Reconciling the Cash-Up

Reconciling the Day's Cash-Up to the Accounts

Yesterday’s Z Report says one figure, the cashbook says another, and the ledger says a third. This guide is for the accounts clerk the morning after a trading day who has to tie the till’s takings to the accounts, one payment method at a time. By the end you can name every difference, usually to the sen, and show that nothing was lost between the counter and the books. Once you know the checks, a branch that agrees takes a few minutes; the time goes on the ones that do not.

A cash-up involves four numbers. None of them restates another, and comparing two that were never meant to be equal is where most of a morning goes.

The seven checks, at a glance

Use the trading date on every report, never the date keyed.
Take the till figure from the Z Report’s takings block, Device on All.
Compare cash with the count at close, and only cash.
Take each method to its own cashbook.
Expect the cashbook to be lower by the method’s charges, and compute by how much.
Chase any bill that is on the till report and not in the accounts.
Check what was corrected after the cash-up.

Before you start, one caution. If a card or e-wallet method carries a charge and your company has no SETTLEMENT_CHARGES default GL code (the account for settlement charges), the fee lands on the customer’s receivable account without any message. Map it before any charged method goes live; Step 5 shows how to spot it afterwards.

Meet GadgetSphere

Branch GS-KV-01 traded yesterday. The Z Report’s takings block reads:

Method	Tendered	Charge on the method	In the cashbook
Cash	RM 3,547.55	none	RM 3,547.55
Card (card-acquiring bank)	RM 4,000.00	1.8% = RM 72.00	RM 3,928.00
E-wallet	RM 650.00	1.5% = RM 9.75	RM 640.25
Total	RM 8,197.55	RM 81.75	RM 8,115.80

The till opened on a RM 300.00 float. RM 2,000.00 was taken out at four o’clock and banked that afternoon (Banking the Day’s Takings). The cash method’s cashbook points at CASH-PRI-KV01 and the card method’s at DEBTOR-CC-RETAIL.

Before you start

You can open the Z Report in POS General for the branch, the enquiries in Cashbook, and Ledger and Journal.
Missing Cashbook is in the Data Fix applet, which is an administrator’s applet. If you cannot open it, agree who runs it for you each morning.
The day’s sessions are closed, and the supervisor’s slip of cash taken in and out is with you.

The four numbers

The number	Where it lives	What it is
The drawer	the session’s float count and Close	physical cash, counted
The till’s record	the Z Report takings block, or Cashier Collection line by line	what was tendered, gross, by method
The bank and cash accounts	Cashbook › Enquiries › Query Cashbook Transaction	what was received, net of the method’s charges
The ledger	the journal behind each bill	the double entry, including the charge

Step 1: Settle the date basis before you compare anything

Z Report, Cashier Collection, Query Cashbook Transaction

Everything downstream of the counter uses the bill’s transaction date, not the moment it was keyed. The Z Report filters on it, the cashbook line copies it onto itself, and the journal header takes the same date and records the posting moment separately. So run the Z Report for the trading date. If you use Cashier Collection as well, tick Transaction Date, not Create Date.

A bill backdated from the till’s Others panel moves on all three together. That is the point of backdating, and it is also why a backdated bill is missing from the report for the day it was actually sold.

Step 2: Take the till figure from the takings block

POS General › Reports › Z Report

Run the Z Report with Device on All first. A bill written without a registered device is left out of any device-specific run (Troubleshooting). Read the takings block: one row per settlement method, plus Contra where it applies. That is the gross tender, and it is the number the accounts have to explain. For GS-KV-01 it is the Tendered column above.

Step 3: Compare cash against the count, and only cash

The cash in the till should have moved by Opening + Cash In − Cash Out + cash takings, and the count at Close should match it. Take Cash In and Cash Out from the cashier’s slip, because the Z Report does not show them (why). At GS-KV-01: RM 300.00 + RM 0.00 − RM 2,000.00 + RM 3,547.55 = RM 1,847.55, and that is what the supervisor counted.

