It’s 8:15 the next morning, the first cashier sits down at the register, and yesterday’s drawer is still open in Altru. Somebody walked out at close without finishing the job. Now the opener is waiting on a supervisor, yesterday’s sales can’t be reconciled cleanly, and the deposit is off by a day.
A drawer left open overnight is a familiar daily sales headache. It’s also one of the easier ones to prevent, as long as you stop relying on the software to catch it.
Can Altru close or warn about drawers on its own?
As far as we know, Altru doesn’t close a cash drawer automatically at the end of the day, and it doesn’t stop a user from logging out with a drawer still open. Closing a drawer is a deliberate step that involves counting the money, so there’s a good reason it isn’t automatic: an auto-close would record numbers nobody actually counted.
Altru changes over time and configurations differ, so if a warning like that would matter to you, check with Blackbaud support or try it in a test environment before you assume either way. Plan as though there’s no built-in safety net, and build the reminder into your own closing routine.
Make closing the drawer part of leaving, not an extra task
Drawers get left open because closing feels optional at the end of a long shift. The fix is to tie it to something staff already have to do before they go.
- Put it on the closing checklist, in order. “Close drawer in Altru” belongs right after “count the till” and before “lock the cash bag.” If it sits at the bottom of a list, it gets skipped.
- Post a reminder at the register. A small printed card taped next to the screen (“Drawer closed in Altru? Then log out.”) works better than a policy in a binder. Put it where the cashier’s eyes land when they go to log out.
- Make the cash handoff the checkpoint. If cashiers hand the bag to a supervisor or drop it in a safe, the supervisor asks one question at that moment: is the drawer closed? No closed drawer, no handoff.
- Train new and seasonal staff on it specifically. Experienced cashiers forget less often. Open drawers tend to show up the week new hires start or on event days when extra people are pulled onto registers.
Give a supervisor a quick end-of-day check
A reminder catches most misses. A daily check catches the rest. Whoever closes the building should be able to see, in under a minute, whether any drawers are still open.
Depending on your setup, that might be the drawer or daily sales views in Altru, a report your team already runs at close, or a query your administrator builds for drawers that haven’t been closed. If you aren’t sure which option gives you a clean list of open drawers, ask your Altru administrator or Blackbaud support what’s available in your version. Once you find it, add “check for open drawers” to the manager’s closing duties alongside alarms and lights.
If a supervisor has the rights to close a drawer for someone else, decide ahead of time when that’s acceptable. Closing it without a count fixes the screen but not the cash, so it’s worth requiring either a count by the supervisor or a note explaining what happened.
Reduce how many drawers can be left open
Some of the problem is structural. A few changes cut down on how often it happens:
- Limit who opens drawers. If every staff member can open a drawer at any workstation, more drawers get opened and forgotten. Keep drawer access to people who actually handle cash.
- One drawer per cashier per shift. Shared drawers blur responsibility. When a drawer has one owner, it’s clear who needs to close it.
- Close at shift change, not just end of day. If a morning cashier hands the register to an afternoon cashier, close the first drawer and open a new one. Long-running drawers are the ones most likely to be forgotten.
- Watch your gift shop and secondary registers. Admissions desks get attention at close. A café or shop register that runs on a different schedule is often where drawers stay open overnight.
When it still happens
It will now and then. Have a short, written procedure so the opener isn’t improvising:
- Who gets called (a supervisor or the finance contact, not whoever happens to be nearby).
- Whether the drawer is counted and closed that morning, and how the date difference is noted for reconciliation.
- Who tells the cashier who left it open, so it becomes a coaching moment rather than a mystery.
Track how often it happens for a month or two. If the same register or the same shift keeps coming up, the issue is usually the closing routine at that spot, not the individual.
Quick answers
Can we schedule Altru to close all drawers at midnight?
We aren’t aware of a native scheduled auto-close. Confirm with Blackbaud support for your version, but plan your process as if it isn’t available.
Will Altru warn a cashier at logout if their drawer is open?
Don’t count on it. Put the reminder in the physical routine (checklist, register card, cash handoff) so it works regardless of what the software does.
