Cash sessions and the drawer — User Guide

Switching cash sessions on

Settings → Modules

Off to start with. Switch on Settings → Modules → Cash Till Sessions and two links appear under Finance: Cash Till Session and Till Cash Flow.

Use it when you want one cashier to be accountable for one drawer for one shift. Skip it if a single owner works the counter all day.

Opening the till

Cash Till Session

Cash Till Session opens on No Active Session until somebody starts one. Type the Opening Float Amount — the change you are putting in the drawer — add a note if you like, and tap Open Session.

From then on the page shows Session Active with the time it was Opened, the Opening Float, Total Sales, Total Payouts and Expected Cash.

Each cashier has their own session. Opening a second one while yours is open is refused.

Petty cash out of the drawer

Cash Till Session

New Payout records money taken out of the till: an Amount, a Purpose and optionally the Recipient. Record Payout logs it against the session.

Every payout comes off the expected cash, so the drawer still balances at the end.

Money out of the drawer at eight o'clock

The kitchen runs out of gas and somebody is sent to buy a cylinder.
New Payout — Amount: 4,500. Purpose: "Kitchen gas cylinder". Recipient: the person who went.
Record Payout logs it against the session.
Expected Cash drops by 4,500 straight away, so the drawer still balances when it is counted at midnight.
A payout that was never recorded is the single most common reason a drawer comes up short.

Closing the till

Cash Till Session

At the end of the shift, count the drawer. Type what you counted into Closing Float (actual cash counted), add a note, and tap Close Session.

The page then shows how the till came out: what you counted, what the drawer should have held, and whether it was short or over. A till closed short or over carries a red flag for whoever checks the cash-up.

The session moves into Session History with its opening float, its closing float and its status, and can be reopened for reading at any time.

A drawer that comes up short

Opening Float: 2,000.
Total Sales taken in cash during the shift: 34,000.
Total Payouts: 1,500 — a gas cylinder.
Expected Cash: 34,500.
The cashier counts 34,200 and types that in. The 300 difference is now on the record, with a note, instead of being lost.

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Till Cash Flow

Till Cash Flow is the line-by-line ledger of one session: the Opening Float, the Total Sales, the Payouts, and then Cash Sales, Card Sales and Bank Transfer Sales split out.

Below that is the Transaction Ledger with the time, type, payment method, description and amount of everything that happened, and a Petty Cash Payouts table with each purpose and recipient.

Use the Session dropdown to look back at an earlier one.

A blind cash count

Roles → Cash Till Session

Roles → edit a role → Cash Till Session decides how much of the till's money staff on that role see. "Their own till, with the amounts" is how every role starts.

"Their own till, amounts hidden (blind cash count)" keeps the figures from them: they open the till, sell, record payouts and close it by typing in what they counted, but the page never shows the opening float, the sales, the payouts or the expected cash, the close box starts empty instead of filled in, Session History is hidden and Till Cash Flow does not open. The POS and the offline till are not sent the figures either.

A cashier who cannot see what the drawer should hold has to count it — which is the point. A count copied off the screen proves nothing.

Only once the till is closed are they shown the result: what they counted, what the drawer should have held, and whether it was short or over. The count is saved by then and cannot change, so the result gives nothing away — on the offline till it shows as soon as the closed till reaches the server.

The owner always sees every till. Give a manager's role "Every staff member's till" and they see them too.

Why a blind count catches a sale that was never rung up

Soup is hard to count — it is in a pot, not on a shelf — so no stock count will notice ten bowls sold off the books.
A cashier takes the money for ten bowls without ringing them up. The cash goes into the drawer with everything else.
If the screen said "Expected cash: 50,000", they would hand over exactly 50,000 and keep the rest. Nobody would ever know.
On a blind count there is no figure to aim for, so they count the drawer and type in what is there — 52,000.
Only when the till is closed does it say: counted 52,000, expected 50,000, 2,000 over. The red flag is on the owner's dashboard straight away: money came in that no sale accounts for.

Checking every cashier's count

Cash Till Session → Staff tills

Staff tills, at the bottom of Cash Till Session for the owner and the managers who see every till, lists every other cashier's sessions — open ones first — with the Opening Float, the Expected Cash, what they Counted and the Difference.

Difference is the count minus the expected cash. Below zero the drawer was short; above zero it was over. Either way the till carries a red flag — over is cash no sale accounts for, which usually means a sale was taken without being rung up. View opens that session's Till Cash Flow, line by line.

The dashboard lists every till closed short or over in the last 7 days, for the owner and the managers who see every till. With the Audit bot on, a till short or over by at least its threshold (one average bill unless you set one) is emailed to you as well.

Pick a name from the list at the top to see one cashier's sessions only.