Social Good Software
How to Count Visits per Constituent in Altru (and Trust the Number)
“How many times has this person visited?” sounds like one number. In Altru it can be three or four different numbers depending on what you count, and the first query most people build usually answers a slightly different question than the one they were asked. Before you open the query tool, decide what a visit
How to Report on the Admission Cycle in Altru, From Sale to Visit
“How did admissions do last month?” sounds like a simple question until two people pull numbers from Altru and get different answers. One counted tickets by the day they were sold. The other counted by the day guests were supposed to visit. Both were right, and neither showed how many people actually walked through the
How to Report Altru Attendance by Day of Week (Like Every Saturday)
“How many people came on Saturdays last year?” sounds like a one-minute question. In Altru it often turns into an afternoon, because the reports you already use are built around date ranges, not days of the week. You can get to the answer, though, and once the setup is right you can rerun it whenever
How to Reconcile Altru Donations With Raiser’s Edge NXT Gifts
Plenty of cultural organizations run two Blackbaud databases side by side: Altru for admissions, memberships, and the front desk, and Raiser’s Edge NXT for major gifts, grants, and the development team. That split usually makes sense on paper. In practice it means money lands in one system and somebody has to prove, every day, that
How to Run a Deposit Summary Report in Altru (and Make It Reconcile)
Finance asks for “the deposit summary for last week.” That sounds like one report. In practice it can mean three different things, and the number you hand back depends on which one they had in mind. Before you open a single report in Altru, it helps to pin that down. This guide covers what a
Why American Express Charges Are Missing From Your Altru Deposit Summary
Visa, Mastercard, and Discover tie out. American Express is short, sometimes by one transaction, sometimes by most of the day. Finance wants to know where the money went, and the deposit summary in Altru doesn’t explain it. In most cases nothing is actually lost. Amex is the card brand most likely to take a different
How to Reconcile Altru Payments with BBMS Deposits (and Why Dates Differ)
The bank deposit from Blackbaud Merchant Services lands, finance pulls the Altru revenue report for the same day, and the two numbers don’t match. Usually nothing is missing. The two systems are counting the same money on different days and, sometimes, at different amounts. Once you know which differences are expected, reconciliation turns into matching
How to Report Payment Type by Revenue Type in Altru
Finance wants a simple grid: payment methods down the side (cash, check, credit card, other), revenue types across the top (admissions, memberships, donations, events, store), totals in every cell. It sounds like one report. In Altru it usually turns into a query, an export, and a pivot table, and the numbers only tie out if
Why Altru KPIs Don’t Match the Total Revenue and Payments Report
The dashboard says yesterday brought in one number. The Total Revenue and Payments report says another. Finance asks which one is right, and the honest answer is usually “both, for different definitions.” KPIs and reports in Altru are built separately, and unless you know exactly what each one counts, they will drift apart in ways
How to Get an Altru Web API Key (and What to Ask Blackbaud)
A vendor sends over their onboarding checklist, and line three says “Paste your Altru API key here.” You open Altru, search through administration, and find nothing that looks like a key. That isn’t you missing a setting. Altru doesn’t work the way many cloud apps do, where any admin can click a button and generate
