Printing Speed Improvements with Altru 4.3

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Summer is here and it is hot outside. For some, summer means staying indoors and enjoying the air conditioning, as standing in the heat is not on their to-do-list. Others, however, love the outdoors. There is one thing all of us can agree on: standing in line stinks.

With the release of Altru 4.3, we’ve significantly shortened the time it takes to print documents. In fact, the move to SVG gives you print speeds at least twice as fast as the old way. We accomplished this by moving away from Microsoft Reporting Services to something called Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). SVG removes the bulk of the back and forth that takes place when you complete a sale and print sales documents, like tickets and receipts.

How does this impact you? We’ve reduced the amount of time it takes to prepare documents for printing by approximately 2.37 seconds, from 2.93 seconds to .56 seconds. Please note that these improvements only include the time it takes Altru to transfer data to the printer and does not take into account the actual printing of the documents. The speed of different printers will vary.

However, the team did some testing that was a bit more "real life" and timed the process all the way through printing using an Epson TM-T88IV receipt printer and a Boca Lemur S ticket printer. A transaction with two tickets and an itemized receipt showed an improvement from 9.38 seconds in Altru 4.1 to 4.84 seconds in Altru 4.3.
Print speedsAnd no, you are not crazy, the font has changed on the Itemized Receipt. In order to cut start-finish printing speed in half, we had to use a fixed width font that works with SVG. With a new font, some customers may find that they need to tweak their payment method names to optimize formatting. That’s an easy fix, and you can find more info on that here. You’ll also no longer see a “Balance Due” on your receipt when the balance due is $0 (this will appear if it is necessary, such as if there is a balance due or change to be dispensed).

Will your patrons notice the font change? Possibly. Will you notice your lines moving faster? Most definitely.

With this change, along with the printing changes in version 4.2 (no extra CC receipt, SVG ticket printing), Altru 4.3 takes a big step toward shortening the time it takes to move a patron from standing in line to enjoying everything that you have to offer!

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