You might call it your takings, cash up, z-read or reconciliation. The takings process allows you to quickly and easily compare actual payments taken with orders put through the POS so that you can track and control your revenue by payment type.
You will minimize cash variances and ensure accountability by conducting regular takings at every end-of-trade or end-of-shift. You should perform your takings at least daily, or by shift, if you have longer trading hours.
For example for a cafe, you will perform takings at the end of the day when you close. For a restaurant, it could be done after lunch service and then after dinner service. Or just at the end of the night and include both services.
What's in this guide?
Configure your takings workflow | 1 minute
How to Finalise Takings | 3 minutes
Before you begin
You will need:
- Finalised Takings permission from Advanced POS Permissions
Check out our Managing User Settings guide to learn how to adjust staff permissions.
Configure your takings workflow
If this has already been set up, head straight to How to Finalise Takings.
Depending on the workflow in your business, your takings may get counted by different staff or at different (or multiple) times of the day.
You just need to configure this once, so Lightspeed knows how you will perform takings.
- Under My Site from the Back Office, select Site Information
- Scroll down to Takings reconciliation. Select one of the three:
- By Register - If you need to count each registers takings separately (e.g. each register has its own dedicated cash drawer)
- By Site - If you finalise your takings across all your registers together, or if there are multiple registers but only one cash drawer, then this is the option for you. This is the most common workflow.
- By Staff - Generally a very niche use case: this is applicable to you if each of your staff members has their own cash register. It means that at the end of the day, each user would need to reconcile the total from the sales that they themselves finalised.
3. Select Save.
How to Finalise Takings
1. From the Lightspeed POS, select the menu icon in the top left of the screen.
2. Select Takings.
- If you still have open orders, you will be prompted with a dialogue box. This is a warning that some tables or orders are still open. Finalise your open orders before continuing.
Note - You can also complete your takings without finalising open orders if needed. However, those sales will not be included in the reconciliation report for that day so it will skew your data.
4. Enter your cash takings totals - you have the option to enter either the total counted amount or denominations.
- The Counted option will prompt an interface with numbers where you can enter the total amount counted.
- The Denominations option will prompt an interface with all denominations of notes and coins so that you can enter the totals for each denomination. This makes handling money easy, even at the end of the busiest nights!
6. Enter the amount for other payment types.
- For card payments through an integrated EFTPOS - the field will not be editable because the payment here doesn’t need to be counted.
- For manually created payment types including card payments through an unintegrated EFTPOS - these are payments that are recorded manually. You would need to enter the amount counted in the provided fields.
-
Pro Tip - Integrating EFTPOS payments make one step of finalising takings a lot easier. You have plenty of payment integrations to choose from that work well with Lightspeed, such as our own Lightspeed Payments solution.
6. Select Finalise Takings to confirm.
You will be taken to Takings History. Here, you can review the takings history slip and print it out if needed. The takings history is made of three columns:
- Counted: How much you have counted for each payment type.
- Recorded: How much Lightspeed recorded through the takings period.
- Diff.: The difference between what you have counted and what was recorded, AKA the variance.
Pro Tip - To give you an idea of how much you expect to count, you can start the process by checking the Takings History first. 'Not finalised yet' will show the amount yet to be finalised, and will give you an idea of what to expect to count for each payment type.
What's my next step?
Integrating EFTPOS payments make one step of finalising takings a lot easier. You have plenty of payment integrations to choose from that work well with Lightspeed, including our own Lightspeed Payments.
Now that you're recording your takings regularly, use this wealth of data to help you secure your revenue and minimise variances. Check out the Reconciliation Dashboard on Insights.
Frequently Asked Questions
How often do I need to finalise my takings?
Lightspeed recommends performing your takings daily. It's important to note that the Lightspeed app cache can only store up to 7 days worth of unreconciled sales, any sales that fall beyond 7 days may be erased from the app cache and permanently deleted.
Do I need to grant special permission for my staff to finalise takings?
Yes. Staff must be granted permission from the People Page under Advanced POS Permissions. You would need to tick Finalise Takings.
Can I edit the takings amount after I have finalised my takings?
Once the takings are finalised, these are locked from editing to ensure the security and accuracy of the counts. If you missed some of your counted money from your takings you can enter a second takings immediately afterwards with the extra amount included.
Where do I find how my sales amount for integrated delivery partners like Uber Eats or Doordash?
Go to Takings History for today's date, the one not finalized yet. You will find sales for each integrated delivery partner there. You can copy those numbers in the Finalise Takings screen.
Can I edit the payment type for an order after it is paid?
Once orders are finalised, it is locked from editing. If you have entered the incorrect payment type during checkout, simply refund the order and enter again with the correct payment type.
Can I opt to not show my staff the expected amount for takings?
Yes, you can do that to make sure that your staff does not just enter what was recorded by Lightspeed but the actual real amount.
This setting is in the People Page under Advanced POS Permissions. You would need to untick View Current Takings.
Can I take tips out of the takings for my staff?
If you have the Tipping add-on enabled and the permission to withdraw tips as cash is enabled you will be prompted if you’d like to withdraw tips at this stage - this will be recorded in the takings as Money Out.