Queries are one of the most “popular” features in Altru shortly after an organization goes live. This is understandable as queries are a really powerful feature that helps us dive directly into the database.

There have been some really great blog posts on helping set up queries. Kevin has not one but two blog posts on how we can take advantage of queries. We also have one on our most frequent query question. However, my favorite remains Stephanie’s lessons as a rookie.

As a follow up to these existing posts, I thought of some tips to help you manage all these queries your organization will be creating.

Using Query Folders
It is not uncommon for your Altru team members to create a large number of queries – enough to make the list unmanageable. In turn that makes it difficult to find the one query you need and users often end up creating duplicates of existing queries. One the most efficient ways to keep on top of all the queries that various offices in your organization create is to set up folders. Each office can have its own set of queries and changing the parameters of the queries will not affect any other department’s operations. One can also add sub-folders within folders. This can not only help you organize queries based on functions within a department, but you can also set up a folder to house queries that are “Work in Progress”. Once you have confirmed the function of the query, you can move it out of this folder and into a more permanent folder location. One can also set permissions to a folder to determine who should have access to the folder. Any permission at the folder level will be inherited by the queries within it.

Lock queries
If you have set up a query that is particularly complex or one that you run on a regular basis and therefore need to confirm it does not get changed,  we recommend locking it down. This way you can just run the query without having to check and confirm that no one else has edited it. In the screenshot below, you can see how you can use the Permissions features to determine who can run or edit the query. Advanced Permissions allow you to select you can run or edit a query based on their Altru system roles.

Leverage “Save As”
As you start building your library of queries it not uncommon to need to build a query that is very similar to an existing query with some slight change in parameters.  Before opening a query, we can access the “copy” function allowing us to copy a query and then change it:

However, sometimes we may prefer to preview results in our existing query before we decide to copy it. If you have the query open in the editing window and want to copy the query, you do not have to go back to the query list to make a copy.  Just edit the existing query that you already have open to match your new parameters and then use the “Save as” function to create the new query. As you save this new version of the query, you create a new name for the query to separate it from the original query that was used as a base.

I trust these simple tips will help you save time and better manage your query library.

Bonus Tip: If there is a query that you run on a regular basis, take advantage of the “Add this page to shortcuts” feature so the query is conveniently available from the shortcuts section irrespective of where you are in Altru.

If you have locked down the query so it cannot be edited by other uses, you are confident of your results and won’t need to review the criteria. You can just open the query page from the shortcut, run the query, and you are all set!

Check out even more about Query in our new Query training curriculum.

We had a fantastic Masters Workshop on Camps and Classes and so thought it would be great to share some tips for folks that could not join in.

Changing the Name of Secondary Events

A key component of any multi-day activity such as camps or classes is to set up secondary events to represent the recurrence of the activity on our calendar and to also reserve the location for the camp/class. We trim the capacity of these secondary events down to 0 so one does not accept registrations to this event by mistake. I have found one simple adjustment to help you and your team keep track of these secondary events in Altru. As you set up these secondary occurrences just add a simple suffix such as “(0)” to the name of the event.

The advantage of this is that when program events are viewed in the calendar or as a list, they are easily identified as a repeat occurrence.

Another advantage is with queries for these program events. A simple criteria adjustment (“Does not contain”) will ensure these secondary events are also excluded from any results.

Accepting Partial Payments

Sometimes, for programs with a high registration fee, we may offer partial payments as an option for registration. Now, we all know that currently in Altru we cannot accept partial payments for program events. One of the ways we can adjust for this restriction is to set up a special event for the purposes of accepting transactions. It helps to keep the name of the special event the same as the name of the registered program and slip this special event into its own “Camps/Classes” specific category. Any transactions received are set up as registrations for the special event. One can have parents as hosts for the children if this is a kids-specific event. The registration options should match the price types for the program:

And for the program event, the price types are set to a price of $0 to ensure we are not double counting revenue.

Please note that this partial payment option will preclude offering this camp/class for sale via any online channel, and also because we are routing transactions through a special event, we cannot leverage any discounts. Instead, discounts are represented by separate registration options and corresponding price types. It is also helpful to keep your accounting/finance team informed of this adjustment so they can track revenue for this program from the special event.

Single multiple registrations (Custom Class)

Sometimes, custom classes may be set up as a specific offering. For example, a local business could tap your organization to offer an evening class for its employees. In this case, you may have numerous registrations come in at different times with the organization paying for all registrations at a later date with a single payment. You can accommodate for this by taking advantage of the “Pay on arrival” feature of Advance Sales.

Set up the organization as the Patron for the order and sign up the various attendees as registrants with the organization as the host:

After adding all the registrants for this round, please note the name of the patron and/or the order number. Remember to click “Pay on Arrival” as opposed to adding payment information to close this order.

If we need to add additional registrants or just need to complete the payment at a later date, open this sales order by using the “Pick up tickets” feature on the Sales page.

Find the order using either the name of the patron or the order number. Once the sales order is opened in the Advance Sales window, if you need to add additional registrants just select the item and click on “Edit” to add registrants to the order. If you need to just complete the payment, click on the payment method to complete the order.

And there you go! We have completed a single transaction registration for a variety of registrants coming in at different times.

I hope these tips are useful and something to help you save time and add value when managing the variety of camps and classes in your operations.

What is a smart field?  What can I use smart fields for?  What type of smart field should I use? When should I use a smart field? These are the types of questions we hear regularly on support calls.

Smart fields provide quick access to specific information that otherwise might take hours or days to compile. For example, you create a query of all donors in your database who gave $10,000, along with their first gift date. A smart field looks at all the records in your database and compiles it and allows you to report on this information in an easier way.

You can use smart fields in a variety of ways throughout the program:

• To build queries and selections.
• To quickly view details about a constituent’s giving history on the Smart Fields tab of their record.
• To calculate the entry amount for ask ladders on marketing effort reply devices.
• To calculate greatest need for sponsorship opportunities.
• To calculate for renewal notices when memberships are set to expire.

The most commonly used smart field is a Constituent Revenue Application Amounts Smart field. This can be used to compile Total Giving amounts.  To create this smart field, go to Administration, and then smart fields. Be sure you have the smart fields’ system role or you will not be able to see them.

Smart fields can be a little overwhelming at first, so here is a quick breakdown of the Constituent Revenue Application Amounts smart field.

• A – Here you can select exactly what you want to report on. You can look at the total amount that a patron has given, their largest gift amount, or even an average of their gifts.
• B – Here you select the revenue types you want to include. For example, if you only want to look at donations you would select donations under Revenue types and Transaction type/Application.
• C – To look at specific designations, building a financial line item query is helpful. Click the magnifying glass. Click Add and create a query that includes the designations you are looking for.
  • Note: If you are using a Constituent Revenue Application Amounts Smart Field or a Constituent Revenue Application Dates Smart Field in conjunction with an Application Selection, check your query selection to make sure all of the designations and applications are include
• D – Enter the date range you want to look at. If you do not have specific dates, you can leave this blank.
  • Note:  In the For option (in the above screen shot) in your smart field you can look at constituent recognition or household revenue and recognition as well.  If you select one of the recognition options you will be able to select Recognition credit types to look at as well.

Be sure to save and process your smart field! Now it is ready to go.

