Short answer. One session per till and per cashier, opened with a float counted by denomination and signed, closed by a count; a payment cannot exist outside a session, by database constraint. Everything that goes in or out of the drawer is a movement of the session: sale, refund, change paid in, purchase paid out with a coded reason and receipt photo, safe drop signed on both sides; opening the drawer without a sale is a logged event. At closing, the expected amount is computed from the movements and hidden; the cashier counts blind, by denomination; the gap appears afterwards, is compared with a written tolerance, gets a coded reason and the manager's signed approval beyond it. The safe is a special till, the bank deposit has its slip and reconciles with the statement, and a monthly board shows gaps per cashier and openings without sale, without accusing.
This guide is for the business that takes cash all day, minimarket, pharmacy, restaurant, phone shop, service station, and its multiple tills, for the founder based in France who wants to know every night how much is in each drawer and why, and for the manager who wants to stop recounting everything. It does not repeat how card, QR or online payments are taken and reconciled with the terminal or the provider, described in the till guide; here it is about cash, the session and the drawer. Tax rules on cash, payment ceilings and cash-register obligations are for the accountant and counsel; this guide builds the application that counts, logs and signs.
One cash session: from opening float to gap
The figure follows one day's session. The expected amount is not copied from a notebook: it is the sum of movements, and the cashier does not see it before counting.
The float: 20,000 dinars counted by denomination at 08:02 and signed by the cashier; if it differs from what the previous session left, the gap is already there, dated, before the first sale. Cash sales: 148 receipts, each linked to the session by code, not by goodwill; a sale cannot be recorded on a till without an open session. Refunds: two returns with the original receipt required, as in the after-sales guide, leaving the drawer with their trace. Change paid in from the safe, approved by the manager at 10:40; purchases paid out, 3,500 dinars with a coded reason and a receipt photo as in the trustworthy photos guide; the safe drop of 200,000 at 14:30, signed by the cashier and by the person receiving, because a full drawer is a risk. The expected: 132,750, computed, hidden.
The blind count: at 20:14 the cashier enters what she counts by denomination, 41 notes of 2,000, 32 of 1,000, and so on, in four measured minutes; she sees the expected only after validating. The gap: 1,000 dinars short, beyond the 500 tolerance written by the manager; she picks a coded reason, change-giving, and the manager approves from his phone, signed, timestamped. The next day 131,750 go to the bank with a slip linked to the session. Non-cash payments of the same session, card, online, customer credit, are in the session total but not in the drawer: they reconcile on their own statement, as the till guide describes. Amounts, times and names are a constructed example.
«The expected amount is computed from the session's movements and hidden; the cashier counts blind, by denomination; the gap appears afterwards, and it is signed by two people.»
Closing a till, in six beats
The blind count is the accented beat: without it, the count always balances, because the cashier adjusts.
Count the float: at opening, by denomination, signed; the session does not open without it. Take payments: every payment is linked to the session; the drawer opens on an event, sale, refund, manual opening, and every event is logged with its time and author; that is an old habit of cash registers, where a no-sale key opening is recorded in the register log so that management can review the counters, according to the common description of those machines. Move cash: paid-ins, paid-outs and safe drops have a coded reason, a photo when there is a receipt, and the manager's approval beyond a written threshold; a paid-out without a reason does not exist.
Count blind: the expected is hidden, the cashier enters by denomination, the time is measured, and the result is signed before the gap appears. Decide the gap: written tolerance, coded reason, manager approval beyond it, both signatures; a gap is never fixed by editing a sale. Deposit and reconcile: the deposit slip is linked to the sessions it covers, the bank statement is reconciled line by line, and the export to accounting follows the integration guide; what is exported is the closed session, never an open one.
A month of gaps: four cashiers, 72 sessions, one pattern
The figure is the manager's monthly board: one dot per session, a tolerance band, and a counter of openings without sale per cashier.
What the board shows: three cashiers have dots on both sides of zero, almost all within the band of plus or minus 500 dinars, with four to six drawer openings without a sale in the month; that is the normal noise of a till, change-giving, a dropped coin. The fourth has seven sessions out of tolerance, all negative, and 31 openings without sale. What the board does not say: why. It may be a badly set till, a sticking drawer, someone who gives change badly, or something else; the board shows a pattern nobody saw in a notebook, and the manager decides, with the logged events at hand.
Where the figures come from: each dot is a gap signed at closing; each opening without sale is a log event, with the time and the logged-in account as in the roles guide; medians and counters are computed every night by a background job as in the background jobs guide and land in the manager's dashboard with their written definition beside them. The founder in France receives every night, for every till, the expected, the counted, the gap and the name, as in the remote management guide; no more calling. Cashiers, sessions and figures are a constructed example.
«One gap is a mistake; a run of same-sign gaps for the same person is a pattern, and the board shows it without accusing.»
The till, in five layers
The count is the accented layer, but the session above is the constraint that gives everything else its meaning.
Session. One session per till and per cashier: opened with a counted float, closed by a count, and a payment cannot exist outside a session, by database constraint; two cashiers on one till make two sessions with a counted hand-over signed by both. A session left open is an alert the next morning, not a hole the next month. Movements. Sales and refunds come from the till; paid-ins, paid-outs and safe drops are entered with a coded reason, a photo when there is a receipt, and the manager's approval beyond the written threshold; opening the drawer without a sale is logged every time. The same ledger feeds the stock of the stock guide for sales, and the safe for drops. Count. The expected is computed from movements and hidden until validation; the count is entered by denomination, and the time is measured; the gap is compared with the tolerance, gets a coded reason and, beyond it, the manager's signed approval; a gap is never fixed by touching a sale.
