The café on your ground floor is run by a caterer. The gift shop might be run by an outside retailer. Every month they send a statement and a check for your share: a percentage of their sales, sometimes plus a flat rent. Then someone on the Altru team has to decide where that money goes, and the first idea is usually “enter it as a donation.” Don’t.
Tenant commission is earned income, not a gift. This article covers how to tell whether it belongs in Altru at all, how to set it up if it does, and the monthly routine that keeps it out of your fundraising numbers.
First decision: does this revenue need to be in Altru?
Altru is good at tracking money tied to people and visits: admissions, memberships, gifts, event registrations. A monthly commission check from a vendor is none of those. Plenty of organizations never put it in Altru. Finance records it straight into the accounting system against the concession contract, and the vendor relationship lives in a contract file.
Recording it in Altru makes sense when:
- You run all deposits through Altru batches and want every check you bank to show up in one place for reconciliation.
- Your GL export from Altru is how revenue reaches the general ledger, and finance would rather not key some deposits by hand.
- You want the vendor as a constituent anyway, because they also sponsor events, rent space, or get invited to things.
If none of those fit, the simplest honest answer is to leave it out of Altru and let finance handle it. Talk to your finance lead before you build anything. They decide how commission income is classified, and your Altru setup should follow that, not the other way around.
If it goes in Altru: set it up once
1. Give the tenant an organization record
Create an organization constituent for the vendor company (not the café manager as an individual). Add the main contact as a relationship. Every commission payment attaches to this one record, so you can pull a clean history of what the tenant has paid you over the life of the contract.
2. Agree on a revenue type that is not a contribution
This is the step that matters most. If the payment is entered as a donation, it will count toward giving totals, show up in donor reports, may trigger an acknowledgment or tax receipt, and can make the vendor look like a major donor in prospect lists. None of that is true.
Look at what non-gift payment options your Altru configuration offers for recording revenue on a constituent. Organizations set this up differently, and the right choice depends on how your revenue categories and GL mappings are configured. If you aren’t sure which option keeps the payment out of contribution reporting, test it in a sandbox or ask Blackbaud support before you enter real checks.
3. Map it to its own GL account
Ask finance for the account they use for concession or commission income (and a separate one for rent, if the contract includes a flat fee). Set up a revenue category or GL mapping in Altru that points there. Keep commission and rent apart if finance reports them separately; it’s much easier to split them at entry than to untangle them later.
4. Build a query you can reuse
Create a revenue query filtered to that revenue category, showing date, amount, constituent, and reference. This is how you’ll check the monthly entry, answer audit questions, and prove the money never leaked into fundraising totals.
The monthly routine
- Get the statement before the check. The tenant’s sales report shows gross sales, the commission rate, and the amount owed. File it with the deposit.
- Record only what you receive. Enter the commission amount, not the tenant’s gross sales. Their sales are their revenue; your share is yours. Recording gross would overstate your income and confuse anyone comparing Altru to the audited financials.
- Use the statement period as the reference. A note like “Café commission, August” on the payment saves a lot of guessing next spring.
- Put it in the right batch. Enter it in the same deposit batch as the physical check or ACH so the batch total matches the bank deposit.
- Spot-check the GL output. After posting, confirm the amount landed in the commission account, not the default contribution account.
Timing is finance’s call. If they accrue commission in the month it was earned but the check arrives the following month, they may handle that accrual outside Altru and use the Altru entry only for the cash receipt. Ask once and write the answer down.
Watch for the gray areas
- Sales that run through your own POS. If shop items are rung up in Altru and you pay the vendor their cut afterward, that’s a different setup: the sale is your revenue and the vendor payment is an expense. That’s not commission income in the sense covered here.
- Sponsorships from the same vendor. If the caterer also sponsors your gala, that can be a separate transaction with its own treatment. Don’t fold it into the commission entry, and don’t let the commission entry make the sponsorship look bigger.
- Sales tax. When the tenant sells, the tenant usually collects and remits tax. Your commission check shouldn’t include tax amounts, but confirm with the contract and your accountant.
- Short payments and adjustments. If a statement corrects a prior month, enter the adjustment as its own entry with a clear note rather than editing the old payment.
Quick answers
Can I just use the donation form and mark it non-deductible?
It still lands in giving history and contribution reporting, which skews donor counts and totals. Use a non-gift revenue type mapped to an income account instead.
Should the vendor be in my mailing lists?
Probably not for appeals. Add a constituent code or solicit code on the organization record so it’s excluded from fundraising mailings.
