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Are any of you using Altru in a gift shop?

Kelli Everett

Hi everyone,

Our Museum shop currently uses quickbooks, but we are hoping to make the switch to Altru. I'm curious about other user experiences before I get myself in too deep. I want to hear all the successes and nightmares. Any and all insight is greatly appreciated.

-Kelli

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Merchandise

Comments

Dianne Crosby

The Good:

The cashiers are able to sell merchandise, tickets, and memberships in one POS system. From the cashier's point of view, it's a decent system. What is difficult for them is:

The inability to exchange merchandise. An "exchange" actually involves a refund and a new transaction.
There is also no Gift Card module - so we have a third party system for those.
There are a few other problems, but they're manageable.

The Bad:

Altru Merchandise is very difficult for the Store Manager/Buyer.

Reporting is abysmal.
There isn't a purchase order module.
Tag printing is practically useless - we had to resort to a third-party system.
Inventory counts are a "figure it out how to do it yourself" scenario.
Everything requires figuring out a work-around for what you want to accomplish. Prepare yourself by learning advanced Excel skills.
Altru has not made any improvements to the merchandise module in the past 5 years or so. Nor do they have any plans to do so in the future.

For small stores that have never had a POS system, it might feel like an upgrade. For medium to large stores that are used to a half-decent POS system, you will experience a great deal of frustration. I have never used QuickBooks - so I'm not sure what the comparison from QuickBooks to Altru would be.

I'm happy to answer more specific questions. I would also recommend you read through the past threads here for more insight.

Good luck!

Kelli Everett

Dianne Crosby‍ Thank you for your response. It honestly sounds like we would just be trading one issue for another issue, unfortunately. The fact that no future improvements are planned is also really disappointing.

Dianne Crosby

We've been using it since 2014. For various reasons, it is crucial for our cashiers to only have one POS system for merchandise/tickets/memberships. So we really like that part of it.

I'm really the only one who feels the pain of the system. Initially, I was super slow getting anything done. Over the years I've created workarounds for everything and I can eventually get my job done. (But still not as well as when we had a more robust POS system.)

Jose Orara

I took interest in this post since our institution will be selling masks at the door. Since it would be weird for someone to purchase a ticket and then send them into the store to get a mask, I figured the merchandising aspect of Altru may work for the front desk to sell a ticket and mask.

From what I'm seeing, it sounds like the merchandising system is an entire new beast. Hmm... Not sure if it's worth the trouble of implementing the system as opposed to making our visitor or associate run all over the place to get and sell a mask.

Dianne Crosby

Jose Orara:

I took interest in this post since our institution will be selling masks at the door. Since it would be weird for someone to purchase a ticket and then send them into the store to get a mask, I figured the merchandising aspect of Altru may work for the front desk to sell a ticket and mask.

From what I'm seeing, it sounds like the merchandising system is an entire new beast. Hmm... Not sure if it's worth the trouble of implementing the system as opposed to making our visitor or associate run all over the place to get and sell a mask.

You should have no problems selling masks along with admission. If I were in your shoes I would absolutely create a merchandise item for masks and sell it with an admission ticket.

The issues with Merchandise are more to do with overall store management - ordering, receiving, printing tags, tracking sales, sales analysis, tracking inventory, etc.

Paula Christenson

We are just starting Altru here at the Gardens and we will be using Altru in our gift shop. It is very streamline for our accounting department.