Gardens, historic houses, and zoos get the same call every spring: a photographer wants to shoot engagement portraits, senior pictures, or a small wedding on the grounds, and they want to know what it costs. Charging for that is simple. Getting the sale into Altru so it shows up cleanly in revenue reports, ties to a real person, and can be checked at the gate takes a little planning.
Altru doesn’t have a sales item designed specifically for permits, so in practice you choose one of the sales items it already has and set it up so it acts like a permit. Which one fits depends on how your organization treats a permit: as a timed admission, a flat add-on charge, or a booked session that needs a coordinator involved.
Start with three questions
Answer these before you build anything. They decide which option makes sense.
- Does the permit cover a specific date or time slot? If you limit how many shoots happen at once, or the permit is good for one day only, you want something with capacity and a date attached.
- Does the photographer still pay admission? Some sites charge the permit on top of a regular ticket. Others fold admission into the permit price. That changes whether the permit is its own item or an add-on.
- Who needs to see the sale later? Finance will want the revenue coded to its own account, and the operations team will want to know who is on the grounds with a camera and a tripod on a given day.
Option 1: Treat the permit as a ticketed program
For most sites this is the most practical setup. Create a program (or a price type within an existing admission program) called something like “Photography Permit,” and give it its own price and revenue coding.
What you get:
- A dated, scannable ticket, so gate staff can confirm the permit the same way they check admission.
- Capacity control if you schedule it in time slots, so you don’t end up with six portrait sessions crowding the rose garden at golden hour.
- Reporting that sits next to your other admission data, which makes it easy to count permits by day or season.
The tradeoff: if the permit price already includes admission, decide whether the photographer also needs a general admission ticket for attendance counts. Pick one approach and write it down so staff at different registers handle it the same way.
Option 2: Sell it as a fee or merchandise-style item
If the permit is a flat charge added on top of normal admission, with no time slot and no capacity limit, a simpler item can work. Depending on how your Altru database is set up, that could be a fee or a merchandise item rung up at the register with the admission ticket.
This is quick at the desk, but you give up some things. You may not get a separate scannable credential, and tying the charge to a specific shoot date takes discipline. Before you commit, test it in a sandbox or training database: ring up a sample sale, then confirm the revenue lands in the right account and that a query can find it. If you’re not sure your version supports the item type you want for daily sales, Blackbaud support can confirm.
Option 3: Use an event for booked sessions
Weddings, commercial shoots, and anything that needs a staff escort or a reserved area are closer to bookings than to tickets. Setting these up as events, or handling them through group sales when there’s a contract and a deposit, keeps the details together: the date, the space, the number of people in the party, and any special conditions.
That takes more setup per sale, but these shoots are usually higher priced and less frequent, so the extra step is worth it. Commercial and media shoots often involve insurance certificates and location agreements that live outside Altru anyway. Note on the record where those documents are kept.
Capture who the photographer is
Whichever route you take, sell the permit to a named constituent rather than as an anonymous walk-up sale. Photographers come back. Once the permit is on their constituent record, you can:
- See repeat photographers and decide whether an annual permit makes sense for them.
- Send rule updates (restricted areas, drone policy, tripod limits) to everyone who bought a permit in the past year, using a query.
- Follow up if someone breaks the rules, without hunting through receipts.
A constituent attribute or code such as “Professional photographer” makes that list easy to build. Keep it consistent, though. A free-text note that each staff member words differently won’t help you later.
Online sales
Many photographers would rather buy the permit before they arrive. If the permit is set up as a program, you can usually sell it online the same way you sell timed admission (confirm it on a test purchase before you announce it), so the photographer shows up with something to scan. Put the permit rules right next to the purchase, not on a separate page they’ll skip. Something like “Permit holders must check in at the front desk” saves a lot of awkward conversations on the lawn.
Annual permits
Some sites sell a yearly permit to professionals who shoot often. You could build it as a membership level, which gives you an expiration date and renewal tracking. But it will show up in membership counts and reports unless you filter it out. If you go that route, tell whoever reports on membership so the numbers don’t look inflated.
Quick answers
Should the permit include admission?
Either works. Just make it consistent and make sure your attendance reporting reflects the choice.
Can we sell different permit tiers (hobbyist vs. professional)?
Yes. Separate price types or items with clear names work well. Keep the names obvious at the register so seasonal staff pick the right one.
How do we report on permit revenue?
Give permits their own revenue coding when you set them up, then build a query or use your revenue reports filtered to that item. It’s much harder to separate later if permits share coding with general admission.
