Drawer shifts, floats and safe drops
A shift is the unit of cash accountability: one person, one device, an opening count, whatever moved during service, and a closing count. Everything on the day report’s cash reconciliation is built from these.
- Plans
- Brasserie, Signature, Enterprise
- Can it be switched off?
- No. It is part of every plan that includes it and cannot be switched off.
- Needs first
- POS and in-house orders. This stays off until all of them are in your plan and switched on.
Opening and closing a shift happens on the POS app, at the till. The dashboard shows the history — see On the POS app.
Opening a shift
Section titled “Opening a shift”Count the float, then open the shift with that number. You give:
- Which device — required, and in a drawer shift it must be a provisioned counter till
- Opening counted cash — required, the float you just counted
- Shift type — drawer or personal float, where your banking mode allows both
- Location, a register label and a note — optional
The confirmation is Register session opened. From that point every cash payment you take belongs to this shift.
Who may open what:
| Role | Drawer | Personal float |
|---|---|---|
| Manager | Yes | Yes |
| Cashier | Yes | Yes |
| Waiter | No | Yes |
| Accountant | No — view only | No |
| Owner | No | No |
The owner’s exclusion is deliberate; Who can do what with cash explains why.
Cash movements during service
Section titled “Cash movements during service”Anything that moves cash other than a sale is a recorded movement. There are three kinds — Removal, Add and Adjustment — and each carries a reason:
| Reason | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Safe drop | Moving cash out of the drawer into the safe mid-service |
| Tip out | Paying tips out of the drawer |
| Bank | Cash going to the bank |
| Vendor | Paying a delivery or a supplier in cash |
| Paid in | Cash going in that is not a sale — a float top-up |
| Cash refund | Refunding a customer in cash |
| Other | Anything else, with a note |
The amount must be at least 0.01, and you can record the drawer total before and after, which is what makes a mid-service discrepancy traceable to the moment it happened rather than to the whole shift.
Safe drops are the one to insist on. A busy Friday drawer holding a thousand in notes is a risk in itself, and an unrecorded removal looks exactly like a shortfall at close. Drop to the safe, record it, carry on.
Recording movements needs tenant.register.movements.manage — managers and cashiers have it,
waiters do not.
Blind counts
Section titled “Blind counts”While a shift is open, the expected cash figure is hidden from the operator. Only someone holding the supervisory close-any permission sees it, and once the shift is closed the figure is shown to everyone who can read the report.
The reason is simple: if you know the drawer is supposed to hold A$412.50, you will stop counting when you reach it. A blind count is the only count worth having.
Closing a shift
Section titled “Closing a shift”Count the drawer, enter closing counted cash, add a note, close. The confirmation is Register session closed.
- Closing your own shift needs
tenant.register.close.own. Managers, cashiers and waiters all have it. - Closing somebody else’s needs
tenant.register.close.any, which only a manager has. A cashier who tries gets Only a manager can close a shift opened by someone else. - Someone with neither gets You are not allowed to close a register shift.
The second case is the one that comes up in practice: a waiter goes home without cashing up, and a manager force-closes the shift with a reason. The forced close is recorded with that reason, which is the point — it does not quietly become a normal close.
The register-session history
Section titled “The register-session history”On the day report, Register sessions (cash drawers) lists the shifts for that business day: “Per-device till opens, closes, and cash removals with staff identity for this business day.”
Per shift it shows Opened by, Closed by, Opening float, Expected in drawer, Closing counted and Variance, with day totals for cash sales, card sales, tips and cash paid out or in. When a day’s cash is wrong, this panel is where you find out which shift it was wrong in.
No register sessions recorded for this date. on a day you traded means nobody opened a shift — which, at Warn enforcement, is possible and is exactly the gap the setting exists to show you.