The cash-up sheet photographed at 1am
The closing manager counts the till, prints the Z read, prints the PDQ end-of-day batches and fills in the cash-up sheet. A photo goes to the finance WhatsApp group. The cash goes in a sealed bag in the safe, to be collected by the security firm on Thursday. Card money lands in the bank two or three days later, net of fees, in a single figure covering several terminals.
At head office, the finance assistant has twelve sites' worth of photos to type up. One sheet has a card total that does not match the EPOS. Another has cash over by a round number, which usually means a float mistake. The bank shows a deposit that could be two days of banking from one site, or one day from two. By Wednesday they are still working on last Friday.
Why cash-up reconciliation is so slow in a group
- The cash-up is done on paper or a site spreadsheet, then retyped at head office.
- Card settlements arrive in lumps, days later and net of charges, covering several terminals.
- Cash is banked on collection days, so one deposit may hold several trading days.
- Voids, refunds, deposits for bookings and petty cash payouts all affect the figures.
- Differences are found days later, when the closing manager cannot remember what happened.
What the manual process costs
Finance time is the visible cost, and it grows with every site you open. The hidden cost is that problems are found too late to fix. A card terminal batch that was never closed, a cash shortage on one manager's shifts, a refund processed twice: all of these are easier to sort out the next morning than a week later. And when banking is not reconciled quickly, genuine losses are harder to separate from timing differences.
How we build the site cash-up
- The closing manager completes the cash-up on a tablet, which already shows the EPOS totals by payment type for the day.
- Card terminal totals are read from the payment provider's reporting where it allows, or entered from the end-of-day batch with a photo.
- Cash is counted by denomination on screen, with the float kept and the amount to bank calculated.
- Payouts, deposits taken for bookings and other adjustments are entered with a reason and a receipt photo.
- Any difference over your tolerance needs a note before the cash-up can be submitted, and goes to the GM straight away.
- Head office receives each cash-up as data, and card settlements and bank deposits are matched to site and trading day automatically where the references allow, with the rest queued for finance.
| Payment type | Checked against | Common difference |
|---|---|---|
| Card | Terminal batch, then settlement | Batch not closed, fees netted |
| Cash | Count, then banking deposit | Float errors, banking timing |
| Delivery platforms | Platform statement | Commission and refunds |
| Vouchers and deposits | Voucher or booking record | Redeemed but not recorded |
Your accounts system, such as Xero or Sage, stays where the books are kept. The reconciled daily takings can be posted into it as one clean entry per site per day.
The morning after
By 9am finance can see every site's cash-up, with differences already explained or flagged. Card and bank matching is mostly done, and the few unmatched items have a site and date against them. GMs see their own reconciliation history and can spot a pattern on a particular shift. Month end stops being a hunt through photos.
Does this sound familiar?
- Cash-up sheets arrive as photos or site spreadsheets.
- Finance retypes figures from every site every day.
- Card settlements are hard to match to sites and days.
- Differences are found a week after they happened.
- Banking reconciliation falls behind at busy times.