Best practices for cash management
This article applies to Greenbits.
Most cannabis businesses have limited or no access to banking services, so it's crucial to have solid cash management practices in place. Otherwise, your business is vulnerable to:
- Loss
- Theft
- Misplacement of funds
- Unauthorized discounts
- Inaccurate accounting records
In this article you'll learn about best practices and recommendations to help you and your staff manage cash securely and efficiently:
- Choose the right cash management setting
- Enable automatic sign-out
- Use Paid In/Paid Out to record every time cash changes hands
- Process exchanges in the Register app
- Verify starting cash, cash drop, and left in drawer amounts
Choose the right cash management setting
Greenbits offers three different cash management settings. Make sure the option you've chosen is the best fit for your store.
Enable automatic sign-out
Secure your registers by enabling Sign Out After Every Sale, Sign Out After Inactivity, or both. This can prevent potential issues stemming from users forgetting to sign out and leaving the register unattended or inadvertently using the register while signed in as a different user.
Use Paid In/Paid Out to record every time cash changes hands
Cashiers often need to record changes to the amount of cash in a till for reasons other than sales, including:
- Mid-shift safe drops to avoid holding excess cash in a till.
- Adding cash or coins, such as ones or quarters, to a till so a cashier can make change.
- Using extra cash from the till for minor business expenses, also known as "petty cash".
Paid In and Paid Out allow you to track who added or removed cash, how much, from which till, when, and why. This can help account for any potential mishandling and discourage theft.
Greenbits prints a receipt for every Paid In and Paid out. Cashiers should include these their end-of-shift cash drops.
You can also use the Paid In/Paid Out Report under Reports > Other Reports in Back Office to see all Paid Ins and Paid Outs over a period of time.
Process exchanges in the Register app
A common mistake when processing exchanges is to return or void the original sale, but forget to ring up the replacement item(s). This results in missing or unaccounted merchandise, failing to report that sale for the day, and cash discrepancies.
To properly process an exchange:
- Process a return for the item the customer would like to exchange.
- Ring up the replacement item. Even if this is the same Product be sure to scan the barcode for the replacement, since it may be a different Barcode (SKU).
- If the replacement item is a different price than the returned item, refund or charge the customer for the difference.
Verify starting cash, cash drop, and left in drawer amounts
Greenbits relies on accurate entry of starting cash, cash drop, and left in drawer amounts to determine whether your drawers are balanced at the end of a shift.
- At the beginning of each shift, Greenbits prompts you to enter your starting cash amount. If you don't see this prompt when you sign in, this means you or another employee forgot to end the drawer for the last shift. Before making any sales, end the drawer in the Register, or close the shift in Back Office if you have administer shifts permissions.
- Count your cash, write down the total, then count again to make sure you get the same total the second time. For more accountability, have a second staff member verify the amount before entering it in Greenbits.
- If you reconcile your tills off of the sales floor, end the drawer at the Register and use the Enter Later option.
- Forget to record a drop amount? You can edit a shift in Back Office if you have administer shifts permissions.
- The Register app prints a receipt every time you start or end a drawer. Store these in your till and include them with your cash drop.
- End your drawer(s) before midnight. Otherwise the drawer will be included in the following day's reports.