Don’t forget to take a look at the system generated smart fields that you do not have to set parameters for. Be sure to process your smart field each time you include it in a query or use it for information in your database. And remember – Support is always here to walk you through the process and help you decide which smart field is best to gather the information you are looking for!

In 2014, we released the capability to ask for more than just first name and last name from our participants in preregistered programs. This capability can be especially important for programs such as camps and classes, where there are often many pieces of information that need to be collected about the individuals who will be attending. Today, we’ll look at ways of using the Registration Information section in ways that you may not have thought of before. I hope by reading this blog, you’ll feel encouraged to be creative in the ways you can gather and view information about your patrons.

Multi-day Options as Price Types

Some organizations offer camps that last all week, but that don’t require participants to attend every day. For these types of offerings, you could have price types that consist of one-day, two-day, three-day, four-day and five-day options as illustrated below:

This is a great offering for your patrons! Letting them choose exactly how many days they want to purchase. You can also incorporate pricing incentives for each price type; offering a lower per day rate as the number of days they plan to attend increases.

Better registration information options can really streamline the maintenance on an offering like this. Before the registration information collection improvements, you would have to contact the patron to find out which specific days they were planning to attend, if it was fewer than the entire camp session. Or you would have to create a price type option for every combination available, such as Monday & Tuesday, Monday & Wednesday, Monday, Wednesday & Friday, etc. Now with registration information, you can have your patron register for the number of days needed and collect which days they will be attending using the Checkbox type of question.

Now you can plan for how many people to expect on specific days and the patron only has to register once.

Please note that when you use this method, each registrant is only counted once in the attendance numbers on reports regardless of the price type (number of days) they choose.

Restricting Questions to Certain Price Types

Some price options you offer could have a lunch option or include a T-shirt, while other price options do not. Did you know that you can ask for their T-shirt size or food preference without that question showing up for every price type? When adding or editing a question be sure to unmark the checkbox “Show for all price types.” This allows you to choose the price types that are eligible for the question. Now you can ask a required question to the right people and not confuse the patrons who do not qualify for that option based on the price type they chose.

Waivers or Terms and Conditions

Most organizations need parents to sign a waiver for general insurance purposes or perhaps something as simple as a photo release when their children attend a camp or class. Organizations might also need to include Terms and Conditions that clearly state what the organization is responsible for. All of these examples can be added on the Registration Information page as a notice/disclaimer. You can also use registration options to ask for a patron action such as an e-signature or acceptance of terms (using a Yes/No checkbox):

Note: Field names used in Registration Information must be unique. You will not be able to use a field named “Date” multiple times even if it’s in different sections. Be sure to label similar fields in ways that match the field to the purpose or section it is used in.

Due Diligence with Registrant Name

I’m sure it’s happened to everyone. When using Altru web forms somehow the parent ends up coming in as the registrant instead of the child. Unfortunately, we cannot change the field names from “Registrant 1” to “Child 1” or “Camper 1.” However, we can ensure we’re getting the right information about our camper by re-asking for the participant information along with related fields:

To some this may seem redundant, but I’m sure to some of you it seems like the 100% sure fire way to make sure you’re getting the real camper information (and not the parent’s) for your reports.

I hope you now feel you have a new freedom with Registration Information, especially for camps and classes, in Altru. We’d love for you to keep the conversation going by adding your comments below on creative ways that you’ve used the Registration Information feature with Altru!

Let me open by saying that I have a prize to give out, but you have to read to the bottom of the post to learn more!

In January, Blackbaud employees from all over the world rallied together to celebrate our cultural customers through our #showyourculture initiative.  Everyone from engineers to sales representatives to our CEO Mike Gianoni got in on the fun, posting their favorite memories from arts and cultural organizations on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, using #showyourculture in their post so we could all follow along.

Not only did this campaign produce a bunch of adorable pictures, it also taught me a few things about my company and social media campaigns in general:

1. Blackbaud employees love arts & culture! Not really surprising – Blackbaud has been working with arts and cultural organizations for over 30 years and has over 2200 cultural customers. But it was still fun to see how many of my Blackbaud colleagues serve on arts boards, perform at theatres and orchestras, or regularly take their children to their local zoo, museum or aquarium.
2. People love to post pictures on social media. Cultural events make for great pictures. More than almost any other industry, the arts and cultural industry has the ability to be extremely visually captivating.  This gives organizations like yours a huge advantage when it comes to social media marketing.
3. People LOVE giraffes: Seriously, there were some really cute giraffe pictures posted. Go search #showyourculture on Twitter and Facebook and check them out.

Ok, now back to that special prize. Show us YOUR culture! Post a picture on social media of your favorite memory of a visit to an arts and cultural organization. Use these tags:

#showyourculture
@blackbaud

We’ll select one winning post, based on the uniqueness, aesthetics and sentimental meaning of your photo. The winner will win FREE tickets to an arts and cultural event of your choosing, up to $100 value!

You have until March 31^st to post to be eligible to win tickets!

Couple of helpful hints: we’ll check Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, but Twitter is the easiest to find. You’ll need to make sure your post isn’t set to private or we won’t be able to “see” it. Good Luck!

When we ask you, our Altru users, what you want more training on, the number one request is always QUERY! So it brings me great pleasure to announce that we’ve released a whole bunch of query resources recently.

In last month’s blog, we announced the release of Altru Curricula in Training Central. Now in addition to what was there, you’ll also find a Query curriculum as well. It’s got lots of great videos, a few helpful printable resource documents and links to the Query online instructor-led classes. Speaking of online instructor-led classes, we’ve revised the Query 101 class to add a bit of new content and added a Query 201 class with more advanced query skills and tips covered.

Other common training requests are around membership management and marketing and communications. In March, we’re offering Masters Workshops that cover some of the areas many of you have been asking about. I hope you’ll find them helpful.

Altru Masters Workshop: Creating the Best Online Experience for your Patrons – Part 2: Your Repeat Customers and User Registration – March 5th – 1-2pm ET – Register here

This hour-long instructor-led workshop dives into the details of user registration—how it works, what the benefits are, and how to handle situations where customers are not receiving discounts or are having difficulty registering. This is the second session in a two-part series. You must enroll in each session separately. Web Forms 101 is a recommended prerequisite for this workshop.

Altru Masters Workshop: Managing Membership Changes – March 11th – 4-5pm ET – Register here

During this one-hour Masters Workshop session, you will learn tips and tricks on how to manage some of the most common membership activities including how to adjust a membership transaction to add an add-on, switching a donation payment to a membership payment, and reprinting membership cards.

Altru Masters Workshop: Leveraging Digital Communications – March 13th – 1-2pm ET – Register here

Are you ready to take your constituent communications to the next level? This one-hour online instructor-led Masters Workshop will help you understand what your digital communications options are in Altru from Appeals to Renewals to Acknowledgements. The class covers the differences, best practices, and design of emails in Appeal and Transactional Communications. This class is ideal for those who want to explore enhancing their use of email in Altru communications.

Altru Masters Workshop: Cumulative Giving, Recognition, and Reporting in Altru – March 18th – 2-3pm ET – Register here

Want to better understand how your Constituents contribute to your organization financially? Wondering whose name should really go on that Donor Wall? This one-hour Masters Workshop class will cover configuration and use of revenue and recognition filters, cumulative giving smart fields, and a selection of useful revenue reports. The Revenue 101 in Altru class and general comfort with adding revenue records should be considered prerequisites for this class.

