Cashing up a till and explaining the difference
How to count a shop till at the end of a shift, where the expected cash comes from, and how to record cash over or short so it gets explained.
By Achekam · · 5 min read · For Retail businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
The shift is over, the queue has gone, and someone has to count the drawer. The total on the counting sheet rarely matches what the till expects to the last coin. Sometimes the drawer is short, sometimes it holds more than it should, and either way the owner wants to know why.
A cash-up is more than a count. It is the moment a cashier hands the drawer back to the business, and the difference is information. Read properly, it tells you whether change is being given wrongly, whether a cash refund went out without being recorded, or whether money is leaving the shop. Covered up with a note from someone's purse, it tells you nothing.
This guide follows a cash-up from the opening float to the final report, for a shop in South Africa, Nigeria or Kenya.
Begin with a float someone actually counted
Every cash-up depends on the opening figure. If nobody counted the float at the start of the shift, any difference at the end may have been sitting in the drawer before the first customer arrived.
In Achekam, a cashier opens a till by giving it a name, such as "Front counter" or "Pharmacy", and entering the float they have just counted. Only one session can be open per till name, so two people cannot unknowingly run the same drawer. If the browser is reloaded during the shift, the open till is found again rather than started afresh.
Habits worth building at opening time:
- Count the float in front of a second person and both sign the float sheet.
- Use the same float every day, so a wrong one stands out.
- Never top up the float from takings during the shift without recording it as cash paid in.
Count the drawer, then compare
At the end of the shift there are two jobs: counting what is in the drawer, and comparing it with what should be there. They are done by different hands.
By notes and coins, not by bundle
Counting a drawer as "a stack of big notes and some change" is how small errors turn into arguments. Count each denomination separately and write down how many of each you hold.
Achekam's cash-up asks for the drawer by notes and coins, with the denominations listed for rand, naira and shilling. Counting this way makes a recount quicker, because you can recount only the tray that looks wrong, and it leaves a record of exactly what was handed over.
Where the expected figure comes from
Expected cash is what the drawer should hold if everything was rung up and recorded correctly. In any shop it starts from the counted float and moves with every cash event in the session: cash sales put money in, cash refunds and cash paid out take it out, safe drops remove it, and cash paid in adds to it. Card, QR and mobile-money payments never belong in the drawer total.
In Achekam, the server works out the expected cash from what has been recorded for that till, and safe drops, cash paid in and cash paid out are recorded on the server too. The cashier does not type the expected figure. That separation matters: the person counting cannot change what the count is compared with. Accountants call this segregation of duties; AccountingTools explains segregation of duties as giving the steps in a process to different people so that no one can both commit and conceal theft or error. The movements during the day are covered in safe drops, cash paid out and banking the takings.
Over and short both reach the books
Once the count is entered, Achekam records the difference and posts it to the cash over and short account. A shortage and an overage are both posted, and that is deliberate.
A drawer that is over is as much a warning as one that is short. It usually means a sale was not rung up but the money was taken, a customer was short-changed, or a refund was recorded but never paid out. If overages are pocketed or used to cover the next shortage, the pattern disappears.
Over a few months, the cash over and short account tells a story. A scatter of small differences across several cashiers is ordinary handling error. Repeated shortages on one person's shifts, or a steady drift in one direction, deserve a calm conversation. Because every difference reaches the ledger, your accountant sees it as well; what a till sale posts to your books explains the accounts involved.
X reports during the day, a Z report at the end
Two reports help, and Achekam opens both as PDFs:
- An X report is a live snapshot of an open till. A supervisor can run one before a shift change, or when a drawer looks too full, without closing anything.
- A Z report is frozen at cash-up. It is the till's record of that session and does not change afterwards.
File the Z report with the counting sheet. If a difference needs investigating next week, the Z report shows what the till believed at the moment the drawer was counted.
When the till is not ready to be cashed up
If the shop's connection drops during trading, Achekam keeps till sales in the browser and sends them when the connection returns, and a sale sent again is never recorded twice. Until those sales reach the server, though, the expected cash would be wrong, so a till with unsent sales cannot be cashed up.
If that happens at closing time, restore the connection and let the waiting sales go through before counting. Do not open a new till or ring the sales up again by hand. That is how a shop ends up with the same sale in its books twice.
Investigating a difference before anyone signs
When a cash-up is out, the supervisor should work through this list:
- Recount the drawer, denomination by denomination.
- Check the opening float against the signed float sheet.
- Look for cash refunds or payouts handed over but not recorded, or recorded but not paid.
- Check whether a card or mobile-money sale was rung up as cash, or the other way round.
- Compare with the X reports run during the day to narrow down when the gap appeared.
- Write down what you found, even if you found nothing.
If the trail leads to a refund handled the wrong way, refunds, voids and store credit at the till sets out who should have done what.
A cash-up that happens the same way every time, with a counted float, a counted drawer and a difference posted and explained, turns cash from a source of suspicion into figures you can read. Start with tomorrow morning's float.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
