The cashier shift: open, take payments, close

Why	Keep the day’s money under control: know how much should be in the cash desk and check it against an actual count.
Who	Front desk staff and administrators who take payments in person.
What you’ll get	An open shift with a clear “Expected balance”, tidy cash-in and cash-out entries, and a close-out with a count; any gap, once surfaced, gets explained in a comment.
Limitations	This covers the current shift on the “Shifts” tab of the Finances screen. The money journal lists movements for the current month only.

A cashier shift is the cash desk’s working day: it opens in the morning with an opening balance, takes in guest payments through the day, and closes in the evening with a counted reconciliation. Everything to do with the shift lives on the “Shifts” tab of the Finances screen — in the left menu, under the management section.

Open the shift with an opening balance

The day starts by opening the shift:

1. Open “Finances” and go to the “Shifts” tab. With no shift running, the tab is empty and offers an “Open shift” button.
2. Click “Open shift” — the “Shift opening” dialog appears.
3. Enter the “Opening balance” — the amount actually sitting in the cash desk at the start of the day. Starting from zero is perfectly fine: you can bring in change later.
4. Confirm with “Open shift”.

Result: the shift is running. The tab now shows a “Shift: 1” heading with the shift number, the “Opening balance” and “Expected balance” lines (a dash until anything moves), and a “Date · Type · Amount · Description” table where every movement of the day lands.

The “Expected balance” is the shift’s key figure: how much should be in the cash desk if every movement has been recorded. It recalculates on its own as payments, cash-ins, and cash-outs come into the shift.

Where the day’s payments land

Payments on bookings flow into the open shift: record a guest’s payment on the booking card (the “Payments” tab → “Add payment”) and the amount shows up in the shift table and moves the “Expected balance”. That is why you open the shift before the first payments and close it after the count — then it holds the whole day in one view. Recording a payment on a booking is covered in Record a guest payment: cash, card, at the desk.

Each row of the shift table shows a date, a movement type, an amount, and a description. Over a day, that means:

• payments on bookings, recorded on the booking cards;
• cash-ins and cash-outs — manual cash movements, covered below.

Next to it, on the “Money movements” tab, sits the journal: the same movements, each linked to its source document — a payment pointing back to its booking, for example. The journal covers the current month; details in The money journal: what moved through the hotel.

Move cash in or out

The cash desk does not change only through booking payments: topping up change, taking the day’s cash to the safe — these go through the “Cash in” and “Cash out” buttons on the open shift. Every such movement appears in the shift table and is counted in the “Expected balance”.

Result: cash-ins and cash-outs keep the “Expected balance” honest — by the time you count, it shows what should actually be in the cash desk, not just the booking payments.

Close the shift with a count

The shift closes at the end of the day, against the actual cash:

1. Count the cash in the cash desk.
2. Click “Close shift” — the “Shift closing” dialog appears.
3. Enter the “Actual balance” — the amount you counted.
4. Add a “Comment” if there is anything to explain.
5. Confirm with “Close shift”.

There is no separate counting step in the interface: the reconciliation happens right at close-out, when the system compares the “Expected balance” (per the records) with the “Actual balance” (your count). If the numbers disagree, the shift table is where you retrace the day: which movements were recorded and what is missing from them.

Result: the shift is closed. The next day starts fresh — with “Open shift” and a new opening balance.

If the numbers don’t match

A gap between the expected and actual balance is a normal working situation. Common causes:

• a cash-in or cash-out nobody recorded;
• a wrong amount;
• change handed to a guest without a note.

That is what the “Comment” field in the closing dialog is for: describe why the cash desk ended up above or below the expected amount.

If gaps keep coming up, record cash-ins and cash-outs as they happen rather than from memory in the evening — the “Expected balance” stays a reliable reference, and closing the shift comes down to a quick check.

See also

• Record a guest payment: cash, card, at the desk — record a payment that lands in the shift.
• The money journal: what moved through the hotel — every movement with its source document, for the current month.