Altru Masters Workshop: Managing Constituent Name Formats, Communications Preferences & Address Processing – March 25th – 3-4pm ET – Register here

The greatest mailing in the world is no good if it doesn’t get to the right person – or worse – they don’t open your envelope. In this one-hour Masters Workshop session we’ll review mailing settings in Altru that will help you correctly display someone’s name and select the right address for the job – automatically! We’ll also look at how to specify individual constituent mailing preferences on their constituent record.

Altru Masters Workshop: Fundraising & Special Events Part I – March 30th – 3-4pm ET – Register here

This two-part Altru Masters Workshop will cover everything you need to know about Fundraising and Special Events.  Part I covers setting up your events including creating registrations options, assigning event coordinators, tasks, and expenses, and configuring a seating plan. Part II will build on information covered in Part I, so it is suggested that Part I is taken as a pre-requisite to Part II. Part II will focus on what to do after initial event setup, such as creating invitations and managing invitees and registrations. It will also cover reporting on your events. Each session will last one-hour and you must enroll in Part I and Part II separately. Note: Part II will be held on April 13^th – 1-2pm ET – Register here

Altru Masters Workshop: Managing Membership Renewal Communications – April 2nd – 1-2pm ET – Register here

Reviewing and revising your membership communications on a regular basis is a great way of keeping your membership program fresh and members engaged. During this one-hour Masters Workshop session we’ll dive into how we can reorganize our membership renewal letters configuration, update content, manage exclusions, and monitor performance.

And as always, we have our regularly scheduled classes:

Appeals & Mailings 101 – March 9, 25
Batch 101 – March 25
Daily Financial Reconciliation – March 10, 24
General Sales 101 – March 3, 19
Introduction to Altru – March 4, 16, 31
Managing Group Sales Reservations – March 6, 17
Membership Setup 101 – March 5, 18
Merchandise 101 – March 12
Query 101 – March 11, 24, 30
Query 201 – March 13, 24, 30
Revenue 101 – March 2, 20
Ticketing Setup 101 – March 4, 18
Web Forms 101 – March 9, 25

Guest Post from Kathleen Magness, Donor Database & Prospect Research Coordinator for LeMay Museum: America’s Car Museum

America’s Car Museum hosts an annual event called, Vintage Motorcycle Festival: The MEET at ACM. At this event, more than 2,500 classic motorcycle enthusiasts gather together on the ACM’s Haub Family Show Field to view hundreds of vintage motorcycles and scooters ranging from 1910 to 1990. At this event, virtually every brand in the history of motorcycling is represented from owners across the U.S. and Canada.

Every participant who registers to show their motorcycle can show up to 6. Their motorcycles fall into one of 18 judged classes. What we needed from Altru was the ability to sell general admission tickets to the event as well as register the participant’s motorcycles. To do this,I created two events in the scheduled program occurring around the same time (motorcycle check in begins before we allow people onto the field) at different locations – that way the e Tickets will direct general admission attendees to the field and participants to check in.

Signing up to participate in the event costs $20.00, regardless of how many motorcycles you choose to show. I was advised by Altru support staff to use a scheduled program so that I can create a registration form with custom questions the registrant would have to fill out. These questions are a combination of dropdown lists and text type.

We wanted for each registration to be a count of each unique motorcycle, rather than each registration a count of how many people were participating. Instead of having unique price types for the number of motorcycles each participant would be showing, Jessica Lee suggested that I set up an automatic discount that would be applied up to 5 times. The participant now uses the quantity box to enter the number of motorcycles being registered and they will be charged only once. This also allows for us to use the ticket number as a unique identifier for each motorcycle at the event.

What became problematic with this is that Altru web forms are set up to register people, not motorcycles. Some of the verbiage was confusing and the automatic subtotal feature was showing the price before the discount. Our registrants would have to add their registrations to the cart before seeing that they are only being charged $20.00.  In addition to this, the shopping cart page had a note about the amount of discount applied, which we found to be confusing for the participant as well.

Most of the customization that we did for this page were available through the “Manage Event Registration Forms” built in features by clicking “options” and then navigating to the “Language” tab. We set up custom price type headings, a custom ticket quantity error message, and custom button titles. For the changes that weren’t available, I used the Altru Web-Forms A-Z guide and some help from our graphic designer to edit the CSS style sheets to edit out the unwanted information within the page designer. We changed the font color of the subtotal to white (which is our website background) and hid the discount verbiage that appears in the shopping cart. Now we have a beautiful web form that we can use to register the motorcycles!

Check out the web form here. And feel free to play around with it! Enter a number in the quantity box (2-6) to see the registration questions or enter a number of 7 or more and click register to see our customized error message!

In addition to this web form being totally awesome, our registration list is going to be used in conjunction with a query and export definition to create a merge document so that we can print the display signs for each motorcycle (which lists all the answers to the registration questions) in one big batch rather than manually creating 400+ as we had to do last year.

If your organization has a lot of Group Reservations or Facility Rentals, and you aren’t familiar with the Tracks feature, then you should definitely investigate this awesome time saver! The Tracks feature allows you to significantly speed up the process of adding items to the Group Sales reservation itinerary by having a “template” consisting of Daily Admission Programs, Scheduled Programs, and Custom Items that are added all at the same time.

Tracks are a very useful tool when you have reservations that are standardized and always include the same combination of Admissions, Programs and Custom Items. Even if you do have some variation in your activities, the Track process can still save you time by auto-loading all of the items and then you can add the small customizations as needed.

Let’s say that you offer a standard package for school groups that consists of a Guided Tour, Lunch Time, an Education Activity, and time to further explore the museum. Instead of having to manually add each of those four activities to the itinerary, with Tracks you can simply load a saved track and have all the activities scheduled for you together.

One of the biggest time savers of using a track is that you do not have to preschedule your Scheduled Program Events! If an event is part of a track, there is a built-in shortcut to add the event right from within your itinerary window!

The first thing you’ll need to do in order to use tracks is to either manually build a track from the Group Sales screen:
 

Or, you can use an existing Itinerary and “Save as track” so that you can easily replicate something that you’ve already done:

Once you have a Track saved in Altru, you can use it over and over again for future reservations. Simply begin your reservation like you normally would and when you go to build the itinerary, instead of adding all of the items individually, use the “Load a track” feature:

Once you have loaded the track, you’ll notice that any Scheduled Program Events that were not prescheduled will appear in a dark red color with the warning “XXXX; NOT ADDED: Event not scheduled on this date and time”. Don’t worry, this is the shortcut we mentioned before. Simply double click on the red box and your Schedule Event screen will appear. All you need to do is click the “Save” button to have the Event added since the date and location information is loaded automatically for you based on your program configuration and your track:

Guest Post from David Raber, Nevada Northern Railway:

While you can do many things with the WYSIWYG email editor in Altru, we’ve opted to use an additional tool to save ourselves some time. Here is a little about the email formatting tool that I use. As you may have discovered, email rendering software such as Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, etc do not pay attention to style sheets. They also resist many formatting instructions.

