.
Pay attention to money before you cancel. If the group paid a deposit or prepaid in full, decide in advance whether you keep it, credit it toward a future visit, or refund it. Cancelling a paid reservation can trigger refund steps, so walk your finance lead through one test case first.
Option 2: Leave the reservation in place and flag it
Some organizations prefer to leave the reservation as booked, especially if they keep the deposit and want the revenue to stay where it is. In that case you need a flag that a query can find. Common choices:
- An attribute on the reservation or on the group’s constituent record, such as “Group no-show” with a date. Attributes are queryable and easy to report on, and that’s what makes them useful here.
- A constituent note or interaction on the school or tour company record. Notes are good for context (“bus broke down, rebooked for May”) but hard to count, so pair them with an attribute.
Flagging the constituent rather than only the reservation is what makes the information useful next time. When the same school calls in the fall, whoever takes the booking should see the history on the record without having to run a report.
Option 3: A combination most teams settle on
In practice, a reliable setup looks like this:
- The morning after, the group sales coordinator reviews yesterday’s reservations against what actually checked in.
- Any group that didn’t arrive is cancelled (or left in place, per your deposit policy) with a “No-show” reason.
- An attribute is added to the group’s constituent record with the visit date.
- A short note captures anything unusual, like a weather closure on their end or a call that came in too late.
Assign this to one role, not “whoever notices.” No-show tracking breaks down quickly when three people each do it slightly differently.
Reporting on no-shows
Once the flag exists, build a query that pulls groups with the no-show attribute or cancellation reason in a date range. Include the contact, the booked count, and any payment on the reservation. That gives you:
- A list of repeat offenders you might require a deposit from next season.
- A rough sense of how much capacity no-shows cost you, which helps when you set overbooking limits for school groups.
- A follow-up list for a friendly “we missed you, want to rebook?” email.
Save the query somewhere your group sales team can run it on their own, and review it at the end of each school season.
Prevent some of them up front
Tracking helps, but a reminder a few days before the visit catches a lot of groups that forgot or changed plans. A confirmation call or email with a clear “reply if your plans changed” line turns some no-shows into ordinary cancellations, and those are much easier to handle. A written deposit or cancellation policy, included in the confirmation, gives you a fair basis for keeping a deposit when a group doesn’t come.
Quick answers
Can I add a custom reservation status called “No Show”?
Don’t assume you can. Check what your group sales configuration lets you edit, and confirm with Blackbaud support if the option isn’t clearly there. The cancellation-reason and attribute approaches work either way.
Should no-shows count toward attendance?
No. Whatever method you choose, make sure your attendance reports exclude flagged reservations, and test one report after you set it up.
