A folder of Z-reports
At the end of each day, the café supervisor or a trainee prints the till's end-of-day report, counts the cash, and puts both in an envelope in the safe. On Monday, the finance officer, who works three days a week, collects the envelopes from two cafés and the shop, and types each day's takings into the accounts: food, drinks, retail items, cash, card.
The card payments arrive in the bank as payouts from the card provider, net of fees, sometimes covering two or three days at once. Cash is banked on Wednesday. The finance officer spends Monday afternoon trying to make the week balance, and the day the café's till was used for the community event, with its own pricing, never quite does.
Why till takings are slow to reconcile
- Each site's till produces a report that has to be read and retyped.
- Card payouts combine several days and deduct fees before they arrive.
- Cash is banked in batches that do not match single days.
- Some sales are free or discounted meals for people referred by partners, pay-it-forward items or staff meals, which need recording differently.
- Refunds, voids and till errors are only noticed at reconciliation.
How you treat free and discounted meals, staff meals and VAT on different items in your accounts is for your accountant. We do not give tax or accounting advice. We carry the categories they set from the till to the ledger.
What manual reconciliation costs
The finance officer's time is the main cost, and in a small social enterprise that time is scarce. Errors in retyping flow into the management accounts the board relies on.
Discrepancies are found days later, when nobody remembers what happened on the till on Thursday afternoon. Cash differences become awkward conversations with supervisors and trainees, when the problem was often a till mistake rather than anything worse.
From till to ledger automatically
What we build connects your tills to your accounting software and matches the money.
- Each till, such as Square, SumUp, Zettle or your café EPOS, sends daily sales by site and by category to the accounts through its API or a daily export.
- Categories are mapped to the income codes and tracking your accountant sets, with free, discounted and pay-it-forward items coded separately.
- Card payouts are broken down into the days and fees they contain and matched to the bank line.
- Cash counted at close is entered on the till or a short form, and each cash deposit is matched to the days it covers.
- Days where till totals, cash and card do not agree are flagged the next morning, while the supervisor still remembers the day.
- The finance officer reviews a summary and approves the entries, rather than typing them.
| Money | Where it is matched |
|---|---|
| Card sales | Provider payout, fees shown separately |
| Cash sales | Cash count at close, then the bank deposit |
| Free or referred meals | Separate category, no cash expected |
| Refunds and voids | Shown against the day they happened |
| Community event sales | Tagged to the event or site |
Monday, afterwards
On Monday the finance officer opens last week's summary: fifteen trading days across three sites, all posted to Xero. Card payouts matched. One cash difference on Thursday at the library café, flagged on Friday morning; the supervisor had already added a note that a refund was done in cash but not keyed. The finance officer approves it and moves on.
The board's management accounts that month show café and shop income by site and category, taken straight from the tills.
Is this your Monday?
- Till reports are printed and retyped into the accounts.
- Card payouts are hard to match to days.
- Cash differences are found days later.
- Free and referred meals are not recorded consistently.
- Reconciling a week takes most of a day.