Safe and bank. The safe is a special till without sales: it receives drops, supplies change, and is counted too; every dinar is in one place at a time, drawer, safe, in transit, bank. The deposit has a slip linked to the sessions it covers, and the bank statement is reconciled line by line; a deposit gap is dated and attributed, not searched for a week later. Measurement. Gap per session and per cashier, openings without sale, paid-outs by reason, time from closing to deposit, unclosed sessions; a monthly board read without accusing, and WhatsApp alerts as in the notifications guide for the forgotten session and the gap beyond threshold. Offline. The till keeps working without network: sales and movements are timestamped locally and synced when back as in the offline guide; the closing count also works offline, and the manager's approval waits for the network, which is written on the session.
Six real situations, and what the application does
Each row is a sentence heard in a business that takes cash, and the answer is a constraint, not suspicion.
1,000 dinars are missing tonight: the cashier does not recount until it balances, because they do not see the expected; they enter, the gap appears, a reason is chosen, the manager approves. The cashier took cash for bread: the paid-out has a coded reason, a receipt photo, and beyond the threshold an approval; without an entered paid-out, the evening gap brings it back. The drawer opens without a sale: every opening is a log event, and the counter per cashier is on the monthly board; the manager reads 31 against 5 and decides.
Two cashiers on the same till: one session per cashier, with a counted hand-over signed by both; the gap is attributable. Power cut at 3 pm: the till keeps going on the phone or tablet, sales and movements timestamped without network, synced when back, not retyped at night. The deposit does not match the statement: the deposit is linked to sessions, reconciliation is line by line, and the gap is dated and attributed the day the statement arrives, not a week later in slips.
Putting tills into sessions in 2027, in weeks
Seven weeks, the first without code, and two for sessions and movements, because the count and the reconciliation are only readings of those two layers.
- What the manager sees: every night, per till, the expected, the counted, the gap and the name; every month, the board of gaps and openings without sale; sessions left open.
- What the cashier no longer does: recount until it balances, take cash out without a trace, share a till without a hand-over, retype sales after a power cut.
- What is measured: gap per session and per cashier, openings without sale, paid-outs by reason, time from closing to deposit, deposit gaps, unclosed sessions.
Week 1, rules: the float per till, the tolerance, the approval threshold for paid-outs, the coded reasons for paid-ins and paid-outs, who closes, who approves, who opens the safe; with the manager, and without code. Weeks 2 and 3, sessions and movements: session per cashier, payments linked by constraint, paid-ins and paid-outs with reason and photo, logged drawer opening, safe drop signed on both sides, receipts as in the printing guide. Week 4, count and gap: expected computed and hidden, count by denomination with measured time, tolerance, signed decision, hand-over between cashiers.
Week 5, safe and bank: the safe as a till, deposits with slip, reconciliation with the statement, accounting export of closed sessions. Week 6, offline and multi-till: sales and movements timestamped without network, sync, several tills and points of sale, a per-shop view for the remote founder. Week 7, measurement: gaps per cashier and session, openings without sale, paid-outs by reason, deposit delay, alerts, Monday review.
- Why hide the expected amount from the cashier?
- Because a cashier who sees the expected counts until they find it, and the count always balances; the gap disappears at night and reappears at the deposit or the stock count. The blind count, by denomination, is entered before the expected is shown; it is a screen rule, not a trust rule, and it protects the honest cashier too.
- What happens when the gap exceeds the tolerance?
- The cashier picks a coded reason, the manager receives an approval request on their phone with the expected, the counted, the session's movements and the openings without sale, and approves or refuses, signed and timestamped. The gap is never fixed by editing a sale or a movement; it is recorded as is and attributed to the session.
- And card, QR or online payments?
- They are in the session, because they are part of the cashier's sales, but not in the drawer: the cash expected does not count them. They reconcile on their own statement, terminal, online payment provider, as in the till guide and the online payment guide. The session total adds both; the count concerns cash only.
- How are several tills and several points of sale handled?
- Each till has its sessions, each point of sale has its safe, and the founder sees a board per point of sale with, per till, the open or closed session, the expected, the counted and the gap. A cashier moving from one till to another opens a session on each; the rules, float, tolerance, thresholds, may differ per point of sale.
- Does it work without network?
- Yes: sales and movements are timestamped locally and synced when the network returns, with the same guarantees as the offline guide. The closing count works offline; the manager's approval for a gap beyond tolerance waits for the network, and the session carries the note that approval is pending.
- Does this replace accounting reconciliation?
- No, it feeds it: closed sessions, with their movements, gaps and deposits, are exported to accounting as in the integration guide; the accountant reconciles on signed data rather than a notebook. Tax rules on cash and cash-register obligations are for them and for counsel; this guide does not describe them.
- How long to set this up?
- Seven weeks in the typical calendar, the first without code and two for sessions and movements. A business that already has the till of the till guide takes less, because sales are already linked; a chain with several points of sale and several safes takes more, the time to write each one's rules.