Cash drawer — shift handover and reconciling discrepancies

The cash drawer guide covers opening + closing. This one covers the messier reality: handing over mid-shift, dealing with takings that don't match, and audit trails that survive a week-later question.

Shift handover (without closing the till)

When one staff member's shift ends and another starts and you don't want to fully close + reopen the till:

1. Outgoing staff: POS → Cash Drawer → Handover.
2. Count what's in the drawer right now.
3. Pick the incoming staff member from the dropdown.
4. Click Confirm Handover.
5. Incoming staff signs in (PIN or password) — they confirm the count.

The session stays open; subsequent transactions are attributed to the incoming staff. The handover counts are logged with both names + a timestamp, so when the till is closed at end-of-day there's a chain of custody for every dollar.

Discrepancies on close

Closing the till asks for an end-of-day count. If it doesn't match expected (sales − payouts + opening float), Trimsy:

• Flags the variance in red
• Asks for a reason (drop-down: cashier error, customer overpaid, refund not logged, suspected theft, other)
• Lets you write a free-text note
• Saves the close anyway — short / over closes are still valid records

Don't fudge the count to make it match — record the truth. The variance + reason show up in the financial report and if the same staff has repeated unexplained variances over a few weeks, it's a flag.

Common discrepancy causes

• Refund processed without till entry — staff handed cash back from the drawer but didn't void the original sale or process a refund through POS.
• Tip jar mixed in — cash tips dropped into the drawer instead of the tip jar.
• Float opening counted wrong — the opening float entry was off, so the close looks short.
• Cashier change error — gave $5 too much in change to a customer.

Audit trail

Every cash drawer event is logged on an immutable ledger:

• Open with float
• Each cash sale (links to the receipt)
• Each cash refund
• Each payout (paying suppliers / petty cash withdrawals — record with a note)
• Each handover with both staff names
• Close with declared total + variance + reason

Export the ledger from Reports → Cash Drawer Ledger for any date range. PDF or CSV. Useful for accountant queries and for the once-a-quarter "wait, what happened on the 14th?" investigation.

Recommended hygiene

• Count the drawer at handover, not just at close — it's the cheapest way to identify when a discrepancy started.
• If you bank cash mid-day (large sums), record the bank deposit as a payout from the till with note "Bank drop $X — receipt attached". Attach the bank deposit slip if you have one.
• End-of-day, count twice. The second count catches half the errors.