A school bus pulls up with 58 fourth graders, six chaperones, and a teacher holding a confirmation email. Someone at admissions needs to get all 64 people through the gate, and the question is whether you hand over a stack of printed tickets, a single group pass, or just a headcount on a clipboard. Altru can support more than one of those approaches, but the printing side takes some setup before the bus arrives.
This guide covers how group ticket printing generally works in Altru, what has to be in place for it to work, and when printing individual tickets is worth the effort at all.
First, decide whether the group needs individual tickets
Before anyone configures a printer, settle what the tickets are for. Printing one ticket per person makes sense when:
- Guests pass through a turnstile or scanning point that expects one barcode per person.
- The group splits up and enters timed experiences (a planetarium show, a behind-the-scenes tour) at different times.
- You need a physical receipt-like item for each visitor, for example a souvenir ticket or a re-entry pass.
It often does not make sense for a school or camp group that arrives together, stays together, and leaves together. In those cases many sites check the group in against the reservation, count heads, and give the leader a single printed itinerary or group pass. That is faster at the gate and avoids wasting ticket stock when the actual count differs from the booked count, which happens often.
Some organizations land in the middle: print individual tickets only for the add-on programs, and admit the general admission portion as a group.
What has to be set up for printing to work
Group sales reservations in Altru are tied to the programs and events the group is booked into, and ticket printing depends on several pieces lining up. If printing does not work, it is usually one of these:
- A ticket layout for the program. Tickets need a layout to print from, and in most setups that is tied to the program configuration. If a program was created for group sales only and never given a ticket layout, there may be nothing to print. Check the program setup alongside a program you know prints correctly at daily sales.
- A working ticket printer on that workstation. Group sales staff often work from back-office computers that were never set up with a ticket printer, while the front desk machines were. Confirm the printer is installed and selected on the computer that will do the printing, and test with a daily sales ticket first to rule out the reservation as the cause.
- The reservation’s status and payment state. Depending on how your organization configured group sales, a reservation that is still tentative, or has an outstanding balance, may not be ready to print. If you are unsure what your configuration enforces, test with a confirmed, paid reservation in a sandbox or training environment.
- Security rights. The user printing needs permission to perform ticket printing tasks in group sales. If one staff member can print and another cannot from the same reservation, look at their system roles before anything else.
Because Altru’s group sales screens vary with your version and configuration, we are not going to list exact buttons here. If the print option is missing or grayed out after checking the four items above, Blackbaud support can confirm what your version expects.
When to print: in advance or on arrival
There are two common rhythms, and each has a cost.
Printing ahead of the visit
Staff print the tickets the day before or the morning of, put them in an envelope labeled with the group name, and hand the envelope to the leader. Check-in is fast. The downside is the headcount: if 64 were booked and 51 show up, you now have 13 printed tickets that need to be accounted for, and possibly a refund or adjustment on the reservation.
Printing at check-in
The admissions lead confirms the actual count with the group leader, updates the reservation if your policy allows, and then prints. Ticket counts match reality and revenue reports stay clean. It is slower, so it works best when the group check-in happens at a separate window or a staff member is assigned to meet groups.
Whichever you choose, write the rule down and attach it to your group sales procedures. Mixed practice, where some coordinators print ahead and some do not, is what produces reconciliation headaches at month end.
Handling headcount changes after tickets are printed
This is the part that causes the most cleanup. A few habits help:
- Agree on a final count deadline with group leaders, such as 48 hours before the visit, and print only after that point.
- Collect unused tickets at the gate and keep them with the reservation paperwork until the reservation is adjusted.
- Adjust the reservation, not just the paper. If you invoice on actual attendance, the reservation needs to reflect who came. Printed tickets that were never used should not drive revenue.
- Know your reprint path. Tickets get lost or a leader forgets the envelope. Test how reprinting works in your setup and whether it creates a record you can audit, so staff are not guessing in front of a group.
A simple alternative: the group pass
If individual tickets are more trouble than they are worth, a single printed group document can do the job. Many sites use the reservation confirmation or itinerary, which already lists the group name, arrival time, programs, and booked count. Staff mark the actual count on it at entry and file it. If you scan admissions for attendance reporting, confirm how you will record group attendance without individual barcodes, since that affects how visits show up in your reports.
Quick answers
Can I print group tickets from daily sales instead?
You can sell and print tickets at daily sales, but that creates a separate transaction rather than tickets tied to the group reservation. That splits the group’s revenue and attendance across two places, so it is usually better to fix printing on the reservation itself.
Why do tickets print for some groups but not others?
Usually the programs differ. A group booked into a program without a ticket layout may not print, even if another group’s program does. Compare the program setups side by side.
