How does your store handle drawers?

[bean]

From what I understand, the way my employer handles tills is pretty unique. Tell me how your store handles them?

Beginning of the shift, each cashier counts their drawer in the cash office. Typical right? The drawers start with $400.

If a cashier takes in over $400 in cash, the register starts prompting for a pick up (pretty typical I think) and locks up if you get over $1000 taken in.

We do loans if we run low on change/small bills.

Here's where it gets odd, from what I've heard.

1-2 hours before the end of your shift, you do a "final" - you request all the change and small bills you need to build your till back up to $400, and you get it while you're still on the floor.

15-20 minutes before the end of your shift, you log out of your register and carry your till back to the cash office.

You then make your own deposit, build your till back to $400. The supervisor then verifies your till, double checks your deposit, then tells you if you're over, short, or zero.

From what I've gathered from other cashiers, the supervisors typically do the deposits, final loans, and building the till at other companies. Right or wrong? This is the only grocery store I've worked at, and everywhere else I've cashiered had management doing the drawers.

I can see why we do it the way we do - we have 20 registers, and use all of them for multiple shifts through the day - we also have somewhere close to 40 drawers, and we can't re-use the same drawer twice in the same day. As many as 5 people may log in to a single register through the day, and for obvious reasons they can't share a drawer. Our registers also have 2 drawers per register, so that one cashier can take a break with another ringing in their place (this way we don't have to close a lane for breaks).

[purplecat41877]

Where I work, the morning office employee will count and verify the tills, then put them out. A few hours before closing, one of the service desk employees will count the tills and also put out a till for the night crew to use.

[bean]

Where I work, the morning office employee will count and verify the tills, then put them out. A few hours before closing, one of the service desk employees will count the tills and also put out a till for the night crew to use.

Not really an option for us - we're just too busy to shut down lanes, and like I said, we have multiple shifts using the same register.

We have 12 main lanes, we could easily use double that during our peak times.

Maybe I should have asked how many shifts stores have too - we have opening, mid, and closing cashiers. And sometimes cashiers will swap out to do express for a few hours. So potentially 5 people using the same register in one day.

[fireheart]

Ours are fairly harmless. Morning, the drawers are counted, service desk people take them and put them out. Bear in mind this is the entire drawer...not just the money.

The rules are with the actual tills:

-No swapping money if we run low on small change. We have opportunities to order change throughout the day but we can't order it willy-nilly.
-If it gets over $2000 we need to do a pickup. Failure to do a pickup 3 times in a row and the drawer locks out. We are also required to do pickups at certain points throughout the day.
-No breaking bills without purchase (i.e. for the phone). Prevents scammers.

At the end of the night, the entire drawer is taken out, marked off and taken up to cash office for counting. The supervisors also do spot checks throughout the day where they'll count the drawers at random times and state if it's over, under or OK. We don't know about this part

[Becks]

Our drawers start at $250. We're supposed to count it, but they don't really give us the time to. Hell, it's all I can do to open my rolls of change and unwrap a $50 pile of singles before I sign in on my drawer.

We do random drops, and occasionally the registers will let you know if/when it's time to make one. (Not sure at what point it decides it's necessary...)

Starting at 8 pm, you're encouraged to do a final drop and ask for change, since the service desk closes at 9.

[kpzra]

When I was a box office manager, I built the tills, had the employee count when they got in, and verify it. End of shift, they'd organize it, count it, and fill out a drop slip. I'd go over it with them there. I'd grab the surplus large bills if needed, but tills were generally only open a few hours on even nights. One person per till.

At the movie theater (both in 2 different states), we'd count the till, log the amount in the computer, and the sup would pick it up at the end of the night, and large bills as needed. Again, one person per till.

At the grocery store, the opening cashier would build the tills, and put them in the drawers. The employee would just sing on and get checking. At the end of the night, we'd gather everything into a drop bag, and drop it into the cash room safe through a secure drawer. Multiple people per till, per day. I once had 12 people use mine in one day. Drops weren't done until the register prompted, around $2000. Tills would lock up at $3500 for mains, $1500 outlaying.

[SG15Z]

Ours well every register has one till. The morning accountant comes in counts the tills does any final deposits and builds them for the day. Most except for 2 or 3 tills (depending on the day) are put out every day. SCO starts out with $430. Regular and express front end lanes have 400 + the 100 +/- in the coin despenser. Deli gets 100. Starbucks 200 and RX gets 300. And Customer service gets over 1500.

Drops are made throughout the day. The general rule is no more than 160 in 20's and drop all big bills and $2 bills unless you need to make change. All non front end registers (deli, RX, and starbucks) just leave the money there till the pickup.

At about 3pm or later the morning FES and a manager pickup all drops and excessive money from all tills. The bill acceptors at SCO are also picked up. And loans are given to SC0 and customer service if needed since they tend to give out more money than they take in, but not always.

Then the evening FES goes to all tills that won't be used the rest of the night and drops all 20s and up. Count up the coin despenser and lock up the tills in the safe. The only tills that stay out are SCO since it's open all night and one express and one regular in case the overnight person needs to either make change or check out a big order.

One final pickup is made once all tills are locked up (usually 930) and all money that is picked up is dropped inton the deposit box in the safe which can't be opened without two keys and the armored car that comes in the morning has the other key so you have to be absolutely sure you want to drop it. Then fuel centers drop are counted and the safe is locked up with it's key lockef inside it meaning no one can open it accept the accountants and the store manager whenever they are there since they're the only key holders for the safe.

