It’s 1:30, your morning cashier is leaving, and the afternoon cashier is standing behind them waiting to take over the register. The sensible move is to hand over the drawer and keep selling. In Altru, that handoff is harder than it sounds, because a drawer session is generally tied to the person who opened it. There isn’t a well-known “transfer this drawer to another user” option in daily sales, so most sites end up closing one drawer and opening another in the middle of the line.
This article covers what that means in practice, the cleanest workarounds, and how to confirm what your own version of Altru allows before you build a shift plan around it.
Why a drawer doesn’t simply move between cashiers
Altru’s daily sales drawer exists for accountability. When a cashier opens a drawer, the starting cash, every sale, every refund, and every payment type are recorded against that user’s session. When the drawer is closed, the counted amounts are compared against what Altru expected, and the result shows up in drawer reporting and, later, in the revenue that gets posted.
Letting a second person keep selling inside the first person’s session would blur exactly what that process is meant to protect: who handled the money. That’s why, as far as we know, Altru does not offer a native drawer transfer. Features change, though, so treat that as something to verify rather than settled fact. Test it in a sandbox if you have one, or ask Blackbaud support directly: “Can an open daily sales drawer be reassigned to a different user without closing it?” Get the answer in writing before you train staff on it.
Option 1: Close and reopen, but make it fast
For most organizations the honest answer is to close the outgoing cashier’s drawer and have the incoming cashier open their own. The pain isn’t the clicks; it’s the count, which can take several minutes while guests wait. A few habits shrink that window:
- Stagger the handoff. Schedule the incoming cashier 15 minutes early and have them open a drawer on a second register (or second device) before the outgoing cashier closes. Sales never stop.
- Use two physical cash trays. Each cashier gets their own till insert with its own starting bank. The outgoing tray goes to the back office to be counted away from the line.
- Count in a back room, not at the counter. Close the drawer in Altru when the count is done, not when the cashier walks away. Just make sure nobody else sells on that session in between.
- Keep starting banks standard. If every drawer opens with the same amount in the same denominations, opening a new one takes seconds.
Option 2: One cashier per drawer per day
Some sites avoid the problem by scheduling so a drawer is never handed off. A volunteer works the register for the whole open-to-close shift, while others handle wayfinding, scanning, and membership questions. That isn’t realistic everywhere, but for smaller admissions desks it removes the midday close entirely.
Option 3: Mid-shift cash drops
If the real worry is the amount of cash sitting in a drawer during a long shift, a cash drop is a different tool from a transfer. The cashier pulls excess bills, a supervisor counts and signs for them, and the drop is recorded so the closing count still reconciles. Check how your organization records drops in Altru today; if you aren’t sure whether drops are tracked in the system or only on paper, settle that before relying on them.
What not to do
Don’t have the second cashier keep selling under the first person’s login. It’s the most common workaround, and it’s the one that causes the most trouble. Any overage or shortage now belongs to two people, your audit trail is wrong, and shared logins usually break your organization’s own security and PCI expectations. If something goes missing, you have no way to tell when.
Also avoid leaving a drawer open overnight “so the morning person can pick it up.” Sales from two days end up in one session, which makes daily reconciliation and revenue posting messier than a short close ever would.
A simple handoff checklist
- Incoming cashier arrives early and opens their own drawer with a standard starting bank.
- Outgoing cashier finishes their current transaction and stops ringing sales.
- Outgoing cash tray is removed and taken to a counting area.
- The count is done with a second person present, and the drawer is closed in Altru.
- Any overage or shortage is noted right away, while the cashier is still in the building.
- The incoming cashier keeps selling the whole time.
Quick answers
Can a supervisor close someone else’s drawer?
Depending on security roles, a user with the right permissions may be able to close another user’s drawer. Check your role settings in a test environment, and decide as a policy who is allowed to do it.
Does closing a drawer midday cause problems with daily revenue?
It shouldn’t. Multiple drawers on the same day are normal. Each one reconciles separately, and your daily totals combine them.
What if the outgoing cashier has already left?
Don’t let anyone else sell on that session. Have a supervisor count the tray with a witness, record what was found, and close the drawer according to your permissions and policy. Then open a fresh drawer for whoever is taking over.
