Using Tills and Cash Drawers

Turn a front-desk computer into a cash register with opening and closing counts, drops and deposits, and end-of-shift reconciliation — so every dollar of cash is accounted for.

Updated 2 days ago 5 views cash till point-of-sale reconciliation shifts

Using Tills and Cash Drawers

Card and ACH payments track themselves — the processor keeps a perfect record of every transaction. Cash doesn't. The moment you take a dollar bill across the counter, the only record that it happened is the one your software makes, and the only proof the drawer balanced at the end of the day is a physical count. The Till feature exists to close that gap: it turns a specific computer into a cash register, tracks every dollar that goes into and out of its drawer, and forces an honest count at the end of each shift.

If you never take cash, you can skip this entirely. If you run a front desk — a marina office, a campground gatehouse, a parts counter — this is how you keep cash accountable.

When you'd use this

  • You take cash payments at a physical counter and want to know, at end of shift, whether the drawer balances.
  • More than one person works a register, and you need to know who took which payment.
  • You want a starting bank ("float") in the drawer each morning and a clean count each night.
  • You periodically pull large bills out of the drawer to a safe or the bank and want that tracked.
  • You've been reconciling cash on a spreadsheet and want the system to tell you what should be in the drawer.

The mental model

Four ideas, in order:

  1. A till is a computer. You designate a specific front-desk machine as a till. The designation sticks to that computer (via a long-lived browser marker), so the gatehouse laptop is "Gatehouse Till" every day without anyone re-selecting it.
  2. A session is one open-to-close cycle. You open the till at the start of a shift with a starting float, take payments during the shift, and close it at the end with a count. A till can be opened and closed several times a day — one session per shift, so a morning cashier and an afternoon cashier each get their own count.
  3. Expected cash is math the system does for you. It starts from the float, adds every cash payment, and subtracts every cash refund, drop, and deposit. At close, it compares that expected figure to what you physically counted. The difference is your over/short.
  4. Everything is logged. Every payment carries the operator's user ID and the session it belonged to. Every count, drop, and deposit is timestamped and attributed. The audit screen is where a manager goes to find a discrepancy.

Setting it up — the typical workflow

1. Create the till (a manager task). In the administration area, under Manage Tills, create a till, give it a name people will recognize ("Front Desk," "Gatehouse"), and bind it to the computer that will be the register. The easiest way is to open that page on the register itself and use the "bind this computer" option. Only a user with the Manage Tills permission can do this.

2. Decide your counting policy. Global defaults live under Settings → Till / Cash Management, and any single till can override them. The settings that matter most:

  • Opening count / closing count — whether staff physically count the drawer at open and at close. Turn both on unless you have a reason not to.
  • Blind close — hide the expected amount while the cashier counts. Leave this on. A cashier who can see "the system expects $412.50" will, consciously or not, count until they hit $412.50. A blind count is the only count that actually catches a problem.
  • Denomination counting — count by bill and coin (four $20s, three $5s…) rather than entering one lump total. Slower, but it catches miscounts and makes the drawer easier to rebuild.
  • Over/short tolerance — the variance you'll accept without ceremony. A drawer that's off by a penny isn't worth a manager's time; one that's off by $40 is. Set this to something small and real, like $2.00.
  • Require open session for cash — leave this on. It blocks cash payments on the register until someone opens the till, which is what forces the morning count to actually happen.

3. Open the till each shift. The cashier opens the Till page, enters (or counts) the starting float — say $150 in small bills — and opens the session. The dashboard on that computer shows a compact bar with the till's name, whether it's open or closed, and the button for the next action. It deliberately shows no cash figures — if the expected total were on screen, a blind count would no longer be blind.

4. Take payments as normal. On the invoice screen, cash payments now behave like a register: enter the amount owed, and if you've enabled it, enter the cash tendered to see the change due. If you've allowed overpayments, you can instead leave the extra applied to the invoice — its balance simply goes negative (a prepaid/credit balance on that invoice) rather than handing back change. Each cash payment quietly updates the drawer's expected total.

5. Do drops and deposits during the shift. When the drawer gets fat, pull the big bills. A drop moves cash to an on-site safe; a deposit sends it to the bank. Both lower the expected drawer total, and both are logged with a reason and the person who did them. This is a security practice, not a bookkeeping nicety — a register with $2,000 in it is a target.

6. Close the till at end of shift. Count the drawer (blind, if you followed the advice above), and submit. The system reveals the expected figure, your count, and the variance, and stamps the session with a batch reference for your deposit paperwork. If the variance is inside tolerance, you're done. If it's outside, you'll be asked for a reason — and, if your policy requires it, a manager will need to enter their own username and password to authorize the close. That manager step-up is the point: an over/short isn't buried, it's signed off.

Reconciliation and the audit trail

The Till Audit screen (a manager permission) lists every session with its expected, counted, and variance figures. Filter to exceptions only to see just the sessions that didn't balance, then open one to see the full picture: every count with its denomination breakdown, every cash movement in the session, who did each, and when. This is where you answer "the Tuesday night drawer was $30 short — what happened?" If a register was left open because the computer died mid-shift, a manager can force-close that stranded session from here.

Common mistakes

  • Letting cashiers see the expected total during the close. A non-blind count doesn't catch anything — it just teaches people to count to the target. Keep blind close on.
  • Sharing one login at the register. The whole point is per-operator accountability. If three people work the desk under one account, you've thrown that away. Each person should be logged in as themselves; the payment records who they are.
  • Setting the tolerance too loose. A $25 tolerance means a $25 theft never triggers a reason or a review. Set it to the smallest amount that isn't worth chasing — a couple of dollars for most counters.
  • Skipping drops. People treat drops as optional until the day a full drawer walks off. If your drawer regularly holds more than you'd be comfortable losing, drop the excess to the safe.
  • Forgetting to open the till. With "require open session for cash" on, the register will simply refuse cash until someone opens it — which is the reminder working as designed. Don't turn that setting off to avoid the nag; the nag is the control.
  • Treating the variance as the cashier's fault by default. Most small shorts are miscounts, wrong change, or a missed drop — not theft. Use the audit trail to find the cause before you find blame.

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