The only way to get around them all successfully is to use tables, and tables-within-tables, and in-line styles. The better the email looks, the worse the HTML code looks.

I use a template tool  called Digith. They have many templates to use.  A pack of templates are $19 for unlimited use. I installed it on my website, then I modified the template colors to match our website. A sample email from last year is below and the website is nnry.com. You can hopefully see that the theme matches.

The emails that are delivered from Altru directly render quite well on desktops to mobile devices.  There is a little problem in the three-column footer that I will fix sometime soon. I decided to use a single-column template rather than one of the multi-column ones so it would render better on a small mobile device.

Here are the steps I followed to get started:

1. Select a theme package from DIGITH. You will need to do some modification of any theme you pick, so don’t worry too much about your initial decision.
2. Install the DIGITH template on your museum’s webserver in a new directory. You will probably want to get your web admin to do this, and to also mark the directory so that the web bots do not index it.
3. Start modifying the theme with your colors and fonts.
4. Modify the header and footer for your museum.
5. Develop a generic email with several sections (large picture and text, picture left and text, picture right and text, etc)
6. Altru requires that you add their unsubscribe link and terms link. I have ours at the bottom. These need to be the actual Blackbaud-generated links. Use a generic email from Altru to find the links for your account.
7. Save the template  (upper right corner  “Project Manage” –>  Save).

Now, each time you want to run an email you will:

1. Open DIGITH with the URL on your website where you installed it
2. Open the template  (upper right corner “Project Manage”  –> Load)
3. Delete sections from your generic template that you don’t want  (upper left, “Edit Manage”  –> layout, then just use the minus icon to delete a section, or the plus icon to add a new section)
4. Replace pictures and add text to your email. The pictures you use need to be loaded somewhere on some website already that is publicly accessible (DIGITH is just a template tool, so it does not provide storage for you images).
5. I usually save each email as a template (upper right, “Project Manage”) so I can modify it later. You can modify templates later, but not the output from the next step.
6. Generate HTML code for your email  (On far left, choose Download button, then HTML).
7. Step 6 downloads a file for you to cut-and-paste into Altru. When creating an email in Altru look under VIEW then HTML. You can paste the HTML there.
8. The nice, fully-responsive styling that DIGITH provides is automatically stripped out by Altru for reasons no one can explain. I always strip it out myself before I ask Altru to handle it. Strip out everything from <BODY> up. Leave everything from <BODY> down.
9. Use Altru to send out a preview. I have a select group for me and one other proof-reader that I use for this purpose.
10. If you need to iterate, open a browser to where you stored DIGITH, then open the template you saved in step 5 (not the Ready-to-go HTML that you saved in step 6).

So, it is not trivial, but with a little patience you can send out themed emails from Altru. Our theme fits what we are doing, but almost certainly not what you are doing. More about the theme at the webpage talks about the website. You can also view the integration I did with the Altru programs on any of the pages from the VISIT menu. It is all automatically updated several times a day.

Here’s the sample email. Definitely use Altru to send your marketing emails – with or without Digith!

Recognition settings can have a big impact on your data.  Your ability to report on total giving by constituent can depend on how you use recognition credits. Configuring your recognition settings can make data entry a little faster and easier.  You can find Recognition settings under Configuration on the Revenue page in Altru. Here’s an explanation of the setting options available to you:

Donor Settings

This is where you specify the recognition credit for applied to the constituent whose record you enter the payment on. In some databases, the default is set to “Donor”.  Another credit type you may see is “Hard Credit”. Your organization is able to add additional credit type names, if you prefer another naming convention.

Anonymous recognition options

This setting allows you to default how you want to apply recognition credits when an anonymous payment is made. If you rely on recognition credits to report on total giving and you include anonymous gifts in your totals, then you should make sure you always apply recognition credits for those payments.

Default household recognition options

In this window, the setting that will affect your data is the For member revenue recognize section.  If you would like to track and report on household giving, we recommend you recognize the Household using a “Household” recognition credit type as demonstrated below.

In Altru you cannot apply revenue directly to a household record; it is applied to an individual within the household instead. As a result, the setting to the left side of the screen under For household revenue recognize: does not affect your data.

Default relationship recognition options

If you would like to create recognition credits based on a relationship, you can configure Altru to automatically add the recognition credit to payments when a relationship of that type exists for the constituent for whom you are entering the payment. The most common relationship that recognition credit defaults are used for is “spouse.”

Note —  This default setting will not apply the credit to converted data with a preexisting relationship.  It will only apply to brand new relationships created in the database.

When new relationships are created, the system will automatically create this configuration for their recognition credits on the relationship record:

It’s important to note that you can adjust recognition credits directly on payment records whenever necessary, to add additional recognition credits or remove those credits if needed. However, by defining your Recognition Settings ahead of time, you save time when entering payment records because your common recognition credits are already applied.

One of my favorite Altru online features is the ability to use User Registration. User Registration recognizes patrons as constituents in your database and offers some great benefits for both your organization and your patrons. Some of these benefits include the ability to apply automatic discounts, auto-populating constituent information, preventing duplicates, and tracking web form visitation.

There can still be a lot of mystery around User Registration—we aren’t always sure how patrons are interacting with User Registration and your Altru Web Forms. I’ve put together a few tips to help create a smooth user registration experience!

Tip 1: Encourage Patrons to Register through the Register\Sign in Button

You may not realize there are actually 2 ways to Register for your website and they are each a little different. You can register using the Sign In/Register button at the top right of your web forms:

OR you can register during your check out:

When you register during check out, Altru does not match the information entered on the order to existing constituents in your database until the order is complete—therefore, the registration is not complete until the order is complete. This could cause a patron not to get a discount if they expect one.

To prevent this from happening, always encourage patrons to register for the first time using the Register\Sign In button at the top of your forms.

Tip 2: Edit Language

Now, there is a chance when registering, your patrons will receive an error. Maybe they’ve already registered or maybe their email is taken. There are default settings in your Altru database, but we expect you to change these settings to help your patrons and to add your contact information in case they need help!

For example, your customers could encounter an error like this one:

Errors Encountered: Registrant is already registered. For information, please contact us by phone or email.

Now, this isn’t entirely helpful for your patrons—what does this mean? How can we get in touch with you?

To edit this language, go to Web > User Registration Settings. On the Language Tab, you’ll see many opportunities to edit this message—and more messaging around user registration! You can change this message to say something like:

Oops! We encountered an error. According to our records, you are already registered with us. Please use the Sign in button, or contact our box office at ###-###-#### for assistance.

This makes it easy for patrons to understand, gives them a next action, and if they are still having trouble, they have a number to call for assistance.

Tip 3: Look for Online Info

Another thing to keep in mind is you can actually see that patrons are registering, signing in, and navigating through your web forms all from their constituent record! All you have to do is look for the Online Info tab on their constituent record:

From this tab, you can also see when they registered, the date they last signed in, and even their recent web traffic:

This can be a great tool in helping to determine if a patron has registered or signed in to your web forms.

Tip 4: Change a User Name

A new feature as of our release in February 2015 is that you can change the online username of a constituent. Previously, if a patron got a new email, they would have needed to create a new registration, now it is as simple as changing the email address!

