Half past midnight with a calculator
The last customers have gone. You print the Z read, pull the drawers, count the notes and coins for each till, take out the float for tomorrow, and write everything on the cash-up sheet. Then you check the card machine totals against the EPOS card figure. Then the petty cash slips for the window cleaner and the milk. Then the safe.
It is a few pounds out. It is often a few pounds out. You write it down and go to bed. Occasionally it is a lot out, and you spend another twenty minutes recounting. The sheets go in a folder. Nobody ever looks at the folder to see whether the differences have a pattern.
Why cash-ups do not balance
Cash-up is a dozen small steps, each with room for error: miscounts, a card transaction done on the wrong terminal, a refund given in cash and not rung in, petty cash taken out without a slip, a float that was short from the start. On paper, all of that ends up as one difference at the bottom of the sheet.
The sheet also cannot see patterns. If one till is out on the same nights, or differences appear when a particular person closes, you would need to compare weeks of sheets side by side. Nobody does, so a small ongoing problem looks like normal noise.
What an unexplained difference hides
| Possible cause | Why paper will not show it |
|---|---|
| Miscount at close | No second count recorded |
| Card taken on the wrong terminal | Card totals checked in total only |
| Petty cash without a slip | No link between cash out and receipts |
| Float short at the start | Float counted once, not per till |
| Recurring differences on one till or shift | Sheets never compared over time |
Most differences are honest mistakes. But you cannot tell the honest ones from the rest unless each step is recorded, and treating every difference as noise is unfair on the staff who are getting it right.
There is the time as well. A cash-up that takes half an hour at the end of a long shift is half an hour of a tired manager doing arithmetic, and the person closing on a Sunday is often not the person who normally does it, so the sheet is filled in differently each time.
A guided cash-up on a tablet
- The expected cash and card figures for each till come from your EPOS automatically at close, and card terminal totals from your payment provider where it offers a report.
- The manager counts each till on the tablet, by denomination if they like, and the counted figure is compared with the expected one immediately.
- Petty cash is recorded with a photo of the receipt, and cash refunds and paid-outs are listed.
- Floats for each till are recorded at the start and end, and the safe balance is carried forward from one night to the next.
- The difference for each till is recorded, with a short reason if the manager knows it.
- A report shows differences by till, by day and by who closed, over weeks and months, so patterns are visible, and the cash-up can be posted to your accounting software.
This is a record of the cash-up. How you follow up differences with staff is your own policy.
Closing up afterwards
The tablet shows each till's expected cash. You count till one, it matches. Till two is short by a small amount. The card totals match. Petty cash has a photo of the milk receipt. The safe balance carries over. It takes less time than the paper sheet, and a month later the report shows till two is short most Fridays, so you look at who works it and how refunds are handled there.
- Expected figures filled in from the EPOS
- Differences shown per till, per night
- Petty cash receipts attached
- Patterns visible over weeks
Is your cash-up like this?
- You cash up on a paper sheet with a calculator.
- Small differences are common and written off.
- Petty cash slips are sometimes missing.
- Card totals are only checked as one figure.
- Nobody compares cash-ups week to week.