The cashier takes a card, the payment clears, and before the receipt prints or the drawer opens, a marketing survey asks how the guest heard about you. The guest is holding out their hand for change. The cashier clicks through the survey as fast as possible, usually picking whatever answer is first in the list. You get a slower line and survey data you can’t trust.
The fix most people want is simple: show the survey after the receipt prints and the drawer opens. Here’s what you can and can’t control in Altru, and what to do in the meantime.
Can you move the survey to after the receipt?
As far as we know, Altru doesn’t offer a setting that changes when the marketing survey appears in the daily sales flow relative to the receipt and cash drawer. The order of steps at the end of a sale is built into the application. If you’ve seen it behave differently at another organization, it’s worth asking Blackbaud support whether something in your version or configuration controls it, but don’t plan around that answer until you hear it.
What you usually can control is whether the survey appears at all, whether it’s required, and what questions and answer choices it contains. Those are the levers worth pulling.
Your realistic options
1. Make the survey optional at the register
If staff can skip it, they can take care of the guest first and answer the question only when there’s time, or when the guest offers the information. You’ll collect fewer answers, but the ones you get will be real. Check your daily sales and marketing settings to see whether the survey is required for every transaction or can be dismissed.
2. Shorten it to one fast question
A survey that takes three seconds is far less disruptive than one that takes fifteen. Trim it to a single question with five or six answers, put the most common answer first, and drop anything you don’t actually report on. If nobody has pulled a report from a question in the last year, remove it.
3. Change the cashier script
Some teams ask the question while the card is processing: “While that goes through, how did you hear about us today?” By the time the survey screen appears, the cashier already has the answer and just clicks it. This costs nothing and works with any configuration. Put the phrasing on a card at each register so new and seasonal staff use it.
4. Turn it off at the register and ask elsewhere
The front desk is often the worst place to ask an attribution question. Guests who bought online can answer on the web, and walk-up guests can be asked after the visit. A short post-visit email with a one-click “how did you hear about us” question often gets more honest answers than a rushed cashier. If you go this route, decide where those answers will live so they can still be reported alongside your sales data.
5. Limit it to certain sales
If your setup allows it, consider showing the survey only for certain sales methods or registers, for example the main admissions desk but not the café or gift shop line. Whether this is possible depends on how your organization has configured sales methods and marketing in Altru, so test it before rolling it out.
Test before you change anything at the desk
Any change to the daily sales flow touches every cashier. Before you change survey settings:
- Try the change in a sandbox or test environment if you have one, or on a single register during a slow period.
- Run a complete sale with cash and with card, and confirm the receipt prints and the drawer opens as expected.
- Check that existing reports and queries that use survey answers still return what you expect.
- Tell desk staff what changed and why before their next shift, not after.
Decide whether you need this data at all
It’s worth asking what the survey answers are used for. If marketing reviews them monthly to decide where to spend, they matter and you should protect their quality. If they sit in a report nobody opens, the simplest fix is to stop asking at the register. A smaller set of honest answers beats a large set of answers clicked through to get the drawer open.
Quick answers
Will skipping the survey affect the sale?
Making the survey optional shouldn’t change how the transaction posts, but confirm in a test sale that revenue, batches, and receipts look the same.
Can I ask Blackbaud to change the order?
You can raise it with Blackbaud support or your account contact. Until it changes, the options above are what you control today.
