New Feature: Nightly at-the-door register page and close-out function with buttons and configurability for door registration scenarios

[leetucker]

At New Columbia Swing, we want a slightly faster and more intuitive way to do at-the-door registrations and checking off existing registrations for class series, without needing to have numerous tabs open on our tablet. We also want to incorporate cash at-the-door payments for our weekly dance more directly into the accounting system for better recordkeeping. And, we want a nightly "close out" page where the house manager can quickly mark off staff who are paid in cash, record the nightly till and cross-check against expected revenue based on registrations and at-the-door payments, etc. We run multiple classes per night followed by a dance, so the process needs to handle multiple events based on whatever is happening that day/evening.

I've decided to take these issues on in a way that will be usable by others as well. I envision this as being the primary new feature of the 0.9.0 release, and I'm hopeful that it won't take too long to build, since it can reuse a lot of existing logic.

Some of the key things that this will entail:

• Add separate static placeholders for online payment processing and at-the-door payment processing, so that all payment processors have the option for separate plugins for each (this will also simplify things re: Square point-of-sale)
• The cash payment functionality that is currently built into the core app will instead be built into the danceschool.payments.payatdoor app. (the CashPaymentRecord model will stay in danceschool.payments.core).
• The Registration model will no longer require an associated Customer or name (but those constraints will still be enforced by the advance registration form.

The at-the-door register page will have:

• Buttons for each event/series that occurs that night. Drop-in buttons and registration for closes series will also be options as they are now for at-the-door payments using the existing form.
• A search box for quickly searching by name for existing registrations for that night's events and checking them in.
• A running total of the number of registrants for each event/series
• Configurable options for the check-in page re: whether or not to require at-the-door customers to provide name and email (I think that initial options will be "Always require," "Require for Series but not Events", "Require excluding selected category", and "Never require"). If a name and email is required, then checkout will proceed to step 2 of the regular checkout process to enter this information, with at-the-door payment plugins shown in Step 3. If a name and email is not required, then checkout will proceed directly to Step 3 of the regular process for more rapid payment.
• Configurable option for adding a button to comp entrants (for attendance accounting).
• Placeholder for additional links/instructions that are needed for each organization to be added easily using the CMS.

The nightly close-out page will have:

• A list of that night's staff members for all events, with the option to immediately mark as paid any staff member whose event ends that day.
• Ability to record nightly cash in and cash out
• Comparison to expected cash given nightly registrations, and ability to quickly generate a revenue item to account for any miscellaneous additional revenue or expense item to account for any shortfall.
  • Placeholder for additional links/instructions that are needed for each organization to be added easily using the CMS.

This functionality will be incorporated as a new app (possibly two new apps) within the project, that is enabled by default in the installation templates, but can be disabled if it is not needed.