To do this, go to the constituent’s Online Info tab and click Edit:

Tip 5: Prepare your Staff

The best advice I have for you is to make sure that if your organization is using User Registration that you educate your box office and ticket staff. Make sure you add some time into ticket-seller training to talk about user registration—staff that’s well-equipped with the knowledge of why patrons need to register and why you may encounter instances where patrons don’t receive their discounts will be able to act swiftly, correct orders, and reassure your patrons.

To help with this training, I’ve created a user registration guide. This explains what user registration is, what the benefits are, and how patrons can register. It also reviews what to check if a patron did not receive a discount they qualify for and how to fix their record for future transactions: Managing User Registration Issues.

One of the best features of Altru is the ability to accept payments for memberships, donations, event registration, program sales, and combination sales online through web forms. However, sometimes there is an issue with the online transaction. These issues are referred to as Unresolved Online Sales Orders. In this blog we will review how to check for, review and resolve Unresolved Online Sales Orders, outline some common errors that we see in support, and discuss how often you should be checking for these types of issues. This is not a frequent occurrence in the Altru system, however, it’s important to understand how find and resolve these issues quickly for your customers when they do occur.

What causes an Unresolved Online Sales Order?

In some cases for online sales payments, Altru will assign a status of “Unresolved” to sales orders after website users make payments using web forms. Altru will use this temporary status to create a record for an online sale even if errors prevented the transaction from completing fully in Altru.

Here is an example: If an item such as a membership level name is changed while the level is live online, the program can accept an online payment for the item but cannot process a sales order if the transaction does not match the new membership level name. If the payment does not get associated with a sales order, you will not have a record of the payment, so the program creates a record for the unresolved online sales order and associates it with the payment.

How do you check for Unresolved Online Sales Orders?

On the Unresolved Online Sales Orders page, you can view a list of all unresolved sales orders and access the records. To access unresolved online sales follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the Sales page

2. Click Unresolved online sales orders

3. The Unresolved Online Sales Orders page appears.

How do you resolve Unresolved Online Sales Orders?

Once you are on the Unresolved Online Sales Order page, you can click unresolved sales orders links in the grid to access the sales orders. You can then resolve issues or refund payments. When you access a record, the View unresolved order error link allows you to access notes about the error that prevented the program from processing the sales order. Let’s review the steps for reviewing and resolving the error:

1. Click on the Order Number link in the grid view

2. Click on the View unresolved order error link to review the error message

3. Review the notes related to the unresolved online sales order. In this example, the steps to resolve the issue are located in the Knowledgebase solution BB743018. If you are having issues resolving any unresolved online sales orders, you can search Knowledgebase for a solution or create a case with support using chat.

4. Once you have reviewed your error message click Save. Follow the steps in your Knowledgebase article or provided from support to fix and complete the order.

What are common errors that cause Unresolved Online Sales Orders?

There are many reasons that orders will have a status of ‘Unresolved’ in Altru. Below are three different common errors and the steps to resolve them. If you are having issues resolving any unresolved online sales order you can search Knowledgebase for a solution or contact support.

‘Error: The record specified does not exist for this data form’

Description: When working with an unresolved online sales order for an event registration, membership, or program and trying to edit the registration in the order record (per the unresolved error instructions), users receive the following error: ‘Error: an error occurred while building an item in the cart. To complete the order, edit the item and enter any missing information. If you are unable to edit the item, remove it from the cart and re-create it.’

This usually indicates there is not a price type, registration option, or membership level selected in the cart. This is can be caused by changing the price types, registration options, or membership levels on the event or membership while the event or membership is live on the web. For example, the registration option was named “Adult” when the patron selected it for purchase online, but then it changed to “Adult-Member.”  This will cause the order to be put in Unresolved Online Sales Orders since the registration option changed from what they originally selected for purchase.

Resolution:
1. Go to Sales and click Unresolved online sales orders.

2. Click on the order to open the record.

3. Click on View unresolved online order error. See ‘Error: The record specified does not exist for this data form.’

4. Look in the cart on the right hand side of the screen. See that a price type or a registration option is missing, but the event name is listed.

5. Highlight the item and delete it from the cart.

6. Go to the Create Order tab and add the same event item back into the cart, but with the correct price type.

7. Click Complete to finish the order.

‘Error: A duplicate credit card charge occurred while processing this sales order. Please review the payments for the order and refund the duplicate charge – when resolving an unresolved online sales order’

Description: A duplicate credit card charge occurred while processing this sales order. Please review the payments for the order and refund the duplicate charge.  You will also see the credit card information for the duplicate charge and the authorization code.  However, in the order, there will be another sales order item and another payment.

Resolution:
1. Contact the patron and determine if both charges were intentional or if one was a mistake (the charge listed in the error message and the charge listed on the right hand side of the sales screen.)

2a. If the duplicate charge is in error: Complete the sales order with the correct payment, then go into your credit card processor portal and refund the other charge (BB716255).

2b. If both charges are valid: First, complete the unresolved order. Then, create a new order in Daily Sales or Advance Sales with the other item that the patron was attempting to purchase. Use an alternate payment method to complete the order, since we do not want to charge the card again.

‘Error: The program billed the credit card but could not link the payment to the sales order. The credit card transaction ID is (transaction ID).’

Description: When the program processed the sales order, the payment amount did not match the total cost. This can occur when a website user accesses the shopping cart multiple times simultaneously. If the user edits one instance but processes the transaction in another, the payment amount and total cost may not match.

Resolution: To resolve the discrepancy, please contact the patron. Add or remove items from the transaction to match the payment amount or refund the transaction through your credit card processor portal, delete the sales order, and create a new correct transaction.

When should I be reviewing Unresolved Online Sales Transactions?

Users that have the Guest Services Manager role will be able to check Unresolved Online Sales Orders. We normally recommend users check this page daily as part of their End of Day process. This ensures that you are keeping up to date on any issues with sales transactions that are completing online. Also if a support case is needed it is always better to create it early so work can begin on a resolution. In addition, subscribe to the RSS feed to receive alerts about unresolved online sales orders for your web forms. These unresolved orders will be few and far between, but having a good process in place to resolve these issues ensures better customer service for your online patrons.

Every year, I am so excited for spring. It’s truly a beautiful season in Minnesota, and after winter here, I’m always ready for the green and the birds and the flowers. I’m reminded that renewal and new growth comes with spring. It’s also true in my work life as well. Many of the projects that were begun in the winter at the beginning of the year start to come to fruition in the spring.

For Altru education so far this year, we released eight task-based curricula plans, 22 new videos, 10 new Masters Workshop classes and one new recurring class, Query 201. It feels good to be able to offer all those new resources to you, our Altru users. The momentum should keep on rolling throughout the spring as well and I’m looking forward to sharing more with you every month.

In the meantime, visiting Training Central to check out everything we have to offer. Remember, everything below is included with your organization’s Altru subscription.

Step-by-step job aids: These downloadable resources, available in Training Central under the Type = materials, provide step-by-step instructions for specific jobs in Altru, as well as advice on important decision making processes.

Videos:  Our videos provide quick, targeted training and are available whenever you need a refresher. They are available to you in two different ways, within Training Central under the Type = online class, and on the Altru videos webpage. There are advantages to accessing the videos through Training Central – we keep track in your transcript of what you’ve watched and you don’t need access to YouTube.

