Without proper cash flow practices, you’re opening yourself up to potential:

  • Loss
  • Theft
  • Misplacement of funds
  • Unauthorized discounts
  • Inaccurate accounting records

Green Bits has built-in tools to help you manage the cash at your register. Below we list some common practices by Green Bits customers, and recommendations to help your store succeed.

In this article you will learn how to:

  • Set up your  Cash Management option to reflect your store
  • Record every time Cash exchanges hands
  • Processing Exchanged Product at the Register
  • Record your Opening and Closing Drop amounts

 

Set up your Cash Management option to reflect your store

How you set up your cash management option should accurately reflect how you manage cash in your store.  You chose your cash management flow during your initial setup, but it’s important to make sure that this is accurately reflecting accountability of cash at your store.

Green Bits offers the following three cash management settings under your Store Options:

1. One Till Per Cashier

  • Cash: Associated with one budtender based upon their pin
  • Shift Reports: Only show one budtender, no matter which registers they use
  • Ending Drawer & Cashing out: Responsibility of individual budtender

Does this sound like your store?

  • Our cashiers each have a cash drawer that is specific to them.
  • Our cashiers either
    • only stay at one register for their entire shift with no one else sharing that register, or
    • carry their cash drawers with them to each register

One till per cashier has each shift report and cash drawer associated with a specific cashier, regardless of which register(s) they use.

It doesn’t matter which registers the budtenders use, the cash follows them.  Cash is associated with each use pin and will follow them from register to register until they cash out.

Each cashier is responsible for reconciling and ending their own drawer.

2. Shared Tills + Cashier Tracking 

  • Cash: Associated with a specific register
  • Shift Reports: Show transactions & cash across all users who sign into the register during the shift
  • Ending Drawer & Cashing out: Store manager or shift supervisor typically reconciles & ends drawer

Does this sound like your store?

  • Our cashiers all share a cash drawer at each register
  • Our cashiers move between registers over the course of the day
  • We track our cashier sales based upon entering their unique pin at the register

With Shared Tills + Cashier Tracking, each shift report and cash drawer is associated with a specific register, and the cashier for each transaction is recorded.

This is the most common option for stores that have cash drawers associated with a single register.   This allows multiple budtenders to use one register and share the cash drawer, and log all transactions in that register to the cashier’s unique user pin.

At the end of a shift, a store manager or shift supervisor is responsible for reconciling cash and ending drawers.

TIPS & TRICKS – If your Budtenders frequently use multiple tills and you’d like to track their unique user pin for each transaction, consider turning on “Sign Out After Every Sale” under Store Options in the back office. This will automatically sign out budtenders after every sale, and ensure that the right user is logged in to make the sale.

3. Shared Tills – No Cashier Tracking

This option is the same as Shared Tills + Cashier Tracking, but the cashier who started the drawer, ended the drawer, and rang up each sale is not recorded.

 

Use Paid In/ Paid Out feature to record every time cash changes hands

In a cash-heavy industry, it can be difficult to track how and when cash exchanges hands.  Green Bits offers a great tool to provide insights into how cash moves around your store.

Track cash movement with Paid In/ Paid Out 

Cash can move frequently on and off the sales floor. Knowing who and when your cash moves can help account for any potential mishandling, miscalculations, and reduce theft.

Common examples of ways cash moves that you may not be tracking:

  • To avoid holding too much cash on the sales floor.
  • If the store is robbed.
  • When a customer complains about too little change.
  • For discovering frequent overages/shortages for particular cashiers.
  • To remove temptation of taking cash without documentation from the cash drawer.

By using our Paid In/Paid Out feature at the register, you can see:

  • Who added or removed cash from the register
  • Amount of cash removed or added from the register
  • When the cash was removed or added from the register

To investigate potential or known cash handling discrepancies, run our Paid In/Paid Out Report.  This is a report containing all the pay-ins and payouts for the selected time period.

TIPS & TRICKS – A pay in & pay out receipt will automatically print every time cash is deposited or removed from that till.  A common practice is to store these receipts in the till for your end of day Close Out Procedures.

 

Processing Exchanged Product at the Register

A common mistake when processing exchanges is to return or void the product, but fail to ring up another transaction.  This results in missing or unaccounted for product, failing to report that sale for the day, and cash management errors on your register.

Returns are the best way to process exchanged goods.  Returns are different than Voided transactions. Returns indicate to the system that the product was returned to your store, and that you have provided those funds back to the customer.

The dollar amount for the returned good will automatically be deducted from your Till.  Without ringing up another transaction, the cash on your Till will show that you are under.

To properly process an Exchange: 

  1. Process a return for the product the customer would like to exchange.
  2. If you’d like, you can hand the cash funds back to the customer.
  3. Find the replacement object. Even if this is the same product, be sure to scan the new barcode for the replacement.  This will help to ensure you are ringing out the correct package/lot ID.
  4. Process the transaction as normal.

 

Accurately record your Opening & Closing drop amounts

On every Shift Report, Green Bits helps by calculating your Over/Short amounts.  This number helps to reconcile your cash at the end of the night, and provides a starting point to investigate for any discrepancies.

Forgetting to record drop amounts at the end of the night is the number one mistake made by customers. Without recording this amount, that till will look as if all cash was missing, and throw your accounting records off.

A few best practices to remember:

  • At the beginning of each shift, you will be prompted to Enter the starting cash amount. If you do not see this screen when starting your shift, especially at the beginning of business day, this till was not closed out.  Be sure to End Drawer.
  • If your cash is stored and counted off of the sales floor, be sure to still End Drawer for proper record keeping and utilize our Enter Later feature. Enter Later allows your team to enter the amounts in the Shifts page of Back Office later. This is done by selecting the shift from the list, then enter the amounts and Save.
  • Forget to record a drop amount? No worries. Simply go to the  Shifts page of Back Office, and click “Edit”.  Here is where you can edit your Opening Amount, Left in Drawer amount, and add in your Drop Amount.
  • The Register App will auto-print a receipt when starting and ending a drawer. Store these in your till and use them during your Close Out Procedures.

Thanks to the most common of NestEggg’s cannabis Clients that use Greenbits for the content share!