Online Express gifts don’t land in Altru on their own. A donor fills out a form on your website, the payment goes through Blackbaud’s processing, and the transaction then waits outside your database until someone on staff pulls it in, matches it to the right person, and turns it into revenue. Skip that step for a few weeks and you end up with donors who never got a thank-you and a deposit nobody can reconcile.
This guide covers the routine that keeps those transactions moving: how often to download, how to make good constituent matches, and how to tie everything back to the money in your merchant account. Exact screen names vary by Altru release and by how your organization’s forms were set up, so treat the steps below as the workflow, not a click-by-click script.
How the process works, in plain terms
Think of it as three stages:
- Download. Altru retrieves the completed online transactions that haven’t been brought in yet. Until this happens, they exist only on the Online Express side.
- Review and match. Each transaction carries the name, address, and email the donor typed. Altru tries to connect that to an existing constituent record, or flags it as a new person. A human needs to confirm those decisions.
- Commit. Once the matches and gift details look right, the transactions are committed as revenue, typically through a batch, so they show up on constituent records, in revenue reports, and in your acknowledgment process.
If you can’t find where downloads happen in your Altru, look in the revenue and batch areas first, and check your security role. Download and commit rights are often limited to a few users. If it still isn’t visible, Blackbaud support can confirm whether your Online Express account is linked to Altru and which role has access.
Set a schedule and stick to it
The biggest problem we see isn’t technical. It’s that downloads happen “when someone remembers.” Pick a cadence that matches your volume:
- Daily during year-end giving, a matching-gift campaign, or any appeal that drives people to the form.
- Two or three times a week the rest of the year for most organizations.
- Never less than weekly. Donors notice when a tax receipt or thank-you takes two weeks.
Name a primary owner and a backup. Write the steps down, with screenshots from your own system, so the backup can actually do it during a vacation.
Getting constituent matches right
This is where most of the long-term damage happens. A careless “create new” adds a duplicate record. A careless “match” attaches a gift to the wrong person, which is worse.
Before you accept a match
- Compare more than the name. Check email, street address, and ZIP. Two people named Susan Miller in the same county is not unusual.
- Watch for households. A gift entered under one spouse’s name may belong on the other spouse’s record, depending on your gift-crediting rules.
- Look for typos in the donor’s own entry, such as a misspelled street or a work email instead of a personal one. Search Altru manually before deciding the person is new.
Before you create a new record
- Search by email and by last name plus ZIP. Online forms are a common source of duplicates because people use whatever email they remember that day.
- If you create a new constituent, consider adding the new email as an additional address on the record later if you discover a match, rather than leaving two records in place.
It also helps to run a periodic duplicate check on records created through online gifts. A simple query of constituents added in the last month, sorted by last name, will surface obvious pairs to merge.
Check the gift details before committing
Matching the person is only half of it. Before committing, scan each transaction for:
- Designation and appeal. Confirm the form mapped to the fund and appeal you expect. A form copied from last year’s campaign may still point to last year’s appeal.
- Tribute or memorial information. If the donor gave in honor of someone, make sure that detail made it into Altru so acknowledgments and notifications go out correctly.
- Recurring gifts. Make sure the first installment and the recurring schedule are recorded the way your team tracks sustainers. If you aren’t sure how recurring online gifts are handled in your setup, test one in a sandbox or ask Blackbaud support before your next appeal.
- Anonymous requests. Mark them before the gift hits any donor list.
Reconcile with the deposit
Committed revenue in Altru should tie back to what actually arrived in your bank. Each time you commit, record the date range and total. Then compare it with the deposits reported by your payment processor for the same period. Small differences usually come from processing fees (if deposits are net of fees), refunds issued on the processor side that were never reflected in Altru, or a transaction that hasn’t been downloaded yet.
Refunds deserve special attention. A refund made in the payment portal doesn’t necessarily reverse the gift in Altru. Agree on who updates Altru when a refund happens, so your revenue reports and the donor’s giving history stay accurate.
When transactions don’t show up
If a donor says they gave and you can’t find the gift, work through these in order:
- Confirm the payment completed on the processor side. Abandoned or declined attempts won’t download.
- Check whether it was already downloaded and is sitting in an uncommitted batch.
- Search for it under a different name, a spouse, or a business.
- If it truly isn’t anywhere, contact Blackbaud support with the date, amount, and donor email.
Most “missing” gifts turn out to be in an open batch or on a record nobody expected. A quick weekly look at uncommitted batches prevents a lot of these calls.
Quick answers
Can Online Express transactions download into Altru automatically?
Don’t assume so. In most setups a staff member starts the download and reviews matches. If you want to know whether any part can be scheduled in your environment, ask Blackbaud support.
Who should do the downloads?
Someone who understands your constituent records and gift-crediting rules, usually in development or database administration. It is not a good task to hand to whoever has a free hour.