Curricula: These training guides combine videos, job aids, and regular recurring instructor-led classes together into a training guideline so that a user knows exactly what resources will cover topics related to the job they need to perform in Altru. Curricula are available on Training Central under the Type = curriculum. We don’t have a curriculum for every area of Altru yet, but we’re expanding all the time and have over 30 different curricula planned for the future.

The easiest way to find what you need in Training Central is to use Browse for Training, filter on Altru under Subject and on the training Type you want.

Here’s what’s in the plans for instructor-led online training in April:

Altru Masters Workshop: Managing Membership Renewal Communications – April 2nd – 1-2pm ET – Register here

Reviewing and revising your membership communications on a regular basis is a great way of keeping your membership program fresh and members engaged. During this one-hour Masters Workshop session we’ll dive into how we can reorganize our membership renewal letters configuration, update content, manage exclusions, and monitor performance.

Altru Masters Workshop: Advanced Appeals and Segmentation – April 9th – 3-4pm ET – Register here

In this one-hour session, we will discuss appeal mailing solicitations and segmentation. This session will focus on end of year solicitations like the annual fund drive, membership drive and donor thank you letters. At the end of the session, you should be able to create multiple selections for different groupings of constituents and attach to an appeal mailing. You should also understand the importance of segmentation and how it affects the responses to marketing efforts.

Altru Masters Workshop: Fundraising & Special Events Part II – April 13^th – 1-2pm ET – Register here

This two-part Altru Masters Workshop will cover everything you need to know about Fundraising and Special Events.  Part I covers setting up your events including creating registrations options, assigning event coordinators, tasks, and expenses, and configuring a seating plan. Part II will build on information covered in Part I, so it is suggested that Part I is taken as a pre-requisite to Part II. Part II will focus on what to do after initial event setup, such as creating invitations and managing invitees and registrations. It will also cover reporting on your events. Each session will last one-hour and you must enroll in Part I and Part II separately. Note: A recording of Part I is posted on our website.

Altru Masters Workshop: Membership eRenewals – April 21st – 1-2pm ET – Register here

This Altru Masters Workshop will cover everything you need to know about sending Membership eRenewals in Altru. The class will cover setting up email letters, packages and editing renewal processes. It will also include tips for using the Altru Web Forms to boost online renewals. This workshop will include some content from other customers for best practices and ideas about how to implement this new process.

Altru Masters Workshop: A Look Back – New Features Review Q1 2015 – April 29th – 3-4pm ET – Register here

In this one-hour instructor-led online event, we will discuss all of the changes made to Altru in the past six months. With our every 2-months release schedule, we release six times a year, making changes both big and small in many different areas of Altru. This session will ensure that you are up to date on our new functionality and any workflow changes. We’ll cover Altru 3.19-4.2, reviewing all releases from November 2014-April 2015.

Altru Masters Workshop: Tips & Tricks for Constituent Record Maintenance – Constituent Update Batch & Global Change – May 6th – 1-2pm ET – Register here

In this one-hour instructor-led online Masters Workshop, we will explore two common and powerful database update tools available in Altru, global change and constituent update batch. Discover how to correct data mistakes in your system, when to use each tool, and how to avoid common stumbling blocks while cleaning your records. Familiarity with Batch in Altru is recommended before attending this class.

Did you know?
While these are special Masters Workshop sessions are run live only once or twice a year, we record them whenever possible and post the recording and a copy of the class materials on our website. Check out the past Masters Workshops.

And as always, we have our regularly scheduled classes:

Appeals & Mailings 101 – April 16, 28
Batch 101 – May 1
Daily Financial Reconciliation – April 16, 27
General Sales 101 – April 6, 24
Introduction to Altru – April 9, 22
Managing Group Sales Reservations – April 8, 20
Membership Setup 101 – April 7, 23
Merchandise 101 – April 3, 13
Query 101 – April 15, 28
Query 201 – April 15, 29
Revenue 101 – April 7, 24
Ticketing Setup 101 – April 6, 23
Web Forms 101 – April 13, 30

As a Customer Success Consultant, I work with Altru customers during the first few months after implementation. One of the most common topics I receive questions about is about Name Formats. Often these are new for organizations and there is a lot to consider when building them. I’ve put together a list of 5 “Need-to-Knows” about Name Formats. I hope this list will help you to get your Name Formats in tip-top shape!

1. The Basics: Name Formats are all based on fields
There’s no better place to start than with the basics. In your database, hop over to Marketing and Communications and click Name format options. The Name Formats tab is where it all begins:

As you can see here, Altru provides us a list of common Name Formats and we can add new ones if we’d like. Although we may see “Mr. and Mrs. William H. Smith,” these are actually based on merge fields in our database. So for example, “Mr. and Mrs. William H. Smith” is actually built like this in Altru:
[Title] and [Spouse Title] [First Name] [Middle Name] [Last Name] could appear like this on Mrs. Smith’s record: Mrs. and Mr. Margaret A. Adams.

It’s very important to keep this in mind when making decisions about how to configure your Name Format Defaults such as Primary Addressee, Primary Salutation and any other defaults that will appear on a constituent record.

You’ll also want to check the other options you see on this screen:

• Show as initial (great for middle name!)
• Remove next space
• Remove if previous or next entry is blank

These options will help with the appearance of your format. For example, if you forget to check the box to remove the “and” if the previous or next entry is blank, you could have a name format for single gal appear like this: “Ms. and Taylor Swift.”

You will then use these field-fueled formats under Name format defaults on the Name Format Options Tab. These will appear automatically when a new constituent record is created:
(We’ll get to Name Format Options, a bit later!)

2. Making Changes: What updates retroactively and what doesn’t?
Inevitably, once you’ve configured your Name Format Defaults, you may want to change something. For example, maybe you decide not to use titles or want a different name format to be Primary Addressee.

Most changes that you’ll make won’t affect existing records; only new records going forward. That’s why it’s very important to put some careful thought into how you’d like to configure these.

The ONLY thing that will update retroactively is a change to the actual format under the Name Formats tab we explored before. For example, I have the format “Mr. and Mrs. William Smith” specified as my Formal Addressee:

If I go to the Name Formats tab and change “Mr. and Mrs. William Smith” to add a middle initial, this will update on the constituent record: See this video example. (NOTE: Some of the standard Altru formats can’t be edited!)

However, if I add a new default (like Board Addressee), choose a new name format for an existing default (like “The Smith Family”) or try to make the Formal Addressee primary instead, you see that won’t update on the existing record: See this video example. These settings will only apply to newly added records.

3. One Format Doesn’t Fit All: Editing and customizing Name Formats
We all know that a single format won’t work for everyone—some people like to be addressed their nicknames, we have lots of constituents with spouses who have different last names, etc.,—so we many need to do some clean up and customizing on individual records.

I always encourage clients to consider what would work for most constituents when configuring Name Format Defaults then edit the name formats on your constituent records for the rest.

On your constituent record, go to the Personal Info tab and click Personal. Under Name formats, you can click Add to add a new format or click Edit to change an existing one:

In the next screen, you have the option to choose another format (these are coming from from the Name Formats tab we explored in #1) or to type a custom format:
Keep in mind, custom Name Formats don’t update automatically if you add or remove a spouse, so always check Name Formats when adding/removing spouse relationships.

