Till and cash-float reconciliation: explain every difference before banking the takings

A cash till begins with an opening float, receives customer cash and gives change throughout the day. At close, the physical money should equal the opening float plus cash sales and other receipts minus refunds, paid-outs and cash removed for banking. Any difference needs to be recorded and investigated.

Count and sign for the opening float

Use a fixed opening float by till or employee and count it before trading begins. Record denominations where cash volumes are significant. Staff should sign or acknowledge the float so custody is clear.

Do not mix yesterday's unexplained shortage into today's opening amount. Reconcile each trading day independently so differences are linked to the period in which they occurred.

Use the POS cash-sales total as the expected movement

The point-of-sale system should show cash sales, cash refunds, voids and any authorised paid-outs. Those movements create the expected cash position before physical count.

Keep card and cash sales separate. A £5,000 till sales report can include £4,200 cards and only £800 cash, so the bankable cash cannot be inferred from total sales alone.

Use two-person counts for material cash where practical

At close, count notes and coins away from customers. High-cash businesses can use a second employee or supervisor to verify the count, especially for larger shortages or deposits.

Record the count before removing the next day's float. This preserves the full end-of-day position and makes it easier to trace whether a difference arose during trading or during banking preparation.

Investigate shortages and overages rather than netting them indefinitely

A small occasional variance can reflect change errors. Repeated shortages at one till, shift or employee need review. Overages matter too because they can indicate customers were short-changed or refunds were recorded incorrectly.

Set escalation thresholds but still record every difference. Writing off £5 a day without review can hide more than £1,000 a year at one location.

Separate the next opening float from the amount being banked

After reconciliation, retain the authorised float and prepare the remaining cash for deposit. The deposit slip, sealed bag or collector receipt should equal the amount removed from the till system.

When the bank credits the deposit, match it back to the daily cash-up. If several days are combined into one deposit, retain a schedule showing each day's contribution.

Keep cash-up records as accounting evidence

HMRC requires business records that allow transactions to be identified. Till summaries, deposit evidence and cash-up sheets help connect cash sales to the bank and accounting ledger.

Store records consistently and review them with fraud and loss-prevention data. The cash-up is not only a bookkeeping form; it is a daily control over money that becomes much harder to trace once physical custody changes.

Worked example: a till opens with £150, records £1,240 cash sales, £60 cash refunds and a £30 authorised petty paid-out. Expected closing cash is £1,300. If the count is £1,287, the day's shortage is £13 and should be recorded before removing the next float.

Where staff share tills, responsibility becomes harder to attribute. Use individual logins even if the drawer is shared so voids, refunds and discounts remain attributable. For higher-risk sites, assign drawers by employee or shift rather than by location only.

Review cash differences alongside POS exception reports. A shortage paired with an unusual number of voids or no-sale drawer openings can indicate a different problem from an isolated change error. Finance and operations should use the same data rather than investigating separately.

Banked cash should be traced all the way to the statement. If £4,800 leaves three tills and only £4,650 is credited by the bank, compare sealed-bag records, collector receipts and bank adjustments before writing off the £150 difference.

Set different tolerance thresholds for investigation and escalation. A £2 variance can be recorded and monitored, while a £50 shortage can require supervisor review the same day. The threshold should reflect sales volume and risk, but no threshold should mean that differences disappear from the records. Trends matter even when each single amount is small.

Where cash is transferred between tills during trading, require a documented till-to-till transfer rather than informal sharing of change. Otherwise one drawer can show a shortage and another an overage even though the site total is correct. Location-level accuracy is useful, but employee or till-level accuracy is what helps identify the actual control failure.

For sites that prepare deposits after close, secure the reconciled cash overnight under a defined custody process. The till can balance perfectly at 10pm and the bank deposit can still be short the next morning if sealed cash is not controlled between count and collection.