With COVID, many businesses have found that they need to keep some details of a visitor who stays for more than XXX minutes. The details and the times vary in different states and the category of business. The problem in retail shops is they often do not know whether someone falls into this category. So some are putting COVID tracking forms on their front door for people to scan.
It isn't good that although the state governments have had many months to prepare, they seem not to have not planned how we are to do this. As usual, my state of Victoria is probably the worst here.
Most businesses are using pen and paper. However, some of my clients in Queensland and NSW have discovered, this might violate the privacy laws. As no-one wants to be snared in a possible looming data privacy calamity, many Australian businesses are now outsourcing the management of their COVID check-in obligations to some COVID tracking software. This has the added advantage of automating the process.
Now some state governments have released apps that can do it, but I am hearing problems running them. It's weird as they will work for some people and not others. Sometimes a person that has logged on cannot log in a few minutes later. I suspect that their software is not ready and being hastily deployed.
If you do not have a state app or even if you do use the state government app, I suggest that you have something else as a backup. If so, that makes sure that this app has publicly disclosed its check-in figures to the relevant authorities.
Please do not select a backyard product.
One free such app that seems to cross all the requirements is guestttrack, which is free. We use it and think it does the job well.
Note if you need professional COVID signs for your shop, here are many free signs. Unfortunately, it does not have a public tracing notice, so here is one that we use, which can be modified for your use.