Our registers don't lockup usually. It will tell you a pickup is needed but it is usually ignored. Some registers like the cigarette express lane has like 6 or more on that register throughout the day. We're suppose to aduit at the end of a shift but never have the time for it. It's always too busy at my store.

[Becks]

I forgot to mention...if you leave at any time up to 8 pm, you can count your drawer.

However, it's only the cash and coins, and you don't actually get to balance it yourself.

Someone else, at some point, counts the checks, credit cards, debit transactions, WIC, house charges, etc.

As far as I know, my drawer has never been short.

[mattm04]

Sat. AM the Cash Office counts the drawers. The rest of the week they stay in the register and are counted each morning and before close by the CDH. At specific time the CDH takes a certain amount out to being the $5's and larger to a certain value and removes anything over a $20. If the amount take in gets over a certain value the register locks up and a CDH must get it below said value, nice to have no warning.

Our old system was where the Cash Office would count anb balance the drawer each morning.

We have multiple use each drawer without it being counted. If issues arise LP will separate out each user until they figured out what happened.

Makes no sense to me since in a average day we could easily start with lane 1-2 for open. during the mid day do 3-6 and at night do 7-12 while at least some of the other acre counted in the event we need extra lanes.

[Primer]

It's been many years since I've been in a cash handling position, but I prefer where I am expected to verify my opening bank, regardless of amount, and balance myself at the end of the shift. At jobs where I was the only person to touch "my" money, I rarely came out over or short, probably because I'd not (want to) quit till I found the discrepancy. Where managers or other people were involved, I'd frequently be off.

There was one time I can recall where I came out $100 short that I never found, but I had processed over
$25,000 cash that shift by myself. I offered to pay it, but the cash office said not to worry about it. They knew I normally balanced to the penny.

Again, the only times I ever had any difficulties were when I was not the only person to touch the money.

[Summerfly413]

Some mornings(only weekends for me), the supervisors working at the service desk will have already put money in the registers, and tell us which register to get it from.
Other times(and every other time), we have to get a till from a storage area under the 1st register and bring it to the service desk. We get $100 to start with. $30 in 5's, $52 in 1's, 2 rolls of pennies, and one roll each of nickles, dimes, and quarters.
I count my cash(the 5's are hand counted in, but $50 of the 1's are already wrapped up, and I've had up to $10 missing from it before), and I move to whatever register they assign me.
Durring the holiday season they encouraged us to do drops if we had a lot of money, but it wasn't really enforced all that much.
Pretty much at any time during our shift we can turn back in our $100 if we've made that much. And we can get change whenever as well.
At the end of our shift we sign out of the register and move down to a register that isn't being used to organize everything. Make sure all the money is facing the same way, stack it, organize coupons, checks, whatever else found it's way into the drawer(and seperate out a $100 if we haven't turned it in yet)
On our money bags I just write my name, the date, and my employee number. Put the coins in a little bag. Someone else counts all the money in the back or whatever. I really don't know...
I guess it sounds kind of disorganized doesn't it?

[PepperElf]

How does your store handle drawers?

my mind soooo went into the gutter on that one.

[Shpepper]

i'm so glad I'm not the only one who thought that.

[Nashida]

At the pool store, the drawers would start with $200 in the two at the front of the store, the one nearest the office had $150 and the one by the pool tables had $100, but that's because those were usually credit only or online orders.

If we ran short on small bills and change, we'd exchange. I'd trade X number of bills for small bills, singles, or coins. We never did pick-ups, oddly enough, unless Bossman!K walked by and saw $100 practically overflowing from the till.

At the end of the shift, I'd do a final count and he'd double-count to see if we were over or under. Nine times out of ten I was over, but never by much (most was maybe $10 over). Then he'd write that down so whoever came on next, if something was under at the end of the night, they knew it wouldn't have been me.

We had to be pretty anal about our drawers too. If a sales associate needed to look up something in the computer, they had to use the register I wasn't on. Same if I went on break or had to use the restroom; no one other than me was allowed on my till while I was on.

[Kagato]

At the depot I work at, each driver has a "cash float" assigned to them which is logged against their name (mine is currently $60), we are trusted to keep our float at that level, and it is up to us to fill any discrepancies since we are the ONLY one that handle our cashbox, it is also our responsibility to make sure we have sufficient change at the start of our shift (which can be a bit hard to predict, I've had days where I've made sure I had extra change, but still ended up with it all wiped out cause people were carrying large notes that day >_< ), if anyone else is caught going through your cashbox without your EXPLICIT permission, they are placed on immediate stand-down and face disciplinary action, we are also subject to random float checks by inspectors and upper management, if we are found to be short, we have 48 hours to bring it back up to the required amount, at which time the float is rechecked, if it is still short, the driver faces disciplinary action.

At the lasertag arena I help out at, there is a single register, which we start off with a $300 float, which is counted out by the duty manager or the big boss at the end of the previous day to prevent unnecessary messing around, duty manager or boss handles all cash transactions, staff are permitted to process EFTPOS transactions on the card machine, but are generally not to touch the register (Used to be that any staff could process customer transactions, but the boss changed policy after an ex-staff member got nabbed for skimming from the register). Usually totals are printed off and cash takings are separated out at the end of each day, except on the weekends which we generally do the full weekend with one register cause by the time we hit closing time we're wiped out.