Shifts

A shift is one cash-drawer session on one terminal: opened with a starting float, tracked through sales, and closed with a per-tender count that computes over or short. This page covers the shift lifecycle from open to close. Mid-shift drawer events (pay-in, pay-out, safe drop, No Sale) are covered on Cash movements, and posting the day's sales is covered on End of day.

Opening a shift

A POS Shift record represents one drawer session on one terminal. It is opened with an Opening Float (the starting cash placed in the drawer), carries a Status of Open or Closed, and stamps who opened and closed it and when. Only one shift may be open per terminal at a time; trying to open a second one is rejected with an error naming the terminal and the existing open shift. Shift numbers come from the Shift Nos. number series on POS Setup.

To open a shift:

1. Open Tell Me (Alt+Q), search POS Shifts, and choose New Shift.
2. Fill Store Code, Terminal ID, optionally POS User No., and the counted Opening Float.
3. Choose the Open Shift action. The card stamps Opened At / Opened By, locks the header fields, and the close and cash-movement actions become active.

On the touch register, the status bar's Shift button opens the terminal's currently open Shift Card directly - cash movements, the X report, and the close flow are all reachable from there. If no shift is open, a toast tells you to open one from the POS Shifts list first.

Two POS Setup fields govern opening: Shift Nos. (the number series; opening fails with a clear message if it is blank) and Allow Negative Opening Float (off by default; when off, a shift cannot be opened with a negative float).

How sales attach to a shift

Every POS sale carries a Shift No. linking it to the drawer session it belongs to. A sale is stamped with the shift that is open at the moment it completes - so a draft started before the shift was opened still counts, because the stamp lands at completion. A sale completed with no shift open on its terminal keeps a blank Shift No. forever; nothing back-fills it later.

Shifts are optional by default. To make an open shift mandatory, turn on Require Open Shift in POS Setup: completion is then blocked - before any money is recorded - unless the terminal has an open shift. The gate protects completion only; drafts can still be started and edited without a shift. It is a company-wide setting with no per-store or per-terminal override.

Expected amounts

For each shift the system maintains one tender row per tender type (Cash, Card, Voucher, Other) holding the Expected Amount the drawer should reconcile to:

• Cash = Opening Float + the cash payment lines on all sales linked to the shift + the signed net of the shift's cash movements.
• Card / Voucher / Other = the sum of that tender type's payment lines on the shift's sales (no float, no movements).

The figures refresh live every time the open Shift Card loads, again when an X report prints, and one final time at the start of the close. You can review them at any point in the Tender Counts subform on the Shift Card (columns: Tender Type, Expected Amount, Counted Amount, Difference). Expected Amount is always read-only. Expected cash sums the applied amounts, so change handed back is already excluded.

Closing a shift

The close is a declared-versus-expected reconciliation:

1. Open the Shift Card, count the drawer, and enter a Counted Amount on every tender row. Enter 0 explicitly for unused tenders - a row that was never touched blocks the close, so you cannot skip a tender by leaving it blank.
2. Choose Close Shift. The system refreshes expected amounts one last time, stamps Difference (Counted - Expected) on each tender row, rolls up the shift's sales totals (Sales Count, Net, Tax, Gross), sets Status = Closed, and stamps Closed At / By.
3. If an over/short warning appears, review the tender counts with a supervisor.
4. Print the Z report for the paper record.

Two POS Setup toggles refine the close:

Field	Default	What it does
Blind Close	Off	While on and the shift is still open, the Expected Amount and Difference columns are hidden on the Shift Card and on a printed X report, so the counting user counts blind. Both reappear once the shift is Closed.
Over/Short Warning Threshold	0 (off)	After a successful close, if the absolute total difference across all tenders exceeds the threshold, a warning message is shown. Purely informational - the close is never blocked.

X report and Z report

One receipt-roll report prints either heading depending on the shift's status:

• X report - shift still Open: a preliminary snapshot you can reprint any number of times during the day. Printing refreshes the expected amounts live first.
• Z report - shift Closed: the final record, including counted amounts and differences.

The report prints the company header, shift identification, opening float, sales totals, a price adjustment / cash rounding / final payable summary, a Tender Counts reconciliation table, a Tender Activity block (applied, tendered, change, and payment count per method), and a Cash Movements block (pay-in, pay-out, and safe drop totals, No Sale count, net movements). With Blind Close on, the comparison columns and the Tender Activity block are suppressed on an open shift's X print; a Z always shows them.

Print it from the Print X/Z Report action on the Shift Card, or via Tell Me -> POS X/Z Report with a shift-number filter.

Reviewing shifts

The POS Shifts list is the review surface: it shows status, open and close stamps, Gross Sales Amount (blank while a shift is open - the roll-up only exists at close), a Cash Movements count with drill-down, and Over/Short - shown only for closed shifts, blank when the count balanced exactly, and styled red when nonzero. Supervisors can scan the Over/Short column across the week and drill into movements when a shift looks off; see Supervisor operations.