Every December somebody at the admissions desk gets asked, “Do you sell gift cards?” Altru doesn’t give you a clear answer. As far as we know it has no built-in gift card or gift certificate feature with a stored balance that a guest can spend down over several visits. So any organization that sells them is running some kind of workaround, and the hard part isn’t selling the card. It’s knowing, months later, how much is still outstanding and which card numbers are real.
What follows is how experienced Altru shops usually handle it, where each approach breaks, and what to settle with your finance team before the first card goes out. Altru’s options vary by configuration and change over time, so before you commit, test any of this in a sandbox or ask Blackbaud support.
First, decide what you’re actually selling
“Gift card” covers three different things, and Altru handles each one differently:
- A gift membership. If the buyer really wants to give someone a year of visits, a gift membership is usually the cleanest choice. Altru supports gift memberships natively, with a giver and a recipient, and the result is a real member record you can renew next year. Offer this first. Many “gift card” buyers will happily take it.
- A fixed-value certificate for a specific thing. For example, “two general admission tickets” or “one family program.” Since it’s tied to an item rather than a dollar amount, you can often handle it as a prepaid ticket or a discount at redemption, without tracking a balance.
- A dollar-value card that can be spent on anything and maybe used across several visits. This is the one Altru has no native answer for, and it needs the most discipline.
Selling a dollar-value certificate
The common setup is to create a sellable item, often a merchandise item or something similar, named “Gift Certificate,” with an open or fixed price. Before you build it, make sure it posts to a liability account (deferred revenue or gift certificates payable), not earned revenue. Money from an unredeemed card isn’t income yet. If it posts to admissions or retail revenue, your revenue numbers will be overstated until it’s spent, and they’ll be overstated again when it is.
Then give each certificate a unique number. Pre-printed, numbered card stock works. So does a simple numbering scheme the desk records in the transaction comments. Without a unique number you can’t tell a valid card from a photocopy, and you can’t tell who bought what.
Redeeming it
On redemption, the certificate has to work like a payment, not a discount. Most organizations add a payment method such as “Gift Certificate” (often set up as an “other” payment type) and have staff enter the certificate number as the reference. That lets you run a query later that matches redemptions to sales by number.
A discount or promo code is tempting because it’s quick to set up, but it hides the money. A discount reduces revenue. It doesn’t clear the liability you recorded when the card was sold, so the two never reconcile.
Tracking balances (this is the hard part)
Since Altru won’t keep a running balance on a card number, you need a ledger outside it. For most organizations that’s a shared spreadsheet with one row per card:
- Card number, sale date, buyer’s constituent name, original value.
- Each redemption: date, amount, and the Altru transaction it appeared on.
- Remaining balance, calculated.
- Status: active, fully redeemed, void, or expired (if your policy and local law allow expiration).
Once a month, run two Altru queries: certificate sales and redemptions by the gift certificate payment method. Reconcile both against the ledger and the liability account balance. If the three numbers don’t agree, find out why that month, while the desk still remembers the transactions.
Partial use is where errors creep in. If a guest spends $30 of a $50 card, the desk has to update the ledger before the guest leaves, or nobody will know there’s $20 left. Some organizations avoid this by only selling certificates for amounts that match common purchases, or by treating each certificate as single-use and issuing a new numbered certificate for the remainder.
Reloadable plastic cards
Reloadable cards, where the balance lives on a card you swipe, need a separate gift card processor. Altru doesn’t hold those balances, as far as we know. The usual setup is that the processor tracks the balance and runs the card, and Altru records the payment as an “other” payment type with the card number as the reference. You’re then reconciling two systems instead of one, so ask the processor what reports it provides and whether you can export them on a schedule. Make sure staff understand that the balance shown by the processor is the one that counts.
Questions to settle with finance first
- Expiration and unclaimed property. Rules on whether gift cards can expire, and what happens to unredeemed balances, vary by state. Ask your auditor or counsel before printing an expiration date on anything.
- Breakage. Decide how and when unredeemed value is recognized as revenue, and who signs off.
- Donations vs. purchases. A gift certificate is a purchase, not a donation. It shouldn’t produce a tax acknowledgment, even when the buyer’s constituent record is full of giving history.
- Refunds and lost cards. Write down whether you’ll replace a lost card. A ledger with the buyer’s name makes replacement possible. Without one, you can’t.
Quick answers
Can I sell gift certificates on our Altru web forms?
It depends on how you set up the item and which web forms you use. Build it in a sandbox and check that a test purchase posts to the right account and captures the buyer correctly before you go live.
Should the recipient get a constituent record?
Ideally, yes, once they redeem. Ask for their name and email at the desk. It turns an anonymous card into a new contact you can invite back.
