POS Payment References, Drawer Sign-off & Margins

Checkout takes one payment method and the full amount: cash, card or M-Pesa. For a card or M-Pesa payment the till shows a reference field, labelled M-Pesa code or Card authorisation depending on the method, on the web and in the mobile app. The cashier types the code from the customer’s M-Pesa message or the authorisation from the card terminal’s slip. When the register’s own STK push or card charge completed the sale, the field is filled in automatically and nobody types anything. The reference is optional, never asked for on cash, and stored upper-cased so “sjk4h7q2xp” and “SJK4H7Q2XP” are one code.

Each payment keeps its own reference, and the sale’s payment list shows them — method, amount, time and reference — on the web and in the app. That includes further payments added to the sale after checkout: a customer who paid the full amount by card and later settles a correction in M-Pesa gets a second payment on the same sale, with its own code. A split across two tenders at the moment of checkout, so one sale is paid part cash and part card in a single step, is something the team can add for you; today the second tender is recorded against the sale afterwards.

In practice: at the end of a Saturday a Kisumu supermarket’s finance clerk is matching the paybill statement. A customer disputes a KES 4,350 charge; the clerk opens the sale from the receipt number and the payment list shows M-Pesa, KES 4,350, code SJK4H7Q2XP — the same code on the statement line, so the dispute is settled in a minute. Two card sales from the hour the terminal was offline show authorisations typed by hand from the slips; the one sale with no reference is the one the clerk follows up with the cashier.

A drawer session opens with a float, takes cash sales, and records cash drops as money leaves the till. At close the cashier enters the counted cash. Expected cash is the opening float plus cash sales less cash drops, and the variance is counted less expected: negative is a shortage, positive an overage. Closing saves the count and the variance, and the drawer then shows Awaiting sign-off — a status you can filter by on the Cash Drawers list, on the web and in the app.

Sign-off is a second person’s act. Someone holding the sign off POS cash drawers permission, who is not the person who closed the drawer, opens it and signs it off, with an optional note. That is the moment the over or short reaches the ledger: a shortage posts Dr Cash Over and Short, Cr Cash; an overage posts Dr Cash, Cr Cash Over and Short; a balanced drawer posts nothing. A drawer can be signed off once only. In the app the Sign Off button is on the drawer detail screen for people with the permission, and it needs a connection. Every close waits for sign-off, whatever the size of the variance; an automatic approval below a tolerance, and a blind count that hides expected cash from the cashier at close, are things the team can add for you.

In practice: a Nakuru pharmacy cashier opens with a KES 5,000 float, takes KES 38,200 in cash sales and makes one KES 25,000 drop to the safe. Expected cash is 5,000 + 38,200 − 25,000 = KES 18,200. She counts KES 17,950 and closes: variance −250. The branch supervisor filters Cash Drawers by Awaiting sign-off the next morning, reads the cashier’s note about a mis-given change, adds her own note and signs off. The ledger now shows Dr Cash Over and Short 250, Cr Cash 250. The cashier could not have signed it herself, even holding the permission.

Every till sale line stores the item’s unit cost at the moment of sale. Sales by item and the POS sales summary margin read that stamped cost, so a receipt next week that moves the item’s moving average does not rewrite this week’s margin. Returns use it too: a return reverses exactly the cost the sale posted, not whatever the average has become since. Lines sold before 14 October 2026 have no stamped cost and fall back to the item’s current cost, so margins on older sales can still move when the average does.

That changes how a margin question is answered. If a manager asks why last month’s margin on an item looks different from what it was when she first ran the report, the answer for lines sold since 14 October is that it should not — and if it does, something other than cost moved, such as a return or a corrected sale. For older lines, the movement is expected and comes from the current cost. Invoice lines raised outside the till are a different path and are not covered by this stamp.

In practice: a Nairobi electronics shop sells 10 power banks on 20 October at KES 2,000 each, when the average cost is KES 1,400: margin KES 6,000. On 25 October a delivery at KES 1,600 lifts the average to KES 1,500. Sales by item for 20 October still shows a margin of KES 6,000. On 27 October one power bank is returned; the return puts it back at KES 1,400, the cost that sale posted, not KES 1,500.