Timed entry changes what “a good day” means. Total attendance doesn’t tell you much anymore. What matters is whether the 10:00 slot sold out while the 2:30 slot sat at a third full, and whether that pattern holds every Saturday. Percent of capacity is the number that answers that, and Altru holds both halves of it: the capacity you set on each scheduled event and the tickets sold against it. The work is getting those two numbers side by side in a form you can read over weeks, not one slot at a time.
Start with the definition, not the report
Before building anything, agree on what counts as “used” capacity. Teams that skip this end up with two spreadsheets that disagree. Decide on:
- Sold vs. attended. Tickets sold shows demand. Tickets scanned shows who actually came. Both are useful, but they answer different questions, so report them as separate columns.
- Comps and member admissions. If members reserve free timed tickets, they take up capacity. Leaving them out makes busy slots look emptier than they are.
- Holds and group blocks. Capacity set aside for a school group is used capacity from the public’s point of view, even if the group sale hasn’t been finalized yet.
- Which capacity number. If you sometimes lower a slot’s capacity for staffing or an event, decide whether you measure against the reduced number or your normal ceiling.
Getting the numbers out of Altru
The per-slot view in Altru’s sales areas is fine for checking a single time on a single day. For trends, you’ll want a query.
- Build an event-based query that returns one row per scheduled event: program name, event date, start time, capacity, and the count of tickets sold or reserved. Whether every one of those fields is available in the same query source depends on your Altru setup, so open the query designer and look before you plan around it. If capacity or ticket counts aren’t exposed where you expect, Blackbaud support can tell you which source carries them.
- Filter to the programs that use timed entry. Mixing in untimed programs or special events distorts the averages.
- Test against a day you know. Pick a recent date, pull it up in Altru’s sales screens, and confirm the query’s sold count matches for three or four slots. If it doesn’t, the difference is usually comps, refunds, or exchanges being counted differently.
- Add the percentage outside the query if your query tools can’t calculate it: sold divided by capacity, per row.
Reading the results without fooling yourself
Weight your averages
Averaging the percentages of each slot gives a slot with 20 spots the same weight as one with 200. For a day, a week, or a program, add up total sold and divide by total capacity. That’s the number that reflects how full the building really was.
Look at time-of-day patterns
The most useful view is usually a grid: days of the week down the side, start times across the top, average percent of capacity in each cell. It shows quickly which slots sell out, which never fill, and where you could add or remove a time.
Capture capacity as it was
If someone edits an event’s capacity after the fact, a live query will recalculate history against the new number. If you change capacity often, save a dated copy of the results each week or month so last spring’s figures don’t quietly shift.
Track the sellout lead time
A slot at 100% doesn’t tell you whether it sold out a week ahead or an hour before opening. If your query can show sale dates, the time between first sale and sellout is a strong signal for pricing and for when to open new dates.
Making it a standing report
A capacity report only helps if someone looks at it regularly. Two habits help:
- Review it on a fixed schedule with the people who set capacity and staff the floor, so the numbers turn into decisions about times and staffing.
- Keep the definitions from the first section written at the top of the report. When someone asks why the number dropped, the answer is often a change in what got counted.
The friction for most teams is the export step: run the query, download it, paste it into the spreadsheet with the formulas, repeat. That’s where the report tends to stop getting updated. Data Bridge syncs Altru query results to Google Sheets, so the capacity query feeds a sheet where your percent calculations, weekday grid, and charts are already set up, without a manual download each time.
Quick answers
Is there a built-in percent-of-capacity report in Altru?
Don’t assume there is one that shows every slot across a date range. Check the reports available in your database, and ask Blackbaud support if you can’t tell. Either way, a query plus a spreadsheet works and you control the definitions.
Should members’ free timed tickets count toward capacity?
Yes, if they occupy a spot in the slot. Report them as their own column so you can see how much of each slot members are using.
