Dealing with uncommitted records

[Angus McKinnon]

I've got a persistent problem with the FM solution I maintain. It's used to manage an equipment hire company, so we have a couple of client machines at opposite ends of the warehouse, as well some in the offices upstairs. 

What's happening is warehouse staff are frequently making changes to records, but not committing their changes. Sometimes as simple as changing a status field when checking a returned hire in.

Of course, that's a problem when someone in the office needs to access that record, and can't. Or if a machine crashes (hours or days later) and the changes are lost. 

I'm trying to add script triggers to fields etc. to automatically commit a record when key changes are made, but we're still finding instances when records are left with open changes. 

What I'm wondering is if I can run some sort of scheduled script to force-commit records that have been left idle for a certain length of time, or if there could be a way for one client to force-commit records on another client, rather than have to send a message and hope someone is standing near enough to the warehouse machine to notice.