Transferring a Drawer (instead of closing)
I had this idea about being able to transfer drawers to different users instead of closing. Maybe this would be considered terrible practice, but I have been trying to think through the issues with having multiple users at one workstation, especially dealing with work shifts. As it stands now for our museum, one user logs in and opens the drawer at the beginning of the day and leaves it open all day. If they leave before close of business, someone else continues to do sales in through other person's username and then closes their drawer. I've asked about this, but our manager feels that it takes far too much time to close the drawer for one user and open another drawer, especially if people are waiting in line. From reading what other Altru users do, the other practice is to have one general log-in for each workstation, which means that you have a password getting passed around to multiple people. The problem is that in either option this creates security issues and makes security auditing much more difficult, if not impossible. I would rather be able to enforce that everyone logs in as themselves and only does work in Altru with their unique username, and if they need to leave in the middle of the day they have the option to transfer their drawer to their replacement.
As a larger issue, I think the manager role needs to have more admin control over drawers (for example, if someone leaves and forgets to close their drawer, it requires the manager calling them, getting their password, etc., when I would rather that the manager be able to go into a "Drawer Admin" function and handle it from their own user profile). If managers had more control, then they could also have the option to transfer a drawer to another user as need be, like if there is an emergency and someone needs to leave suddenly. The drawer transfer, in general, could also have some safeguards in place, such as requiring manager approval before the transfer happens.
Yes, most POS systems have drawers attached to workstations, not users. Users should just be able to take over an active drawer without having to close it, extracting a deposit and reopen it. Having to do this, especially at peak volume is huge handicap to operations and customer service.
We would also love to see the ability to have multiple users using the same drawer. We don't have the time or resources to switch the drawers every time someone steps away from the desk. We have also been having one user sign into the drawer for the day. We would love to be able to have our staff sign in and out to the drawer as they use it, having the option to assign multiple users to a single drawer or anchoring the drawer to the workstation instead of the username would be great.
I do want to mention, from the original post. Managers can close other drawers without another users password. The manager should have access to the approve closed drawers screen. If you go to the last page of that it will show you the open drawers and the manager will have the permissions to close them from their own account.
We would love to see this. We wanted, for instance, to be able to track "who is selling the most memberships" but really there wasn't anyway Altru could help with this because we use a generic login "Frontdesk" for ticket sellers.
I would love to get some more traction on this idea!!! We are really struggling with this right now, and I'm trying to find that right balance between security and flexibility for a front desk team that needs to handle multiple things and would like to quickly switch users at the front desk when necessary.
Frankly, I think that drawers should be attached to workstations, instead of users. If that were the case, any user could then use their own log-in at the workstation and start using that drawer (perhaps there would be a question about whether they want to "open" that drawer in their name. All their transactions would be tied to their username (i.e. then we can actually audit when necessary), and anyone (with the appropriate roles, of course), could close at the end of the day.