A guest calls to move their Saturday tickets to the following weekend. You open the order, start the reschedule, and the date list stops short. Some Saturdays are there, the one they want isn’t, and the calendar on your website shows it with plenty of space. What is going on?
Almost always, Altru is filtering the list rather than losing dates. A reschedule only offers events that pass several checks at once, and any one of them can quietly remove a date. The trick is working out which check is doing it. Below are the usual suspects, roughly in the order we’d check them.
1. The missing date belongs to a different program
Rescheduling in Altru is generally built around moving a ticket to another event of the same program. If your organization created a separate program for a special weekend, a holiday version of a tour, or a members-only session, those events won’t show up as reschedule options for a ticket bought under the regular program, even though they look identical to a guest.
How to confirm: look up the event the guest wants and compare its program to the program on the original ticket. If they differ, the reschedule screen is behaving as designed. Your options are to refund and resell (watch for fees and any price difference) or, going forward, to keep look-alike events inside one program when you expect people to swap between them.
2. The event isn’t available for the sales method you’re using
Events in Altru can be set up for some sales methods and not others, such as daily sales, advance sales, and online. A date that’s on sale online may not be enabled for the method your staff are rescheduling through, or the reverse. This is one of the most common reasons a date “exists” but won’t appear.
How to confirm: open the target event’s setup and check which sales methods it’s available for, then compare to the method on the original order. If one event in a series was created separately or copied from an older template, its settings may not match the rest.
3. Price types don’t line up
A reschedule needs somewhere to put each ticket. If the original order has a price type (say, a member child or a school group rate) that isn’t priced on the target event, that event may be left out of the list or block the move. This shows up most with special pricing and member-only rates.
How to confirm: list the price types on the original order and check that each one is priced on the date the guest wants. Adding the missing price type to the event usually brings it back.
4. Capacity is lower than it looks
The public calendar and the reschedule screen don’t always count the same way. Held seats, group sales allocations, and tickets reserved for another channel can make an event look open on the website while leaving too few seats for the full order you’re moving. A party of six won’t fit into an event with four seats left, and Altru won’t offer it.
How to confirm: check the event’s remaining capacity against the number of tickets on the order. If you need to split the party across two times, that’s often a refund-and-rebook rather than a single reschedule.
5. The event is too far out, too close, or not built yet
A few simpler causes:
- The events haven’t been created yet. If your team builds the schedule a few months at a time, dates past that point simply don’t exist in Altru yet, even if marketing has announced them.
- Date range on the search. Some screens default to a limited window. Widen the range before assuming the date is missing.
- Sales start or end times. An event that hasn’t opened for sale yet, or has already closed for the day, may be excluded.
- Canceled or inactive events. An event that was turned off and later rebuilt can leave a duplicate that’s hidden while the real one is filtered for another reason.
A quick way to isolate the cause
When it’s not obvious, pick one missing date and one date that does show up in the reschedule list, then compare them side by side: program, sales methods, price types, capacity, and sales start and end. The difference between the two is usually your answer. Doing this once also tells you whether the problem is a one-off setup mistake or a pattern built into how your schedule gets created.
If the two events match on everything you can see and the date still won’t appear, try the same reschedule in a sandbox or test environment if you have one, and then open a case with Blackbaud support with both event names and the order number. Exact behavior can differ depending on your configuration, and support can confirm whether you’re hitting a setting or a limitation.
Preventing it next season
- Create recurring events from one consistent template so sales methods and price types match across the series.
- Keep events that guests treat as interchangeable inside the same program.
- Decide ahead of time what staff should do when a reschedule isn’t possible: refund and rebook, issue a credit, or escalate. Write it down so the answer doesn’t depend on who picks up the phone.
- Build your schedule far enough ahead to cover the dates you’re likely to reschedule into, especially around holidays.
Quick answers
Can I reschedule a ticket into a different program?
Generally not through a straight reschedule. Refunding and selling a new ticket is the usual route. Check with Blackbaud support if your setup seems to allow otherwise.
Why does the website show a date that staff can’t reschedule into?
Online availability, capacity holds, and sales-method settings are often different from what desk staff see. Compare the event’s settings for each method.
