Close up without the wahala.

The count that nobody trusts

Most businesses count the money at night. The trouble is what they count it against. A notebook with half the sales in it, a figure somebody remembers, or nothing at all: “it feels a bit light today”. By the time anybody’s sure it’s short, it’s next week, and nobody can remember what happened on Tuesday.

A count only means something if you know what should be there. That’s the one number a till can give you that a notebook can’t.

Open with a float

A shift starts with a float: the change you put in the drawer so the first customer with a ₵50 note doesn’t empty it. Type it in when you open the drawer. From then on every cash sale rung up during the shift is added to it, and every cash refund taken off.

MoMo, the card machine and a Bolt Food order paid on the app never go in the drawer, so they’re never counted there. The drawer is cash, and only cash.

Money that leaves for a reason

Not every cedi that leaves the drawer is a sale going wrong. The gas man is paid from the till, somebody runs to the market for tomatoes, a staff member gets an advance. Before, those went on a scrap of paper, or nowhere, and at closing the drawer just read short.

Pay out of the drawer takes the amount and what it was for, in the same breath, while the answer is still in the room. The drawer is then expected to be short by exactly that. Pay into the drawer is the other way: the float topped up, change brought back from the market, or a figure you typed wrong put right.

Close with a count

At closing, count what’s in the drawer and type the one figure. The till already knows what should be there, so it tells you at once: right on, short by ₵20, or over by ₵5. On the screen above, the drawer should hold ₵645.00; whatever you type is set against that.

It’s said against the name of whoever had the drawer. Not as an accusation, just as the number, while the person is still standing there and the day is still fresh. Most shortages have a boring explanation, and the boring explanation is easiest to find on the same night: change given wrong in a rush, a sale rung up twice, a MoMo payment taken as cash.

Short or over, by person

On Pro, where everyone signs in with their own PIN, each person’s shifts are counted on their own drawer. Over a few weeks you can see whether one drawer is always ₵20 short or it moves around. That’s a very different conversation from “money’s missing”.

The MoMo side

The drawer is half of the day. The other half is the MoMo, and it’s checked a different way: the report shows the day’s MoMo sales, and the Payouts screen shows what actually landed and which sales it covered. If a customer paid by prompt, the money was confirmed before the sale closed, so there’s nothing to chase.

If you still count note by note

Some owners like to count every denomination onto paper. Counting the drawer has a sheet that adds it up for you, note by note, and prints.

What it doesn’t do yet

It doesn’t count the notes for you; you count, it compares. It doesn’t clock anybody in or out or add up their hours. It doesn’t count the MoMo wallet for you; it tells you what should have landed. And shifts are on Pro and Chain, not the Free plan.