Balancing your cash register is not the same as balancing a checkbook. In this article, you will know the strategies and the fundamentals to balance the till.

Balancing your cash drawer should be an essential part of your routine, like unlocking the door to get into work. This is a huge mistake if you’re accustomed to depositing money without balancing it first.

• What are the benefits of balancing your cash drawer?
• Have one person per drawer
• Start by counting the cash
• To ensure you have enough cash, it is best to deposit money throughout the day.
• Determine your balance at the end of each day.

Welcome to the new era of commerce

This article will talk about the future-proof retail tactics that you can use to keep your business flexible and efficient. The new world of retail is a tough place for businesses, so it’s essential to stay up with current trends.

Why should you balance your cash drawer?

As a merchant, you need to be concerned with cash flow, and your business must have the necessary payment methods to balance the till. Mobile payments are becoming increasingly popular, so balancing your cash drawer is crucial in ensuring all of the profit from these transactions.

Even if you trust your employees, it’s essential to implement cash-handling procedures to balance the till. This protects the business and its staff by holding everyone accountable for what goes in and out of the register. The most important reason is preventing shortages due to incorrect cash handling or theft and making sure that customers are getting change back when they should be.

How to balance a cash drawer? Here are some practical strategies that you could use to balance the till.

Have one person per drawer

How to balance a till? To balance the till, it is essential to limit the number of people that have access and responsibility for a  balance cash drawer. For example, in smaller businesses with only one register, it might not be possible. Still, when there are multiple registers, this can create problems such as accountability thinning out and individual responsibilities becoming unclear. However, iPad POS systems offer settings that help monitor transactions better than traditional ones.

Start by counting the cash

Balancing the cash register is essential, but it’s also more complicated than you might think. One of the most common mistakes that people make is to forget about balancing their till at the end of a day with what they had counted in before leaving for a lunch break or heading home. This can be fixed by always counting out everything first thing when coming back from breaks and ensuring there are no discrepancies between all totals.

Traditionally, as a merchant, you want to keep enough cash in your register. This ensures that customers are not frustrated when they do not have change for their purchase or walk away from the store without making a sale.

Make sure to have cash on hand when you open up for the day. Click To Tweet

For a small business, $100-$150 should be enough petty cash at any given time. A good rule of thumb is to keep around five and one-dollar bills.

Deposit cash throughout the day

The next step in keeping a tidy cash register is to deposit the day’s takings throughout the workday. Again, depending on your volume and size of transactions, you’ll need to vary how many deposits are made per shift. In general, though, it’s best not to do this during peak hours, so if you’re working at lunchtime, then midday probably isn’t an ideal time for counting money.

To balance the till, make sure you have a separate person count the cash, remove what is in your drawer, and see that it gets deposited. The store owner should witness this with an employee or manager.

Determine your end-of-day balance

Maintaining the register is an investment that will pay off when you’re done for the day. View your work and make sure everything was handled in a way that reflects honesty.

The first step in determining if you have any discrepancies is to look at your till. This includes counting the cash, credit card transactions, and checks for accuracy. Once all of these numbers are totaled up, compare them with what’s on your POS system. If they match exactly, then there should be no problem, but it can also mean that human error caused an issue or someone made a mistake when handling change.

Finding discrepancies in your end-of-day balance

You need to be aware of two kinds of discrepancies: overages and shortages to balance the till. Overages happen when the amount in your register is more than what’s recorded on your POS system; shortages occur when there isn’t enough money for what should have been sold at a given time.

Although overages are not ideal, they can damage your business. Click To Tweet

Shortages occur when cash is either lost or stolen, and customers have too much money refunded back to them. But an excess of change means that you withheld funds from the customer, which leads to a negative online review for your company.

Modernize your cash register with Lightspeed

Congratulations, you now know how to balance a cash register drawer like a pro. You have all of the knowledge and solutions for managing your receipts so that they check out correctly between shifts and before closing at the end of each day. To make this task even more accessible, it’s time to opt for Lightspeed’s cloud-based mobile point of sale system, which will simplify operations by making everything simple and efficient.