The release this week includes features that enhance reporting and grant greater flexibility for access control! Here are some highlights:

Responsive Web Form Layouts for Mobile Devices
Based on early feedback from Altru Release 4.5, we made changes to increase functionality and improve flexibility for web styling.

Program Revenue Report
This new report displays the revenue and number of tickets sold for scheduled and daily program events by event date, making it easier for you to get the program information you need. You can also filter the report by program or sales method and group the results by event or price type.

Three New System Roles
This release contains three new system roles, which will give your organization more flexibility to control what information Altru users can access in the system. These roles specifically deny access to features that a user might be granted access to in another role:

• Restrict Personal Information: This role prevents users from viewing the demographics and Social Security Number section on a constituent record.
• Restrict Smart Fields Tab: This role prevents user from viewing the Smart Fields tab on a constituent record.
• Restrict Contact Tab: This role prevents users from viewing phone, email, and address information on a constituent record.

Visit the Altru New Features page to get all the information and guidance you need to begin using the new features right away.

We are thrilled to release this new functionality to you and always welcome your feedback.

As of December 7, 2015, there will be a new phone menu when calling Blackbaud Support.

We have simplified some of our options and made some additional changes to the phone menu. We have a Knowledgebase article that will show you the changes: How do I find my product in the Customer Support menu? so you know where an option you may have used before is now located.

Please note that these changes will not apply to our Blackbaud Europe clients.

Let us know if you have any questions in the comments below.

If you have your fiscal year set up to end tomorrow (December 31), make sure that you have your next fiscal year setup. This only applies to organizations that have the General Ledger enabled. If a new fiscal year is not setup, on Jan 1 all users will receive the message “Data could not be saved. Post date must be in an open period.” when trying to add any new transactions: donations, ticket sales, etc.

To do this, ask an individual at your organization that is assigned the Accounting Manager role to do this:

1. Go to Administration and select General Ledger Setup
2. Click on Define Fiscal Years.  Ensure future fiscal years are setup.  If not, continue to step 3.
3. Click Add Next to set up a new fiscal year.
4. Enter a name for the fiscal year.
5. Enter a description.
6. Select the number of periods for the fiscal year.
7. Click Auto-complete if your periods are broken down into a simple month format OR fill in the end dates of each period.
8. Click Save.

Visual learner? Check out this video or walk through it in the product by clicking the Help Icon > Walkthrough > Initial Setup tab > click Configure Fiscal Years.

Starting Monday, April 11, 2016, this blog category will no longer available on Blackbaud KnowHow. All of your Altru product news has been migrated to the Altru Community.

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Thank you for your readership over the years and we look forward to having you in the Blackbaud Community!

Have questions? Reach out to the Blackbaud Community team for more information: community@blackbaud.com.