A member buys timed tickets online and sees a service fee at checkout. A non-member pays the same fee and doesn’t think twice. The member emails you: “Isn’t free admission supposed to mean free?” They have a point, and the fix is less obvious in Altru than you’d expect.
This guide covers why member purchases pick up fees, which Altru settings decide that, and the realistic ways to keep members from paying them. Some of these are clean configuration changes. Others are workarounds, and we’ll say so.
First, pin down which fee you mean
“Fees” in Altru can mean a few different things, and each one has a different answer:
- Order or service fees that your organization configured in Altru and attached to a sales method, such as online sales or advance sales. These are the most common source of member complaints.
- Per-ticket fees added to specific program or event items.
- Payment processing costs charged to your organization by your merchant account. Members never see these unless you pass them along as a visible fee.
Before you change anything, pull up a recent member order where the fee appeared and look at exactly which fee was applied and through which sales channel. That one record usually tells you where to look.
Why members get charged in the first place
Altru fees are generally set up around how something is sold (the sales method and the items in the order), not who is buying it. A fee attached to online ticket sales applies to everyone who buys online through that channel. Altru recognizes the member when it applies member pricing or a membership benefit, but that recognition doesn’t automatically carry over to fees.
Whether your version of Altru can make a fee conditional on membership status directly is something we’d verify rather than assume. Check the fee configuration options in a sandbox or test environment, or ask Blackbaud support specifically: “Can an order fee be suppressed when the buyer is an active member?” If the answer is yes for your setup, that is the cleanest fix and you can stop reading. If not, the options below are what organizations typically do instead.
Your options, from cleanest to messiest
1. Fold the fee into non-member prices
Instead of charging a separate service fee, raise non-member ticket prices by the fee amount and drop the fee entirely. Members on a free or discounted price type never see a fee because there isn’t one. This is often the simplest long-term answer, and it removes the “surprise charge at the end of checkout” problem for everyone.
The tradeoff: your revenue reporting changes. Money that used to land in a fee account now lands in admission revenue. Talk to finance about GL mapping before you switch, and pick a clean start date so year-over-year comparisons make sense.
2. Give members their own sales path
Some organizations run a separate member reservation web form or a member-only program that isn’t set up with the fee. Members get a dedicated link in their emails and on the members page; the public buys through the regular path with the fee.
This works, but it’s more to maintain. Two forms means two places to update capacity, pricing, and copy, and members who wander into the public form will still see the fee. Make sure the public page points members to their link.
3. Offset the fee with a member discount
A member-only discount equal to the fee amount can cancel it out on the order total. It’s a workaround, not a removal: the fee still shows on the receipt with a matching discount below it. Test carefully whether your discount can apply at the order level the way you need, and whether the receipt reads clearly enough that members don’t call anyway.
4. Remove it at the desk, case by case
For phone and walk-up orders, staff can often remove or adjust a fee on an individual transaction if their security role allows it. Confirm which roles have that permission in your setup. This is fine as a courtesy, but it doesn’t help online buyers, and it depends on every staff member remembering to do it.
5. Refund after the fact
Refunding the fee portion when a member complains keeps them happy, but it’s manual, it creates extra transactions to reconcile, and it only reaches the members who speak up. Treat it as a stopgap while you implement one of the options above.
How to choose
- If the fee exists mainly to cover costs and you’re comfortable with simpler pricing, option 1 is usually worth the one-time reporting cleanup.
- If you need to keep the fee visible for non-members and most member visits are booked online, option 2 is the most reliable.
- If you only have a handful of member complaints a month, options 4 and 5 may be enough while you decide.
Whatever you pick, update your membership benefits page. If the benefit is “free admission, no fees,” say it, and make sure the checkout actually delivers it. If members do pay a small online fee, say that plainly too. Members accept fees far more readily when they read about them before checkout than when they discover them during it.
Before you go live
- Run a test member order and a test non-member order through every channel you changed: online, phone, and front desk.
- Check the receipts and confirmation emails for both, since that’s what members will screenshot.
- Run a query on member orders for the first couple of weeks after the change and look for any that still carry a fee. Catching a missed price type or form early is much easier than refunding a month of orders.
Quick answers
Does member pricing in Altru automatically waive fees?
Not on its own in the setups we’ve seen. Member pricing affects the ticket price; fees are configured separately. Verify in your own environment.
Will changing fee setup affect past orders?
No. Configuration changes apply to new transactions. Past orders keep the fees they were charged unless you refund them.
