Hello Network!
Greetings from the California Academy of Sciences. We are celebrating our one week go live anniversary today!
One item, that seems simple enough but is giving us lots of challenges is triggering the cash drawer to open after a cash transaction. We are self-hosted and using BOCA printers for tickets and receipts. We have tried numerous configurations from direct BOCA connection to Serial to USB adapters. We have not yet found the magical solution. Do any of you have this figured out?
Best,
Carl
Congratulations on your go-live! We had a little chuckle at your forum post here... We tried getting the cash drawer pop to work so many times during our implementation and eventually gave up. Since then, it's become a running joke, a humorous symbol of failed efforts.But I know other folks have found solutions. Good luck, and welcome to the network! :)
Wait...our drawers don't pop?
We went partially live on RAMP last October, but are getting ready for our full time seasonal startup at 14 sites now. (More will be following using laptops or TRBO later.)
We made the decision to omit receipt printers since the Boca equipment seems finicky and expensive and early tests revealed that most visitors didn’t care that much about paper receipts anymore. We can e-mail receipts if they do, and/or print confirmations to a page printer. (We are finding that the lack of paper receipts can cause occasional complications in certain scenarios – mostly when someone buys a ticket as general public but then later returns and wants to become a member. Still, overall, we’re happy with the no receipt printer solution.)
Not so much joy on the cash drawer front. We have been involved in an epic 8-month struggle to get our chosen USB cash drawers (Bematech/Logic Controls CR-3003) to pop. This has included shipping a unit to a Tessitura developer and at least two version 15 updates with specific code to address the problems. As of today, we’re still not there, although we have seen it work fleetingly only to have it stop working again. We’re in conversations at a high level with Tessitura about this.
It seems some of the complications have to do with the acrobatics Citrix uses to tunnel COM port connections over to the virtual desktops running our RAMP-based clients, and the various settings buried in back-end configuration files to make that work.
Sounds like you guys are in the acceptance stage of cash drawer grief – we’re still going back and forth between anger, bargaining, and depression.
I can update when we finally get it working reliably. Hopefully. Sigh.
-David
Hi David,
We're in the process of discussing what to do about receipts and bocas. We too think we'll go the direction of "We can e-mail receipts if they do, and/or print confirmations to a page printer." and are likewise worried about those member upgrades. How do you currently handle that interaction?
Thanks!
Katie
We basically created a workaround that lets us sell the new membership at an arbitrary price (so that the cashier can manually subtract whatever they already paid earlier in the day). So we never actually link the new membership to the original general public order. This probably has downsides when it comes to data analysis, but it was the only way we could see to make this work at scale.
After an earlier attempt to handle this without it, we have now installed the "Memberships as Performances" customization, which makes this a little easier to do since you get access to pricing rules, etc. The first attempt to do it without the customization was very counter intuitive for frontline staff and ended up leaving a trail of phantom dollar transactions scattered around the system that no one could figure out how to handle. It's better now. (That said, the ability to adjust the price from quicksale instead of having to go into order details would make us super happy. Any developers listening?)
I could put you in touch with someone a bit more familiar with the details of the setup if that would be useful.
If they paid with card, you can look-up their earlier order by full or partial card number (chicklet next to order number on order details). If it was cash, you pull up any cash order for the same amount they paid and do the ticket exchange/ membership addition to the same order.