Open tab running time

[fununlimited]

A little preface: I run an arcade where I charge by the hour like a billiard hall.  This means I have to know how long the customer has been at my business in order to calculate how much to charge them.  My current POS (salesvu) allows me to use a table management section like a restaurant that keeps a running timer of how long a tab has been open.  This would be useful to a restaurant to determine when the table may leave.  It's useful for me to charge them for how long they have been playing games at my business.

Your open tabs could almost work as it shows the minutes since a tab has been updated.  The problem occurs when the elapsed time goes over an hour in which case it simply shows an "1 hour" even when it's past an hour.  Then over time it will say "2 hours" and so on which means it is keeping track of the hours and minutes in order to determine when to display "2 hours" etc.

So my requests are:

1) please show the hours and minutes HH:MM like 1:37 for 1 hour and 37 minutes. since tab opening

2) Provide an option to NOT update the time when the open tab is modified.  

The reason for #2 is that if a customer adds a pizza or drink to their tab, I wouldn't want the tab to erase the running time since open tab opening.  Some people may want that so an option to "update tab time with modification" on/off would be easy.

[VanKalkerFarms]

what we do to kind of bypass this issue of the open ticket changing when you update it is to add the date to the ticket name, but you would just add the time instead.  you would have to calculate the total time though to charge them, not ideal but at least it doesn't reset when updating the ticket.

[fununlimited]

That is a work around for college grad but the 16 year olds that I have working for me can not figure out time calculations by clock hours and minutes!

For example:  I ask one of them how many minutes in an hour?  They answer 60 with a "duh!".  So I say that's good, how many minutes in an hour and a half?  They become flustered and say "I don't know".  I am not kidding.  So asking them to figure out how many hours and minutes are in the time span from 1:37pm to 3:23pm just isn't going to happen 😞

I'm a software developer myself so I know that since they are keeping track of the time in order to updated it to "1 Hour" and "2 hours" and "3 hours" is a simple format parameter to their existing code.  Would be a 12 second fix to add minutes to the display.   To add the boolean option to reset the time if the tab is modified is a 1 liner in the code plus the time to implement the GUI interface to give the user the on/off option.

[VanKalkerFarms]

I understand the frustrations with help.

But I've got to tell you don't hold your breath waiting for a change in the app to calculate the time.  Everything takes years to model, internal build and beta test with what I've seen in Square POS and betas and suggestions. Many many things are "simple changes" but everything takes time and then more time and then more time.

[fununlimited]

Sadly, you are correct, I requested this modification a year ago and still nothing.

What's crazy is that I don't even need them to calculate time!  Just to display it since they are already keeping track of it and showing "1 min, 2 min, 3 min.... 59 min, 1 hour" and then it stays at "1 hour" until it says "2 hours" and then "3 hours" so they are already keeping track of it, just not displaying it!

The request to make it an option to update or not update that running time if the ticket is modified is a tiny bit more work adding the user interface and the member variable in their code to keep track of whether or not to update the ticket time  is only slightly more work than the above request.

Developers, if you are reading...

// assuming a variable TicketTime holds a CTime value of ticket modification time

CTime CurrentTime = CTime::GetCurrentTime();

CTime ElapsedTime = CurrentTime - TicketTime;

CString sTicketTime;

if (ElapsedTime.GetMinute() < 60) sTicketTime.Format("%d mins", ElapsedTime.GetMinute());

else sTicketTime.Format("%d:%d", ElapsedTime.GetHour(), ElapsedTime.GetMinute());

// update the user interface display with the formated string containing the time 

m_sTicketTime = sTicketTime

UpdateData(false); // updates the screen with the value in m_sTicketTime

That's it!

Now for the snippet of code to leave the Ticket time alone when edited or modified.

// Assuming a boolean value of BOOL m_bUpdateTicketWhenModified;

if (m_bUpdateTicketWhenModified) {

     TicketTime = CTime::GetCurrentTime();  // this sets the ticket time to right now

     // perform the above code to change the user interface to display the elapsed time

} else {

     // if you are here then the user does not want you to update the Ticket Time so do not modify TicketTime

     // perform the above code to change the user interface to display the elapsed time

}

[jointedcue]

I'm having the issue where i have multiple team members "starting table time" but when someone else has to check out the table, it doesn't display the table time - it just says the original team member's initials. it seems like the time is only vie∑able by the twam member ∑ho opened the check it