A guide to the shift close by revenue center

Every revenue center in your property that collects money has a drawer, and every drawer has to balance on its own. The restaurant does not balance with the bar, and the bar does not balance with the front desk. Mix them and a difference in one hides a difference in the other, and at month end nobody knows where the money went. This guide describes the close of a single revenue center, from opening float to signature. Repeat it for every drawer you have.

Before you start: what a revenue center is

A revenue center is any place where you sell and collect: the restaurant, the bar, the coffee shop, the pool bar, room service. Each one has its own cashier shift, with its own float, movements and close. If two revenue centers physically share a drawer, for the purposes of the close they are still two shifts, and the system must be able to tell you how much belongs to each. The property total is never keyed in: it is calculated by adding up the close of every revenue center.

Step 1: the float

The shift opens with a fixed float: the cash you leave in the drawer to make change. Count it in front of the cashier who opens, write it down and have them sign. The float is not a sale and not revenue; it is the property’s money lent to the drawer, returned at the end. A float that changes amount every day is the first source of unexplained differences. Fix it per revenue center and never move it without a record.

Step 2: the movements of the shift

Everything that goes in or out of the drawer during the shift is a movement with an author, a time and a reason. The typical movements of a revenue center are five:

• Cash payments: checks paid with bills. They go into the drawer.
• Card or transfer payments: they go to the bank, not the drawer. They are recorded as sales but do not count toward expected cash.
• Room charges: they never touch the drawer. They post to the guest folio and the front desk collects them at check-out. They are sales for the revenue center, but not cash for the shift.
• Paid-outs and withdrawals: money leaving the drawer to pay an urgent supplier, move cash to the safe or refund a payment. Each with a reason and a signature.
• Cash tips: they enter the drawer and leave for the server. Recorded separately so they never get added to sales.

The rule that prevents half the problems: no movement without a record at the moment it happens. A paid-out written down “later” is a paid-out that gets forgotten.

Step 3: expected cash

At close, the system, or your sheet, calculates how much cash should be in the drawer. The math is simple:

Notice what is not in the table: cards, transfers and room charges. They are sales, and they appear in the shift sales report, but they are not expected cash. Confusing sales with cash is the most common mistake in a manual close.

Step 4: the count

The cashier counts the physical money without seeing the expected cash. This detail matters: if they see the number first, they count until they reach it. Count by denomination, write the total and sign it. If the system lets you capture the count by denomination, better: it leaves a trail of how the total was reached.

Step 5: the difference

The difference is counted cash minus expected cash. Positive is an overage, negative is a shortage. Both are a problem. A recurring overage is usually a payment that was never recorded: the check was paid and closed without being captured, or the customer was overcharged. A recurring shortage is usually an unrecorded paid-out or wrong change. What must never happen is closing the shift with the difference unexplained and unnamed.

Step 6: who signs

A close is signed by two people: the one who counted and the one who reviewed. In a small restaurant that is the cashier and the manager. In a large one it is the cashier, the revenue center manager and the night auditor. What matters is not the title but the separation: whoever counts should not be whoever approves. If the system allows it, closing a shift with a difference should require a different permission than collecting a payment.

What to do about a shortage

1. Do not adjust it “so it balances”. An adjustment without a cause is an accounting lie that costs you later.
2. Go through the shift movements one by one. Most shortages are a paid-out that really happened and was never recorded.
3. Review the checks closed with cash in the last hour. It is the moment with the most rush and the most change errors.
4. Review voided or discounted checks. A discount applied after payment is a classic way to take money out.
5. If it does not turn up, record it as a difference, with the name of the cashier and the reviewer and a comment. Let it stay in the history of that person and that revenue center.
6. If it repeats at the same revenue center or with the same person, change something: the float, the paid-out process or access to the drawer.

The mental template

If you have to explain the close to a new cashier in one minute, it is this: the drawer started with a float, cash came in from payments, cash went out for paid-outs and tips, and at the end there should be float plus inflows minus outflows. Everything else, cards, room charges, transfers, is sales that gets reported but was never in the drawer. Count, compare, explain the difference, sign.

What it looks like when several revenue centers close at once

In a property with a restaurant, a bar and a pool, there are three closes per shift, not one. Each with its own float, cashier, expected cash and difference. The property close is the sum of the three, and any difference must be traceable to the revenue center where it was born. If your system only gives you one global close, you cannot know whether the shortage was at the bar or the restaurant, and the honest cashier ends up paying for the one who was not.

Inn Restaurant runs one cashier shift per revenue center, with several drawers open at the same time and a calculated consolidated total, and every room charge posts to the folio without touching the drawer. You can see the detail on the cash page (/caja) and understand why a room charge does not show up in your close on the room charge page (/cargo-a-la-habitacion). And at the end of the shift, the question that counts: of every dollar that came in today, how many have a name, a timestamp and an owner?