The lecture sold out its online registration a week ago. Then six people show up at the admissions desk asking whether there’s room, and there is, because three registrants canceled and the room holds a few extra chairs anyway. Now the cashier has to figure out how to take their money in Altru and get them onto the attendee list. That part is often less obvious than it should be.
The difficulty usually comes from a decision made weeks earlier: how the event was built in Altru. Altru can handle an event as something people register for (a guest list with registration options and fees) or as something you sell tickets to (a scheduled program with capacity, sold through advance sales and daily sales). Those two setups behave differently at the desk, and day-of selling is easy in one and awkward in the other.
Start by figuring out which kind of event you have
Before you plan the day-of process, open the event and confirm how it was set up.
- Registration-style event. Attendees are registrants on the event record, often with registration options (member, non-member, guest) and registration fees. Online signups typically come through an event registration web form. This is common for galas, lectures, member nights, and workshops where you want names on a list.
- Ticketed program event. The event is a scheduled occurrence of a program with a capacity and price types. Tickets are sold in advance sales or online and redeemed or sold at the door through daily sales. This is how most timed admission, tours, and repeating programs are built.
If the event is ticketed, day-of selling is mostly routine: staff sell the remaining capacity in daily sales like any other program. The rest of this article is mostly about the harder case, a registration-style event where walk-ups arrive.
Option 1: Add walk-ups as registrants and record payment
The most direct approach is to treat a walk-up exactly like a late registration. Staff look up or create the constituent, add them as a registrant on the event with the right registration option, and record the payment against that registration.
This keeps everything in one place: the attendee count, the guest list, and event revenue all agree afterward. The tradeoffs are practical ones.
- It’s slower than a register sale, especially if the person isn’t already in your database and you need to create a constituent record on the spot.
- The staff member needs rights to the events area and to add payments, which front-desk roles don’t always have.
- How the payment flows through to your daily deposits and batches can differ from a daily sales transaction. Check with your finance lead before event night so the cash drawer reconciliation isn’t a surprise.
A workable compromise: take payment and contact details at the door, then have one trained person enter the registrations in Altru during or right after the event. Just make sure that person finishes the same night, while the paper list still makes sense.
Option 2: Sell a day-of item in daily sales
Some organizations set up a separate ticketed program, or a fee or merchandise-style item, purely for day-of admission to a registration-style event. Cashiers sell it at the register like anything else, which is fast and familiar.
The catch is that those buyers won’t automatically appear as registrants on the event. Your headcount and your guest list will be split across two places, and anyone reporting on event attendance has to remember to add them together. If you go this way:
- Name the day-of item so it’s obvious which event it belongs to.
- Set its capacity to the walk-up seats you can actually offer, not the room’s full capacity, so you don’t oversell on top of registrations.
- Build a query or report that combines registrants and day-of sales so attendance numbers are complete.
Option 3: Build the next event as a ticketed program
If walk-ups are a regular pattern rather than an occasional surprise, it may be simpler to stop running that type of event as a registration at all. A ticketed program sold in advance online and in daily sales on the day handles both groups with one capacity number and one sales process. You lose some of the richer registration details, such as per-guest names and table assignments, so this suits lectures and programs better than seated dinners.
Whether you can convert an existing registration event mid-stream is something to test rather than assume. Try it in your sandbox, or ask Blackbaud support, before changing an event people have already registered for.
Things to settle before the doors open
- Decide how many walk-up spots exist. Registered count, expected no-shows, and room limits should give you a number staff can work from.
- Close or keep open online registration. If the web form stays open into the event day, online and door sales can compete for the same seats.
- Pick one method and write it down. A short instruction sheet at the desk prevents three staff from using three different approaches.
- Confirm security rights. Have whoever will work the door log in ahead of time and walk through a test sale or registration.
- Plan the reconciliation. Know which batch or deposit the day-of money lands in and who checks it the next morning.
Quick answers
Can daily sales sell registrations for a registration-style event?
Don’t count on it. Depending on your configuration, registration events are typically handled on the event record rather than at the register. Test in a sandbox or confirm with Blackbaud support before planning around it.
What’s the fastest option for a small crowd of walk-ups?
Collecting payment and names at the door and entering registrations afterward is usually quickest in the moment, as long as someone owns the data entry that night.
