A school calls in March to book a special evening program for June. They want to hold the date with a deposit now and pay the rest after their board approves the budget. That’s a reasonable ask, and it’s also where advance sales in Altru starts to feel like the wrong tool.
Advance sales is built around an order that gets paid when it’s placed. Splitting one order into “some now, the rest later” isn’t what it was designed for, so the real question is which part of Altru should hold the order, and how you’ll track the money until it’s paid off.
Start by confirming what your Altru setup allows
Behavior can depend on your version, your security roles, and how your payment methods are set up, so before you build a process, test it. In a sandbox or test database, create an advance sales order, try applying a payment for less than the order total, and see what happens. Then do the same thing in group sales. You’ll likely find that advance sales expects payment in full, while group sales is more comfortable with a reservation that carries a balance. If your results differ, or you’re unsure what you’re seeing, Blackbaud support can confirm what your instance supports.
Whatever the test shows, decide on the process before staff start improvising. Partial payments recorded three different ways by three different people are much harder to clean up than a slightly clunky process everyone follows.
Option 1: Move deposit orders into group sales
For most deposit scenarios, this is the cleanest answer. Group sales was built for bookings that are made well ahead, change in size, and get paid over time. A reservation can sit with a balance due while the visit date approaches, and staff can see what’s owed on the reservation itself.
This works best when:
- The buyer is an organization (a school, camp, tour operator, or company) rather than an individual guest.
- The headcount might change between booking and the visit.
- Someone on your team already owns group bookings and follows up on balances.
The tradeoff is that group sales has its own workflow, pricing, and reporting. If your “advance sales” orders are really group visits under another name, moving them is worth it. If they’re individual event tickets, it may be more process than the order needs.
Option 2: Two transactions with a clear link between them
When an order has to stay in advance sales, some organizations take the deposit as its own transaction and process the full order later, once the balance is paid. The risk is obvious: the deposit and the order aren’t tied together, and the deposit can get lost or double-counted.
If you go this way, put guardrails around it:
- Use one constituent record for both payments, and check for duplicates before you start. A deposit on one record and the balance on another is an easy way for these to go wrong.
- Write the order reference in a note on the deposit, and the deposit amount and date on the final order.
- Agree with finance on how the deposit is coded so revenue isn’t recognized twice and reconciles cleanly in your batches.
- Hold capacity separately. If the deposit doesn’t reserve inventory in Altru, someone needs to hold those spots manually until the full order goes in.
Option 3: Don’t take a deposit at all
It’s worth asking whether you need a deposit. For smaller events, a short payment deadline (for example, full payment within a week of booking, or the hold is released) is easier to run than partial payments. Deposits make sense when you’re committing staff, catering, or exclusive space. For a few general admission tickets, they usually create more bookkeeping than they save.
Tracking the balances you’re owed
Whichever option you pick, the hard part is collecting the second payment. A few habits help:
- Build a query of open balances: reservations or orders with an amount due, sorted by visit date. Review it weekly.
- Set a balance-due date that’s well ahead of the event, so you aren’t chasing payment the day before.
- Write down who follows up and when. An unpaid balance with no owner tends to show up at the door, which is the worst time to collect it.
- Put the terms in writing when you take the deposit: amount, what it holds, the balance due date, and whether it’s refundable.
Making the second payment easy to collect
Balances often stall at the payment step itself: an invoice by email, a call back to read a card number, or a check that takes weeks to arrive. Social Good’s Link2Pay sends a branded pay-by-link for deposits, invoices, and group balances, and the payment posts to Altru. It doesn’t change how Altru structures the order. You still choose where the order lives using the options above, but it lets the buyer pay the balance online instead of by phone or check.
Quick answers
Can Altru automatically charge the remaining balance later?
Don’t assume so. Test it in a sandbox or ask Blackbaud support. A safer default is to treat the balance as a separate payment you collect and record when it comes in.
Should deposits be refundable?
That’s a policy call, not a software one. Decide it up front and state it on the confirmation so staff aren’t negotiating it case by case.