4. Putting Name Formats to Work: How they interact with Mailings
Name Format Defaults appear on the constituent record, but how do they interact with mailings in Altru? That’s where Name Format Options come in:

Name Format Options allow you to specify how you’d like to address Individuals, Organization contacts, and Groups/Households. As you can see from the screenshot below, we pick what format to use from the individual’s record OR if they don’t have any of those formats, we can choose a backup format under Otherwise, use this format:

You can have as many Name Format Options configured as you’d like in your database! And you will specify which option you’d like to use when creating your mailing:
Let’s say, you’re sending a mailing through Appeal Mailings and choosing to send one letter per household. Which spouses’ name format will appear in the results?! I’m glad you asked—if both spouses are included in your selection, Altru will pull the format from the constituent marked as the Primary Household Member.

5. Thanks to Name Format Options, it doesn’t matter what’s defined on the constituent record…
If you’d like a uniform look to your mailing or need to do a little name format clean up, you can also use Name Format Options to build an Addressee or Salutation from scratch.

All you have to do is remove any formats defined on a record from the grid and choose a name format under Otherwise, use this format. Once you run your mailing, everyone in your results will have this format—even if it doesn’t exist on their record:

If you select a “Joint Name Format” here (indicated on the Name Formats tab from #1 with a green check in the Joint Name Format column), Altru will build the format according to the rules on the Joint Name Format tab:

For more information about configuring Name Format Options, see our Job Aid with step-by-step instructions: Customizing and Using Name Format Options in Altru.

In the Altru 4.2 release on April 14 and 16, a new version of the ActiveX Control add-on for Internet Explorer will be required to print sales receipts and tickets. Follow the instructions below to install the new interface prior to the April 14 release to avoid disruptions to your front desk sales. Do not apply this update to any workstation used for batch printing. These workstations will need to be upgraded after the 4.2 update.

This Workstation Interface must be updated due to new functionality to enable customized ticket designs. We will provide more about this enhancement as we get closer to the release.

The updated interface is compatible with the current version of Altru (v4.1), so you need not wait until the next release to perform the update. Please follow the steps below as soon as possible to avoid interrupting the sales document printing process.

Installing the files will take approximately 15 seconds per workstation.

Do the following on each of your point of sale workstations:
Note: Backoffice workstations that do not print tickets or receipts do not need to be updated. Be sure to login to the workstation with local Admin rights in order to complete the installation.

1. Download these files to the desktop of the computer.
2. Double click the Blackbaud.AppFx.Programming.WebShellWorkstation file.
3. Follow the prompts to install the workstation interface on the machine.
4. Repeat steps 1-3 on all point of sale workstations.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

Every once in a while, we like to do a Community Roundup where we gather up all the great questions and suggestion posts from other users in one place where you can easily view them and add your comments and expertise.  Who better to tell people what membership card printer to use or how to track your grants than you, who do this every day!  I’ve compiled some posts where other users need your help and advice.  So jump in on these trending topics and add your two cents.

For those Development professionals out there,

Do you have an awesome duplicate management process?  Share your ideas with Tom.

Have you struggled with how to enter donations from international donors?  We have a great best practice from our very own international consultant, Peter Gulka.

For you membership gurus,

There’s lots of talk in the Community about membership cards and printers.  Add your advice here or here or here or here.

With your membership  program, do you have problems with multiple households “sharing” their membership?  Or perhaps you’ve developed a great process to prevent this problem.  Give Elizabeth your thoughts.

Have you increased your membership rates?  How did you spread the news to your members?  Let us know here or here.

If you’re very web savvy, Shannon and others could use your help on setting up seamless web form pages to buy multiple event tickets at once.

Does anyone have a lot of grant funding? Let others know what system you use to track your time for these grants.  And while you’re at it, do you track grants through Altru?  If so, share your process.

If you’re looking to expand your focus and programming to youth, check out these ideas about a teen or youth advisory committee.

Does your organization utilize tons of volunteers?  What are your thoughts on volunteer identification cards?

Maybe you have tons of birthday parties.  Do you require payment in advance?  Let us know.

Have you ever brought an old coat out of storage, reached into the pocket and found $20? Do you remember how happy it made you? Money you didn’t even know you had!

Matching gifts allow you to feel that way every time someone makes a donation. If their employer has a matching gift program that gift can often double! If I give $20, and my employer matches it, that’s $40!

We can use the tools in Altru to help us manage what we know about organizations that match their employees’ donations, and make collecting that money a lot easier.

In this post, we’ll talk about the first part of this process – initial settings and creating a matching gift claim. In part 2 we’ll cover processing payments and dealing with unpaid matching gift claims.

A matching gift claim is essentially a pledge created for an employer because you know they have a policy of matching their employees’ donations. At a later date the employer fulfills that claim by sending your organization a check.

There are two main ways that organizations match gifts:
1) Employee payroll deduction – in this scenario you as an organization will typically get one check from the employer which includes both the original gift, and the matching portion. These are the easiest to manage as the employer has done most of the work for you. There’s no need to follow up to collect the matched portion of the gift.

2) Organization notifies the employer of a claim – in this scenario you find out about the matching gift policy first, process the donor’s gift, and then at a later date go back to the employer for their matching portion. This is the most common scenario, and the one Altru’s toolset is best suited to track and follow up on.

The magic of the default matching gift preferences!
A lot of the heavy lifting for setting up matching gift claims can be done by Altru. Creating a matching gift claim is the first step to getting your found money. The Matching Gift Preferences define automated behavior for creating those claims and can be found in Revenue > Configuration > Matching gift preferences:

Set the values on this screen so that Altru will automatically do a lot of the things you would normally need to do manually. It will save a ton of time and increase your data entry consistency! All the settings should be a reflection of your internal policies. We recommend making sure each setting can be explained and justified based on those policies.

If you have trouble understanding exactly when these settings do, click the Help icon in the bottom-left corner of the form for more details on what each setting does.

More automation – configuring known matching givers
On occasion you will find out that a particular employer has a matching gift policy. This can be accidental, or an employee of that company may inform you, or it may be the result of directed research. Typically this means that whatever their staff donate, the company will match at a 1:1 ratio. When you find this information, make sure to update your existing relationships by checking this box:

From now on, a new matching gift claim will be created for the American Medical Association (AMA) every time Robert Hernandez makes a donation on his own.

For new relationships that might be added, we can also modify the matching gift conditions on the American Medical Associations record. These settings will ensure matching gift claims are not only created automatically, but created in accordance with the company’s internal policies:

In this example the AMA is matching gifts at a 1:1 ratio. To be matched the gift must be at least $5.00, but no more than $10,000. Additionally the company will match up to $100,000 annually and up to $1,000,000 over the lifetime of their relationship with your organization.

So the next time Robert makes a donation, a matching gift claim appears automatically!

All of these settings working together will set your organization up well to create new matching gift claim records. In the next post, we will talk more about what the next steps are for collecting the money for these claims and processing them in Altru.

In Part 1 we discussed the basics of matching gifts, and how to set up Altru to create matching gift claims automatically. To review, a matching gift claim works a lot like a pledge. It is a commitment that an organization (typically a donor’s employer) makes to donate to your organization when one of their employees donates first. Now we are going to review how to process the payments that will fulfill those claims, as well as dealing with matching gift claims that might not get paid – for a variety of reasons.