Do not use the printed Variance. It subtracts Total Net Sales (every sale, card and e-wallet included) from a movement of cash only, and that movement leaves out the cash taken in and out. So at any counter that accepts a card it is negative by the non-cash takings, plus or minus every drop. Here it reads −RM 6,650.00 with the count exactly right: RM 1,847.55 − RM 300.00 − RM 8,197.55, which is the RM 4,650.00 taken by card and e-wallet plus the RM 2,000.00 drop the report never sees.

Step 4: Take each method to its own cashbook

Cashbook › Enquiries › Query Cashbook Transaction

A settlement method names the cashbook it posts to (Cashbook → Settlement Method). There is no single “takings” account. A branch with a cash till, a card acquirer and two e-wallets reconciles four accounts.

Query Cashbook Transaction asks for Company and Cashbook (both required, one each), Date From and Date To, and an optional Payee. Its keyword box needs three characters and searches the cashbook code and name, the reference and the document number, so you can find a single bill by its Doc No. It filters on the bill’s transaction date, so it agrees with Step 1 by construction.

The grid starts with an Opening Balance row and has no total row at the bottom: the screen builds one and does not show it. Debit and Credit show one stored figure, positive as Debit and negative as Credit. Balance runs down from the opening. So the period’s movement is the last row’s Balance less the Opening Balance row’s. Compare it with that method’s takings row, and never add the two columns together.

When a cashbook carries other documents too, total only this branch’s cash-bill rows. CASH-PRI-KV01 also holds yesterday’s RM 2,000.00 Bank In, so its movement is RM 1,547.55. The cash-bill rows alone add to RM 3,547.55.

For the same figure without the subtraction, Cashbook › Enquiries › Cash Level over the same dates shows it as In/Out, one row per cashbook (where Cash Level’s figures come from). Click a row to open the source document with a Journal tab beside it. That is the shortest way from a cashbook figure to the double entry behind it.

Step 5: Expect the cashbook to be lower, by a computable amount

This is the single most common reason a cash-up “does not tally”, and nothing on either screen says it. The cashbook line is the tender less the settlement method’s charges: open_amount = (amount_txn − charges) × amount_signum. The journal agrees: the cashbook line is posted at the tender less the charge, and the charge goes out as its own line against the company’s SETTLEMENT_CHARGES default GL code.

Charges are set on the settlement method, either as a rate on the tendered amount plus an optional surcharge, or as a flat amount. So the card row reads RM 4,000.00 at the till and RM 3,928.00 in the cashbook, and the RM 72.00 difference is the fee. The charge is worked out and rounded bill by bill, so the day’s fee can differ by a few sen from the rate applied to the day’s total.

When the rate on the method matches what the acquirer actually deducts, its statement shows the same net figure, which is why the cashbook is the one Bank Reconciliation can match. When it does not (a new rate, tax on the fee, fees billed monthly), the gap is the acquirer’s and the method’s rate needs updating; investigate it rather than forcing the match.

A method with charges and no SETTLEMENT_CHARGES GL code posts a journal that is wrong, not one that is missing. The charge line is added only if a sub-ledger resolved for that code. Without one the line is dropped, and the customer’s receivable line, built from what is left, takes up the fee. A RM 106.00 card payment on a method charging 1.5% posts RM 104.41 to the cashbook, nothing to the card-fee account, and debits the customer’s receivable account RM 1.59 (trade debtors, for an ordinary walk-in customer). The bill stays FINAL, the cashbook line is right, the journal balances, and no message appears.

How you notice: the receivable account creeps up by the day’s card fees on days that were all counter sales, the card-fee expense is empty, and the account stops agreeing with the debtor ageing, which is built from the documents and never shows the fee. Fix: map SETTLEMENT_CHARGES in Chart of Account, then repost the affected bills from Financial Report › Error Checking › Trace Document. A repost deletes the bill’s journal before it builds the new one, and a repost that fails says nothing, so run Missing Journal for those bills afterwards. If they sit in a period already reported, agree the repost with whoever closed it first.

