The last ten minutes of the day decide how tomorrow starts. Count the drawer properly and you walk out knowing exactly what you made. Skip it, and a ₱50 shortage on Monday quietly becomes a ₱500 mystery by Friday. Here is an end-of-day routine for a small shop that takes about ten minutes once it becomes habit.
Why the drawer total is not the answer
The money in the drawer at close is not what you earned. Three things sit in between:
- You started the day with a float — change money that was never a sale.
- You probably paid cash out during the day: a delivery rider, a quick supply run, surplus sent to the back office.
- Some customers paid by e-wallet, QR or card, which never touched the drawer at all.
A proper close separates those from your sales. The goal is one honest number: did the cash that should be in the drawer match the cash that is actually there?
Step 1: Start the day with a counted float
The close begins in the morning. Count your float before the first customer and record it as your opening cash when you open the session. Every later number builds on this one, so a sloppy opening count shows up as a "shortage" at night that never really happened.
If you run shifts, do not share one session across staff. The outgoing cashier closes, the incoming cashier opens a new session with the carried-over cash as their opening cash. That way each person's drawer stands on its own.
Step 2: Log every peso that moves mid-shift
Any cash that leaves or enters the drawer that is not a sale or a refund needs a line. With Store Sessions you record these as drawer movements:
- Cash In — topping up change from the safe, a manager float, a carry-over from the morning shift.
- Cash Out — paying a rider from the till, petty cash for supplies, sending surplus to the back office.
Log the movement the moment the cash changes hands, not at the end of the day. Five minutes later you have forgotten the rider's name; an hour later, the amount. Use specific reasons — "Rider, order #12453" beats "petty cash" when you are tracing a gap next month.
Two things not to log here: refunds (they have their own flow and already deduct from your cash totals) and payouts you want to add after closing (you cannot — record them before you close).
Step 3: The 10-minute close
- Clear open orders. Complete them or move them to On Hold. A payment counts in the shift that takes it, so an order paid after the close lands in tomorrow's drawer.
- Open your active session and tap End Session. You will see the running totals: opening cash, cash sales, payouts, payins and the expected cash the drawer should hold.
- Take the cash out and count it twice. Do not trust the first count. Ever.
- Enter the closing cash. For a tighter count, use the denomination breakdown and enter counts per denomination — 1000 × 5, 500 × 4, and so on. The breakdown adds up into your closing cash, so compare it with your hand count. If they differ, count again.
- Review the variance. The app shows counted minus expected and colors it by how far off you are.
- Pick a reason if prompted, then close the session.
- Print or share the Z-report from Session History.
Two extra minutes on the denomination breakdown saves an hour of "where did the ₱500 go" the next morning.
Expected vs counted: the one formula to know
Expected cash is simply:
opening cash + cash sales − cash out + cash in
Your variance is closing cash − expected cash. Zero means a clean day. A positive number means you are over; negative means short. The whole point of Steps 1 and 2 is that this formula has the right inputs, so the variance tells you something real instead of just "we forgot to log the rider".
Set thresholds so the response is automatic
A variance is normal. What matters is how big it is, whether it keeps happening, and what your shop does about it. Store Sessions lets you set three per-store thresholds so the response is policy, not mood:
- Minor — below this, nothing shows on the close screen. Routine.
- Review — above this, the cashier must pick a variance reason before finalizing: wrong change, counterfeit bill, drawer skim, miscount, bank deposit or other.
- Escalation — above this, a reason and a written explanation are required, and the owner and managers are notified. The closed session is flagged for follow-up.
The defaults are ₱50, ₱500 and ₱5,000. A sensible starting point is to tie them to your own cash flow: Minor around 0.1 to 0.2 percent of a typical day's cash sales, Review around 1 percent, Escalation around 5 percent or a single high-denomination loss. Tighten them over time if your drawer consistently balances.
These thresholds are soft. Closing is never blocked, even on a large variance, as long as a reason and note are given. You cannot fix what you cannot close.
What to do when the drawer is off
- A small shortage once — count again, then check the change you gave on the last few sales. Wrong change is the most common cause.
- The same ₱20 short every week — not a counting problem, a process problem. Investigate this week, not next month.
- Consistently over — usually an under-rung promo or a missed refund. Audit your discount and refund logs.
- Over Review repeatedly — if it is genuine miscounting, raise the threshold temporarily and invest in counting practice.
- A single bad shift — noise. A ₱200 gap every weekend on the same cashier is the pattern worth looking at.
Write down what each threshold means operationally — for example, "above Review, the cashier signs the close sheet alongside the closing manager". Otherwise the prompt becomes paperwork nobody reads.
Keep the record
The Z-report captures the close in one place: opening and closing cash, expected cash, variance with reason and note, the optional denomination breakdown, payments by method, order and void counts, and every drawer movement. Print it to your receipt printer or share it as a summary to your accountant. The full walkthrough is in Closing the Day with the Z-Report.
If you still close on paper, start with the free end-of-day cash count sheet and run the routine by hand for a week. When you are ready to let the app do the math, Fuze Store is free to start and runs on the phone you already have.