Close day reports

[peter@wolftackle.com]

EZ POS 13.0.0 on Windows XP.

What reports are we supposed to be able to use to balance a days receipts? I have been using the Department reports but they generally are significantly off from the Z-Reports. Thus a cashier thinks they balanced yet our spreadsheet that we use to track revenue by department and to post to our accounting software shows them either long or short. Perhaps $10 or $20 dollars seems like chump change, but generally the standard is within pennies.

[ronaldrwl]

The z-out will reconcile the cash drawer payments.  The Department report shows the sales and includes any sales that are not paid yet.  So, it may not be the same.  It also reports in full days where the z-out can be done multiple times a day.

[peter@wolftackle.com]

Since there are no unclosed sales the department report and the drawertotal should match every day. Occasionally this happens. I am only Z-ing out once per day and no sales happen after the Z.

If revenue and receipts don't match it neccessarily ends up in over and short. It is mpossible to hold cashiers accountable if the O/S totals don't reflect their accuracy or lack of it.

[ronaldrwl]

A department report will only shows the sale of products with assigned departments.  It won't show taxes, payouts, services and items not assigned a department.  Use the z-out to reconcile payments and a sales report for the sales of the day.

[peter@wolftackle.com]

I use a spreadsheet to reconcile. The sales taxes are calculated and generally match unless a taxable item is sold with tax deleted (sold to a tax exempt entity). The spreadsheet then produces the end of month GL posting report.

All products have assigned departments. Services show in the service department. Payouts would be tracked if they were done, but they are paid by check through payables. Returns are not always reflected in the z-out report but appear to be included in the department report.

The end of month posting to remove inventory from the GL Retail inventory accounts have to balance to the z out totals or the difference goes into over and short. Sorry, but the reports have to balance.

Who ever heard of bookkeeping software that did not balance?

Thanks in advance,

Peter

[rjsmeyer]

Peter,

If I may suggest, you might want to nail down with things do and do not show up on the Department report, and which things do or do not show up in the z-out.  As Ronald is saying, there are things that don't show up everywhere you might think they should. 

As an example, I first tried to capture our shipping charges by using the "Handling" charge during the Finish process.  Well, all the money collected showed up on the z-out, but there was no mention of any charge being made for it (so, nothing to balance it with).  So we made a series of Items called "shipping-west coast", "shipping east coast", etc., put them in a Category called Shipping and in a Department called "Miscellaneous".  That way, any shipping charge shows up on the z-out under both Department and Category, and shows up in any other report I decide to run, too.

Another area that I've found I have to do a little manual input is with deposits and layaways.  They don't show up on the z-out as I'd like, but I have a function in Quickbooks where I can add it manually - I just have to have a "trigger" to know that I need to do it (I have the cashier print out an extra receipt that I get with the z-out report).  But I've ALWAYS found that if my z-out doesn't balance, it's something I'm missing and not something the software is doing wrong.

I'm not sure Ronald would endorse this, but I keep a copy of the software on a separate computer to run different scenarios like this.  I've run all sorts of transactions with various settings this way to figure out how everything works, and it's helped immensely.   And it keeps a lot of "voids" out of the live version!