A cashier needs the “Sensory Friendly Morning” ticket. It’s on page three of the Daily Sales screen, behind general admission, add-ons, and a page of school-program buttons nobody touches on a Saturday. A line is forming while they tap back and forth. What they really want is a “Special Programs” button that opens a short list of its own and then gets out of the way.
That kind of folder-style, nested button is a common wish among Altru administrators. Here’s what to expect from Altru today, and how to lay out your sales screen so the buttons your staff need are never more than a tap or two away.
Does Altru support nested buttons in Daily Sales?
As far as we know, no. Daily Sales arranges buttons on pages, and staff move between pages to find what they need. We’re not aware of a native setting that lets one button open a sub-list or pop-up of other buttons. Altru does get updated, so before you redesign anything, check the current Daily Sales configuration options in a sandbox or test environment, or ask Blackbaud support whether grouping has been added. If it has, use it. If not, the approaches below get you most of the way there.
Cut the button count before you rearrange anything
Crowded sales screens usually come from having too many buttons, more than from having them in the wrong place. A few common causes:
- One button per price. If “Adult,” “Child,” “Senior,” and “Member” each have their own button for the same program, look at whether staff could pick one program and then choose the price type. That gives you one button where you had four, and the price choice works almost like the sub-list you wanted.
- Seasonal or retired items left on screen. Last summer’s camp, a closed exhibit, a one-time fundraiser. Audit the layout every few months and take off anything that hasn’t sold recently. A quick sales query by item and date range will show you what’s dead weight.
- Items that never sell at the desk. If something is only sold through group sales or advance sales, it may not need a Daily Sales button at all. Confirm with the people who own those workflows before you remove it.
Use pages as your groups
You can’t nest buttons, but a page can do the same job as a folder if you treat it like one. In practice that means:
- Put what sells most on the first page. General admission, the most common membership levels, and parking or your most frequent add-on. Most transactions should finish without leaving it.
- Give each other page one clear theme. For example “Programs & Tours,” “Memberships,” “Add-ons & Fees.” Don’t use catch-all pages like “Misc.”
- Use page names staff already say out loud. If the team calls it “the camp page,” name it that. Short, plain names are easier to scan than internal program codes.
- Keep the order the same everywhere. Put buttons in the same position on every page and keep pages in the same sequence. Muscle memory is the closest thing you’ll get to a shortcut menu.
Name buttons so they group visually
A short prefix on button names can make related items stand out on a busy page: “TOUR – Behind the Scenes,” “TOUR – Twilight,” “CAMP – Week 1.” It isn’t pretty, but staff can spot a whole cluster at a glance. Keep prefixes to a word, because long labels get cut off on smaller screens.
Consider different layouts for different stations
An admissions window, a membership desk, and an event check-in table don’t need the same buttons. If your Altru setup lets you configure separate Daily Sales layouts or restrict items by station or user role, give each one only what it sells. A membership desk with two focused pages is easier to work than a shared screen with six. How much control you have here depends on your configuration and security setup, so test it in a sandbox before you train staff on it.
Test the layout with the people who use it
Before peak season, give two or three front-line staff a list of ten realistic transactions and watch them ring each one up. Notice where they hesitate or flip pages looking for something. Those spots tell you what to move to page one, rename, or remove. Do it again after any big change to your programs.
If you still want true sub-lists
If nested buttons would really change how your desk runs, tell Blackbaud through your account contacts or support channels, and explain the problem in concrete terms: how many items you sell, how many pages you have, and how long staff spend looking for buttons. In the meantime, cutting buttons, giving each page a theme, and building station-specific layouts will usually take more friction out of the sales screen than nesting would.