Applying a payment to a matching gift commitment
First, open the organization’s record that has sent in their matching payment. Click Add a payment. The same payment form we typically use to process one-time donations allows us to process this, but in a slightly different way. We want to make the connection between this payment and the original claim to show that it has been fulfilled. The linking of those two records together is a key part of this process.

Using an Application type of Matching gift claim, tells Altru that the money in this payment is not a one-time donation, but instead should be applied against that outstanding claim:
A list of outstanding claims from this organization will appear. Just click the one relevant to this payment and click Add. Because the Matching Gift Claim functions like a pledge, Altru will prompt you to specify how much of the balance you’d like to pay – the full amount, or a partial amount. In this example we’ll pay the whole thing:
The application has been added to the payment:

Unapplied matching gift payments
It is possible that the person processing the donation may not be aware that it is anything other than a one-time donation. If the donor organization sends a check, but no supporting documentation to indicate it is paying a matching gift claim there’s really no way to know without looking into each donor’s record to see if there is an outstanding claim to be paid.

In this situation, this would probably be added as a regular donation. At a later date we may realize that the check the American Medical Association (AMA) sent was, in fact, supposed to be applied against a matching gift claim. We can see on their record the claim, and the payment entered, but they are not connected – the claim still has a $150 balance:
What can we do? Is it too late? Fear not!

What we need to do is edit the payment and change the application from Donation to Matching gift claim. Even after a donation has been deposited we can make this change. We just need to be aware that the designation we applied the payment to as a donation may not be the same designation we would want when we realize it is a payment on a matching gift claim. This means that we need to make sure we notify the finance team of this change, so they can make the appropriate change in the financial system as well.

Open the payment record for the $150 donation. We want to change the application of the revenue, so click Edit payment. The payment screen appears. It is laid out a bit differently from the screen we see when adding a new payment, but has all the same components.

First, let’s remove the current donation application, by clicking on the row, then clicking Remove:
Now we follow the same process as we did earlier – change Donation to Matching gift claim, select the correct claim, and click Add:
We now see that the payment has been correctly linked to the matching gift claim and the balance is $0.00. We did it!

Clearing unpaid commitments
There are occasions where a matching gift claim will not get paid. This could happen because the company goes out of business, they change their matching gift policy, or any number of reasons.

We can retain the history of the claim existing in Altru, but effectively write off the balance in the same way we might write off an uncollectable pledge. In Altru this is called clearing the claim.

We clear uncollectable matching gift claims by using a process. The process in turn knows which claims to clear and which ones to keep based on a revenue query. You’ll build your own query according to your own rules. In this example we have a query isolating all matching gift claims with a date prior to January 1, 2015 that still have a balance. Remember when you save the query to check the box to make it a selection. This is necessary for us to attach it to the process later.

Now we can create the process. From Revenue, click Clear matching gift claims:
We’ll give the process a relevant name, description, and then attach the selection we just built in query:
We can now start the process:
Once the process runs we’ll see how many claims were cleared:
The records are still present, but now have a status of inactive.

We’re always looking for ways to help our customers use Altru more easily and for ways to incorporate help and training right into Altru. Recently, we’ve been exploring a new tool that we think will help us to meet those two aims.

Many of you may have noticed that on March 31 there was a new Walk through option in the Help menu and new little green walking men icons in a few places in Altru. Both of those are ways to launch our new walkthroughs. Walkthroughs provide step-by-step interactive guidance within Altru to assist you in performing day-to-day and configuration tasks.

Why we love walkthroughs

What we love about walkthroughs is that they are in-product, practical help. You use them as you are actually performing a real-life task in Altru. It doesn’t require using a fake scenario in the sandbox or practicing once in a staging copy of your data first and then reproducing that in your live database.

It’s also available to you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and is even faster than chat support! We think walkthroughs will be great for new users as they are learning to perform their day-to-day tasks in Altru and for experienced users learning new parts of the system. But, we also think that walkthroughs will help all of you with the tasks that you only need to do periodically throughout the year – the kind of tasks that you always end up needing to go back and look up how to do every time. A walkthrough, easily found in Altru, could guide you step-by-step every time.
When a scenario needs a little context or some connection to the bigger picture, we can also embed a video right into the walkthrough, to help you understand why we follow the steps that we do, rather than just how the steps work. The people we’ve got building the walkthroughs aren’t just product experts. They are also the same people who work with Altru customers every day and they are building the walkthroughs with best practices in mind.

Walkthroughs are still in beta & we need feedback

While we believe all of the wonderful things I mentioned above, we want to prove that they are true. Being in beta means that we don’t have walkthroughs for everything yet. In fact, currently, we’ve only released walkthroughs for Group Sales and a handful of initial database setup tasks. However, another really fantastic thing about walkthroughs is that we can release new ones any time – we don’t have to wait for the regular Altru product updates. We’ll be able to drop in new walkthroughs as they are completed.

Additionally, because we are still in beta, we really need your feedback on the walkthroughs. Tell us what you think, including what you think we should add walkthroughs for, by filling out this super quick survey.

See it in action

Watch our video Introduction to Walkthroughs in Altru and then log-in to Altru and try it out!

Please join us in welcoming Dan Peters, of the Museum of History & Industry, as our newest Altru Champion. Although Dan joined the museum just a bit over four months ago, he’s quickly become an Altru expert. He’s already been active in the community (we’re sure you’ve seen his advice!), and we look forward to additional contributions in the months and years to come.  Congrats, Dan!
How long have you been using Altru?

Not very long! I joined the Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI) in December 2014. I was somewhat familiar with another Blackbaud product, eTapestry, but I had to dive into the deep end of the pool. I found all the Altru training videos very helpful, as well as the Altru community, the live webinars, and the ability to chat with Altru support when I have been stumped!

What’s your favorite Altru Module? Why?

The Information Library and OData! Queries are the bread and butter of my work as the Data Manager & Analyst. It took some time to wrap my head around how the Altru query system works, but I feel like I can get just about anything I want out of a query, which I can then analyze and pass along to our leadership team. Perhaps a second favorite is the Appeal mailings module. Before I arrived, no one at MOHAI was really using that module and they relied on de-duplicating mailing lists by hand (yikes!). I figured out the module, passed along the training to the MOHAI team, and mailings have improved dramatically!

What do you like most about the Altru Community?

Getting advice and solutions from other Altru users, as well as the Altru team. It is so helpful to hear how other end-users are solving complex issues, as well as feeling that you are not alone when struggling with those complex issues!

How has Altru helped your work at MOHAI?

Primarily with Appeal Mailings! Just in that area alone we have seen a marked improvement in our ability to track our work and be more efficient. Overall, I would say that Altru is becoming more and more helpful to the MOHAI team as we have better learned how to use Altru and work with the system, not fight it! That may not sound like high praise, but it is. MOHAI is still learning how to integrate Altru into its organizational practices, but as we are doing so, we are becoming more efficient and are better able to track our performance as an organization.

Do you have any fun facts to share about yourself?

I have the cutest Shiba Inu puppy in the entire world, and her name is Ponyo (no bias here, whatsoever)!