What If - QuickBooks Point-of-Sale
In a multi-workstation retail location, it is common for multiple employees to work the same register during the day. Ideally, the owner will want to track each employee’s activity in the cash drawer while being able to run reports that make any employee’s activities visible. Cash management requires preplanning as well as daily management of the Tills.
It is very important you enable security in POS. To do so, go to Company Preferences and in General Preferences check the box, require users to log in. POS will prompt you to set up a Sysadmin password. We recommend that it be a complex password, meaning a combination of numbers, letters and special characters. You should only use the Sysadmin account to create other login accounts. Once you have enabled security, go to the Employee menu and Employee List. Click New Employee and then set up the employee’s login and then click create password.
“Best Practices” mandate that each employee has a separate login and must never share their password. Sharing passwords should be prohibited by written company policy and reinforced with each employee. Let your employees know that they are responsible for their Till and any shortages.
Till Management and End of Day
In order to track each employee’s activity at the drawer, you will need to assign a Till to each employee that works during the day. Tills are the removable inserts that hold the cash inside of the drawer. You should invest in enough tills to cover the number of employees that you will be working on your registers during any single day.
Your Tills should be setup at the beginning of each day. You will be checking the Tills out as your clerks start their shifts and checking the Tills in as they end their shifts. Leaving the tills out, even with locking covers, is simply not secure. It is a “Best Practice” for your retailer to have a safe big enough to hold all of the tills from any single day. This protects both your cash and your staff.
Standardizing the Till beginning amount will aid in Till management. Your “bank” (the money in the drawer at the beginning of the day) will vary based on your circumstances, but a normal retailer will start each Till with between $ 100 and $ 120 dollars each day. At the end of each shift, any cash in excess of your “bank” will be the result of sales, can be removed, and a cash drop recorded accordingly. Likewise, drawers will need to be counted down to their starting “bank”.
The “bank” may need to be replenished if ending balance falls below the “bank” due to returns or payouts.
To start the day, the employee is assigned a Till. Have them count the Till in the presence of a manager to confirm the beginning balance. The employee then should log into their assigned register with their unique user name and password, open the cash drawer, and insert their till. All sales associated with that Till must be made by the assigned cashier. Do not let other employees make sales out of an assigned Till.
During breaks, insert a new Till assigned to the employee covering the register. The employee being relieved removes their Till from the drawer and logs out. Reverse the process when the cashier returns. At a shift change, you may opt to have the cashier count the drawer and finalize their cash drop. Or you may have the manager or the bookkeeper count the drawer. Regardless of which employee counts the drawer, you will want to keep careful track of overages and shortages by employee.
In POS, you can customize an X-out Status report by clicking on the Modify Button and then Filter Data. In the Cashier filter, type the cashier name. Then run the report. Only that cashier activity will be listed. This report can be memorized for each cashier to make the reporting process go faster. The goal is to make sure that each cashier’s activity with their Till is separated out from all other cashiers. You must enforce strict policies: no sharing cash drawers or using another login to make sales. “Best Practices” include a written cash management policy. Making sure the policy is understood by all and enforced equally will help minimized one source of employee theft and/or mismanagement.
William English, President of English Management Solutions, Inc., Certified Advanced QuickBooks ProAdvisor Consultant, Intuit Premier Reseller
J. Lombardi, Queen of Green & NCR Certified Retail Consultant, technical writer for Today's Garden Center
This article is a result of the collaboration between J. Lombardi and William English