Why your cash drawer is short, and how to close the day so it isn't

Almost every shop owner we’ve met has the same story. At the end of the day, the drawer has a few hundred rupees less than it should. Sometimes it’s more. Nobody knows why, and after a while everyone stops asking.

Usually nobody has stolen anything. The money went somewhere ordinary and nobody wrote it down. Here’s a routine that finds it.

Open the day by counting

Before the first customer, count the cash in the drawer and write the number down. This is the opening balance. If yesterday ended with Rs 3,000 and this morning there’s Rs 2,500, you’ve found your first problem before the day has even started.

Write down money that isn’t a sale

Most of the gap comes from money that leaves the drawer without being a sale:

• Tea, lunch, a delivery boy, a bulb for the shop.
• An advance to a staff member.
• The owner taking cash home, or paying a bill with it.
• Change given from the drawer for a customer who paid by JazzCash.

Each of these is small and completely normal. Write each one down the moment it happens, with what it was for. A notebook next to the drawer works; so does an app.

Keep each wallet separate

If you take cash, JazzCash, Easypaisa and bank transfers, each of them is its own wallet with its own balance. A sale paid by Easypaisa should never be counted as cash. When a customer pays half in cash and half by Raast, write down both halves.

Close the day by counting again

At closing time, work out what should be in the drawer:

opening cash + cash sales + any cash put in − expenses − advances − cash taken out = what should be there

Then count what’s actually there. The difference, over or short, is the number that matters. Write it down every day, even when it’s zero.

Look at the difference while it’s fresh

A Rs 200 gap found at 10 pm is easy to explain: someone remembers the samosas. The same gap found at the end of the month is a mystery. If the difference is more than you can explain, ask that evening.

After a couple of weeks, you’ll see a pattern: the same day, the same shift, the same kind of expense. That’s where to look.

Let the software do the sums

BlackWell Salon asks you to count the drawer when you open and close the day, keeps cash, JazzCash, Easypaisa and bank apart, records expenses and advances as they happen, and shows the difference to the rupee. The counting is still yours; the arithmetic isn’t.