IVFDF: Inter Varsity Folk Dance Festival

From IVFDF

Contents

User Guide

Introduction

The till system was initially developed for IVFDF 2008 by Brian Quinion, it was design to handle the collection of advanced tickets, and sell tickets during the festival.

The till system today is still there to handel those two functions, however it's now more integrated with the IVFDF shop wordpress plugin and provides real-time reporting on sales.

Usage

Collecting Pre Booked Tickets

The till system will have stored the details of all the tickets sold on-line prior to the festival. When a customer want to collect their tickets (and T-Shirts etc) the process is quite simple.

The till's screen is divided into 2 halves, the left half handling search, the right half deals with quantities.

The General Case

When a customer arrives to collect their tickets they should have with them their booking letter. The booking letter has a barcode that can be scanned in to find their ticket.

To scan in the barcode you select the search box with the mouse, place the barcode scanner over the barcode and pull the trigger. The customers order should then appear under the search box, you then click on the select button next to the customers order.

Once the order is selected the quantity half of the screen (on the right) will update to show you how many of each kind of ticket the customer bought. Once you've given the customer all their tickets you press the collected button. This marks the order as collected so it can't be collected a second time.

The customer forgot to bring the booking letter

If the customer has forgot their booking letter you can search on other details to find their order. You can search by the name of the person who booked the tickets, or their email address or phone number.

Once you've found their order you just click select and deal with it as you would for the barcode.

Partial Collection

If once you've found a customers order, and they don't wish to collect part of it now (e.g. I bought a ticket for me and a friend can I just take mine now ? ) the till system can do this. In the right-hand half of the screen you can adjust the quantities, you simple reduce the quantities to be the same as what the customer wants to collect now. Then click collect.

This will mark the order as partially collected, and the next time the order is selected it will only allow the outstanding amounts to be collected.

Making a new sale

Not every one will have bought their ticket in advance, some people want to buy a ticket during the festival.

The right-hand half of the screen has a list of all the things a customer can buy, with pricing for waged un-waged etc and a quantity box for each type. Using the + and - button you can change the quantities to match what the customer wants. The total price is updated at the bottom of the product list. Once you've given the tickets to the customer and taken the money press the buy button.

If you are sharing a till with someone else, never clear their order or change it, just get the customer to wait until the other person has finished with the till. As sales only get recorded once the buy button is pressed if you don't wait you risk the system loosing track of sales, making the financial data incorrect.

Admins Guide

Introduction

The admin guide is intended for whomever is setting up the till system at each festival. It's broken in to two sections covering the initial install/setup of the till system, and administrating the till system once it is setup.

Install/Setup

The till server is provided as a virtual machine image by the Archivist he/she/they will provide you with a url to download it from.

In order to run the Virtual Server you will need to download and install Virtual Box (https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads). Once Virtual Box is installed you import the till server image (File=>Import Appliance).

All the settings should now be set correctly for the Till Server except for one which you will have to change (as it's different for every host).

Select settings, then go to the network settings tab and choose the interface you want the server to use. While your running the server at home prior to the festival you will want to select the interface you use to connect to the internet. During the festival choose the interface you use to connect to the reception network.

After saving your settings you can then start the server.

Networking

The server expects to be able to get an ip address via DHCP, whist at home this will not be a problem during the festival you will need to make sure there is one dhcp server running on your reception network.

To find out the servers IP you can login as user ivfdf with the password ivfdf, and on the desktop you'll find an application labeled "Get IP" if you run that it will tell you the servers ip.

Setting up the tills

Once the till server is running you can connect to it with a web browser, simply enter http://<ip addr> where <ip addr> is replaced with the ip address of the server. That browser is now showing the till screen, simply press F11 to go full-screen and your ready.

Administrating the Till System

The till system is administrated using a web browser simply go to http://<ip addr>/admin where <ip addr> is replaced with the ip address of the server.

Once on the admin screen you can import orders from the web shop, view financial data, or backup the server.

Just before the festival

The wordpress shop plugin allows you to download all the orders its taken. Just before the festival you will want to switch off the taking of orders from the shop and download all the orders.

In wordpress login to the admin system (http://yoursite/wp-admin/), and from the menu along the left hand site choose Dashboard => Store Sales. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page you will see the option "Download CSV", click on that link and save the file that starts downloading.

In the till admin system select "Import Orders" then choose the file you've just downloaded then press Submit. The orders will then upload into the Till system and after a few seconds you should see the message "The orders have been imported". If you don't see that message contact the Archivist.

Once you've uploaded the orders select "Broken Down Revenues" and check the total matches the total displayed in wordpress.

Once the Till is being used to sell tickets during the festival don't upload the order data again, as that will wipe all the till sales.

During The Festival

While the festival is running the admin system can be used to check the running totals for ticket sales.

After The Festival

Once the festival is complete select "Download Data" then click on "Backup" send the file you then download to the archivist.