If the customer on the bill has no AR/AP type, there is no receivable line to absorb the fee. The journal is refused with TOTAL_DEBITS_AND_TOTAL_CREDITS_NOT_BALANCES, and the bill sits at FINAL with no journal while its cashbook line is written anyway.

Step 6: Chase a bill the till has and the accounts do not

When a bill is on the till report and nowhere in the accounts, the posting did not happen. The route to prove it and fix it is How to tell whether the posting happened. Work one bill first. A single Missing Journal is a repair. Every bill missing its journal is the posting subscription described under What FINAL sets off, and no amount of GL mapping will change it.

Step 7: Check what was corrected after the cash-up

A Settlement Adjustment made this morning restates last night. The rebuilt journal and cashbook lines carry the bill’s own transaction date, not today’s. So the figures you reconciled before the correction will not reproduce after it, and nothing on either report marks the row as corrected.

Open the adjustment listing before you sign the day off. Its Posting Journal and Posting Cashbook columns show whether each repost succeeded. What an adjustment deletes and rebuilds, and the bank-reconciliation trap, are under Supervisor tools.

Who does what

Who	What	When	How they know it is right
The supervisor	Counts the cash against the Cash row (Step 3) and keeps the slip	At close, before the session ends	The count equals the expected cash, or the difference is reported
The accounts clerk	Steps 1, 2 and 4 to 7	The next morning: posting runs in background jobs, so a bill finalised a minute ago may still be on its way	Each cashbook’s movement is its takings row less charges
Whoever approves settlement adjustments	Tells the clerk which days they restated	The same day	The clerk’s signed-off figures still reproduce

Neither POS General’s reports nor Cashbook’s enquiries put the till beside the cashbook. The comparison is the clerk’s, by method, every trading day. The person who makes settlement adjustments should not be the one who signs the day off.

What success looks like

For one branch and one trading day, in about a minute:

Each method’s cash-bill rows in its cashbook equal its takings row less the charges. For GS-KV-01 that is RM 3,547.55, RM 3,928.00 and RM 640.25.
Ledger And Journal › Error Checking › Missing Journal and Data Fix › Cashbook › Missing Cashbook, for INTERNAL_SALES_CASHBILL on the trading date, are both empty.
One bill paid wholly by card, with no contra, opened in Ledger And Journal › Journal Transaction (search its document number), has the card cashbook, sales and tax lines and a fee line, and no line on the customer’s receivable account. For GS-KV-01 that means no DEBTOR-TRADE-RETAIL line; the DEBTOR-CC-RETAIL line is the card cashbook, and it belongs there.

The full two-person daily routine is on POS General › How you know the day’s takings reached the accounts.

Common mistakes

What you see	Cause	Fix
Bills missing from the Z Report	A device-specific run	Run it with Device on All (Step 2)
Variance is hugely negative while the count is right	The printed Variance subtracts card and e-wallet sales	Compare cash with the count only (Step 3)
The card cashbook is short of the till	The method’s charges	Expected; check it equals the computed fee (Step 5)
The customer receivable rises by the card fees	No `SETTLEMENT_CHARGES` GL code	Map it, repost the bills, then check Missing Journal (Step 5)
A method’s cashbook is higher than the till by one cashier’s takings	The Z Report’s takings block drops payment lines keyed by a user with no e-mail login; Cashier Collection keeps them	Compare that method with Cashier Collection (why)
Cashier Collection and the Z Report disagree on a day with a backdated bill	Cashier Collection run on Create Date	Use Transaction Date (Step 1)
Yesterday’s agreed figures no longer agree	A settlement adjustment this morning	Check the adjustment listing (Step 7)