Take your time for this very IMPORTANT lesson!
Touchpoint will keep track of every single cent that enters the system and help you keeping control of your Sales.
Learn in this lesson how to work with cash drawers to make sure all the money enters correctly the system and doesn't get lost.
Our "Drawer Management daily routine" will help you accomplishing that.
The daily cash management routine includes following steps
Opening cash drawers when starting a shift,
Hot Swapping drawers at end of shift, if no time to count out and close drawer properly or
closing and counting out drawers at end of shift if time allows
to allow opening new cash drawers for the next shift.
Closing and counting out all open and hot swapped drawers at end of day before doing the batch count.
Batch Count to close out the days activities.
1. Registers & Cash Drawers
Each Register has a Name, e.g. Left Window, Main Window, LineBuster1, LineBuster2 etc.
Recall, Register names the “place” where orders are taken. When installing TouchpointPRO on your iPad, you will first choose the role Cashier and then choose a Register for the cashier, e.g. ‘left window’.
In order to count the cash collected for orders, a cash drawer must be started.
A POS register can have one active drawer at a time.
Before we learn how to start a cash drawer, let's look at two rules that you should always follow:
1. You cannot have 2 iPads configured for the same Register!
2. Linebusters need to have their own registers but not an open cash drawer! You will only collect Card payments, no cash.
Manage your Drawers
Tap ☰ (in top left corner) to enter POS settings and go to Active Cash Drawer or Count out Drawers
Active Cash Drawer
View and manage the cash drawer that is active for that REGISTER.
Example: The device you are on is configured for Role "Cashier", Register "Walk-up"
When you tap on Active Cash Drawer you will be able to view and manage the cash drawer for the Walk-up Register.
Count out Drawers
Come here to do the Batch Count at end of day.
Find an overview of all Closed or Hot Swapped drawers since the last Batch Count was done.
Enough of the basics. Let's take a closer look at a Cash Drawers lifecycle.
2. Lifecycle of a cash drawer
The lifecycle of a Cash Drawer is short and simple. Start a drawer for your Register, e.g. “Left Window”, collect cash sales in your physical cash drawer, then close out the active drawer at the end of your shift.
2.1 Start Drawer
Starting the first shift of a day, launch TouchpointPRO and you will be prompted to start a cash drawer.
You can also start a cash drawer by going to the POS menu > Active Cash Drawer. If no Drawer is active yet, Touchpoint will prompt you to start one.
You want to add some Starting Cash when opening the Cash Drawer.
Done! You are ready to process orders on the register and collect cash sales in your physical cash drawer.
2.2 Close Active Cash Drawer
At the end of a shift, close out cash drawers at your stations (registers).
The cash drawer contains Starting Cash and all Cash Sales collected since starting the Cash Drawer.
Open POS Menu > Active Cash Drawer > Select the active cash drawer to close it
Remember: When you started the drawer, you added "Starting Cash". It makes sense to now remove this cash from the drawer and add it as "Starting Cash" to the next drawer.
2.3 Print Z report
The Z report is a final tally of everything that happened to the cash drawer. It is useful to bundle a Z report together with the cash when putting in the store safe.
Note: the cash drawer must be closed and counted before the Z report can be printed.
3. Hot Swap drawers
What is a Hot Swap?
A shift is ending and you have to remove the shifts active cash drawer to start a new cash drawer for the next shift. You want the system to keep track of all cash collected but there is no time to count out the drawer and close it properly? Here comes the Hot Swap!
A Hot Swap is a way to quickly remove a shifts Cash Drawer and start a new one without counting out cash at this point but at a later, more convenient time.
The Hot Swap puts the cash drawer in Stand By, removing it from active drawers but keeping it open in the system until you find time to count and close it out properly.
How to do a Hot Swap?
Swap out quickly the active drawer at the end of the shift, taking out the starting cash for the next drawer and putting aside the remaining collected cash in a bag so that you can count it out at the end of the day.
Now go into Settings to open "Active Cash Drawer" > "Hot Swap & Count Later" > Enter the Starting Amount for next drawer into the system, put the starting cash back into the drawer and tap "Hot Swap".
Your new drawer is live!
4. Count Out Drawers = Batch Count
You’ve learned how to Open, Close Out and Hot Swap drawers. See now how to combine them in a batch and get your days deposit ready.
Touchpoint strongly recommends to establish a closing procedure including a Batch Count at the end of every day.
Let's take a look at this example of a typical scenario at a store.
We have 2 shifts, a morning and an evening shift and 3 drawers per shift.
The morning shift (yellow) starts with new drawers containing starting cash and you will hot swap them at the end of the shift so that the evening shift can start with reset drawers and new starting cash.
The evening shift counts pout and closes their evening-drawers at the end of the day (grey).
The store manager counts out the hot swapped drawers from the morning shift
Now the separate Closing Amounts of all 6 drawers of this day get combined in a Batch (remember, we have 3 closed out drawers from the morning and another 3 from the evening shift).
The next day will start with new cash drawers and $0 open or pending cash!
Important: Close Out Active Cash drawers
Prepare the Batch Count by closing out active and counting out hot swapped Cash Drawers
To do that, go to Settings > Active Cash Drawers and close out the drawer if still open.
Then go to Settings > Count out Drawers. If there are Hot Swapped drawers, it will say "Count out now" in the column to the right ("Counted"). Tap "Count out now" and follow the instructions.
How to do a Batch Count?
You do not want to have any Active or Hot Swapped Drawers when doing the Batch Count!
All Drawers closed? Let's do the Batch Count!
Settings > Count out Drawers > Batch Count
All closed and counted out drawer shown will be included in the batch count.
Count all of the drawers again. You can use the Z report to see how much is expected.
But count carefully - this is the amount you are going to tell the BANK you are depositing.
Once everything has been counted, tap "Batch Count" and enter what you have counted by Total Sum or Bill & Coins.
Remember, with Bill & Coins you count the number of bills, so if you have six $10 bills, enter "6", NOT "$60"
When finalising, a deposit slip is printed.
View Batch Cash Deposit report
Submitting the Batch will automatically print a deposit report.
Find a more detailed report in the stores Web Admin.
Web Admin > Reports and Stats > Deposit Slip
"Drawer Counts" column
Here you will find all Closed Drawers that got combined to the Batch and Drawer details like the Closing Amount.
"POS Expected"
Those separate Closing Amounts combine to a total amount of expected Cash.
"Batch Counted"
Re-count the cash. Does it match POS Expected?
"Variance"
If it does not match, you well see a Variance, red if money is missing, green if you have an overage and black if it matches.
Cash Drawer exceptions
Finally let's take a closer look at some important cash drawer features!
1. Paid In/Out
Paid In: “Hey, you opened today with only $100 instead of the usual $150. Here’s $50. Do a cash Pay In.”
Paid Out: ”Take $80 and go buy some Pizzas. Do $80 paid out.”
2. Opening Cash Drawer outside of a sale (i.e. No Sale)
3. Buying Money from drawers
Drawer Buying: “I need two $5 bills. Here’s a $10 Bill.
Since this is the same value of money, no cash paid in/out records are needed.
4. Print X report
☰ > Cash Drawer > Print X Report The X report is a current snapshot of the current transactions since the last cash drawer close.