Drawer sessions
- One open drawer per branch at a time, enforced by the database rather than by convention
- One session per branch per business day
- Opened with a counted float and closed with a counted total, both by a manager or owner
- The difference between counted and expected is recorded on the session
The business day and the cut-off
The business day is derived from your close-out cut-off in the Africa/Cairo timezone, not from midnight UTC. A shop with a 2am cut-off has a business day running from opening until 2am, so an 00:40 sale belongs to the evening that produced it.
This is why daily figures reconcile for shops trading past midnight. Software that assumes a midnight boundary splits one evening across two dates, and every daily comparison built on top of that is wrong.
Alerts around the till
| Alert | Trigger | Goes to |
|---|---|---|
| Cash discrepancy | Counted total differs from expected, short or over | Owner and branch managers, excluding whoever closed |
| Drawer not opened | Branch past its operating start with no open session | Owner and branch managers |
| Drawer not closed | Branch past its close-out cut-off with the till still open | Owner and branch managers |
A surplus alerts as loudly as a shortfall. An unexplained surplus usually means a sale was never rung up, which means stock left the shop unrecorded.
Frequently asked questions
- Can the business day end after midnight?
- Yes. The close-out cut-off is a per-shop setting and the business day is derived from it in the Africa/Cairo timezone. A shop with a 2am cut-off gets one business day covering the whole evening, so sales rung up after midnight count against the day that produced them.
- What happens if a drawer is left open overnight?
- It is detected as a stale open drawer from a prior business day and surfaced as a prompt to close yesterday's till before opening today's. A 'drawer not closed' alert also goes to the owner and branch managers once the branch passes its cut-off with the till still open.
- Does an over-count raise an alert as well as a short-count?
- Yes. Cash discrepancy alerts fire in both directions. A till that is over usually means a sale was not recorded, which corrupts stock and margin figures as well as cash.
More in daily operations
- The daily loop
Open the till in the morning, work jobs and sales through the day, close the till at night. Everything else hangs off those three.