End-of-Day Cash-Up for a Café — Step by Step
- A cash-up compares the cash you counted with the cash the till says should be there — cash sales, plus collections on house accounts, plus the float, each kept in its own column.
- Count blind. The drawer is counted before anyone looks at the expected figure, or the count will quietly bend towards it.
- Card is reconciled against the terminal's own closing total, not against the drawer. The till's job is to record how much was card; the terminal's job is to have taken it.
- House account charges are today's sales but not today's cash; collections on old accounts are today's cash but not today's sales. Mixing these up is the most common cash-up error.
- In the worked example, expected cash of $472.50 against a count of $467.50 traces to a $5.00 refund given at the counter and never recorded — a named variance instead of a mystery.
- An end-of-day report is your own snapshot, not a fiscal document. Nothing in a café POS like this is filed to any authority — receipt and reporting duties are separate and vary by country.
Closing time does two jobs at once: it finishes the day for the guests and it starts the day's accounting for you. The cash-up is the ten minutes in between. Done properly it is boring — the counted money matches the expected money, the float goes back in the drawer, the rest goes to the bank. Done casually it is the place where small unexplained losses live for years, because nobody ever wrote down what the day actually produced.
Why the Drawer Gets Counted at All
The point is not to catch a thief, though occasionally it does. The point is that a gap between expected and counted cash is information — about change-giving, about unrecorded refunds, about payments typed as the wrong method, about the afternoon somebody paid for their own coffee and forgot to ring it in. A café that never counts learns nothing from any of these; the money simply leaves. A café that counts every day turns each of them into a one-line story with a date on it.
The Routine, in Order
- Stop the day cleanly. Last orders recorded, open bills settled or consciously carried, kitchen told the till is closing.
- Pull the expected figures. Today's takings split by payment method — cash, card, house account — from the day's summary or the end-of-day report.
- Set the float aside. The opening float comes out of the drawer first, into its own envelope, so you are never counting tomorrow's change as tonight's takings.
- Count blind. Cash counted and written down by someone who has not seen the expected figure.
- Compare and record. Expected against counted, variance written down with a name and, where possible, a reason.
- Reconcile card. The terminal's closing total against the card total in the till — these two must agree whatever the drawer says.
- Bank what remains. The cash over the float leaves for the safe or the night deposit, and the drawer is left with exactly tomorrow's float.
| Reconciliation | Compare | Common cause of a gap |
|---|---|---|
| Cash | Counted drawer (minus float) against cash sales plus cash collections on accounts | Unrecorded refunds, change errors, payments typed as cash that were card |
| Card | Terminal closing total against card payments recorded in the till | A payment voided on the terminal but left recorded, or the reverse; tips taken on the terminal and not separated |
| House accounts | Charges added today against collections received today | Collections pocketed as "cash sales", charges made without checking the customer's limit |
Card Is the Easier Half
Card needs no counting because the terminal has already done it. Close the terminal's batch, read its total, and compare it with the card figure the till recorded. If they disagree, the difference is almost always a correction made on one side and not the other — a voided card payment, or a refund run through the terminal after the bill was already recorded as paid. Note it, fix the side that is wrong, and move on; card gaps are rare and almost always paperwork rather than money.
House Accounts in the Day's Numbers
Accounts are where honest cafés tie themselves in knots, because the two directions of an account land in different columns. A charge to an account is today's sale — it is in today's revenue — but no cash reached the drawer. A collection on an old account is cash in the drawer — it must be in the expected cash figure — but it is not today's sale, because it was the day the coffee was actually drunk. Write both into the cash-up explicitly, and the knot disappears.
Worked example
A café's day ends with takings of $1,240.00 — $412.50 cash, $727.60 card, $99.90 charged to the account of the office next door. During the afternoon the office also settled $60.00 of last month's balance, in cash. The float, $150.00, is set aside first. Expected cash in the drawer is therefore $412.50 plus $60.00 — $472.50. The blind count comes to $467.50: a $5.00 shortfall. The terminal's closing total reads $727.60, so card is clean. The manager remembers refunding a dropped coffee in the early afternoon — cash handed back at the counter, never recorded. The variance line for the day reads $5.00 short, refund not recorded, named, dated. The following night the count lands on the expected figure exactly, and the ten minutes stay boring, which is the whole objective.
Where a Gap Comes From
- Change given for a note read as a smaller note — the classic busy-counter error, usually small and usually in either direction.
- A refund or a comped item handed over in cash but never entered, so the till still expects the money.
- A card payment typed in as cash, which shortens the drawer and overstates the card column at the same time.
- Staff drinks rung in as paid by whoever was behind the till, to keep the drawer honest, then paid for in coins later without a record.
- A float that drifted during the week — someone borrowed a note for the parking meter and returned it as change.
Two envelopes solve more cash-up problems than any software: one holding tomorrow's float, one holding the banking. The drawer itself should end every night at the same counted figure it started with, so the only moving number is the day's takings.
After Midnight, Which Day Is It?
A café that closes at two in the morning has a small philosophical problem: the busiest hour of the trading day belongs to two calendar dates. The fix is a setting, not a habit. Choose the hour your business day rolls over — five or six in the morning suits late venues — and every daily total, hourly chart and end-of-day snapshot then cuts on that hour. The 01:30 sales belong to the evening they were part of, and the night's report describes the whole night.
What the Till Contributes
Everything in the routine above that says "expected figures" is the till's half of the work, and it is only as good as the payment records behind it. In Kafe360 every payment is recorded as cash, card or house account, so the reports hand you the day's split on the dashboard — hour by hour if you want to see when the cash arrived — and the Z-report generates once a day, files itself under the date and keeps the last thirty in a list. The bill history adds the payment distribution per day and shows takings on cancelled bills as a separate line, so money that exists in the drawer but not in the day's bills stops being a surprise.
Be clear about what a Z-report is not. It is not a fiscal record, not a tax invoice and not a filing to any authority — Kafe360 is not a fiscal device and produces no tax documents. Whatever receipting, reporting and record-keeping duties apply to your café come from where you trade, so check the rules where you operate, and give your accountant the honest numbers rather than a report pretending to be an official one.
The Closing Checklist
- Float out, into its envelope, before anything is counted.
- Blind count first, expected figure second, variance written down with a name.
- Card reconciled against the terminal, not against the drawer.
- Account collections included in expected cash; account charges excluded from it.
- Banking sealed and labelled with the date.
- Tomorrow's float counted back into the drawer to the same figure as today's.
The best cash-up is a dull one, done the same way by every person you might ever leave in charge. Write the routine on a card, tape it inside the cash drawer, and judge your process by how rarely a variance survives to the next morning unexplained.
Run one real close on it — payments recorded by method, the split ready before you count, the Z-report filed under the right date. Kafe360 is $249 a year, with a 30-day free trial and no card to start.
Start your 30-day free trialFrequently asked questions
What is a blind count and why does it matter?
How big a variance should I worry about?
Should tips be counted with the takings?
The drawer is over, not short. Is that fine?
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We close at two in the morning. Which day do the late sales belong to?
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