Till Controls and POS Assurance

Till Controls is in Settings, beside Sales Defaults. Its Refund approval section has three rules, and none applies until you set it: Refunds above this amount, Refunds more than this many days after the sale, and Every refund paid out in cash. A refund that trips any of them needs someone with the Approve till refunds permission. If the cashier holds it, the refund goes through in their name. Otherwise, on the return form, a supervisor chooses their name under Supervisor (if needed) and types their Supervisor PIN.

The approver, how they approved (their own permission or a PIN), the reason and the time are stamped on the return as evidence for the money paid back. If nobody with the right has approved, the return is refused with a message naming the rule it tripped, for example that it is above the refund limit and paid out in cash. Returns made on the mobile app while offline are not lost: when they reach the server they are kept and flagged for review instead of being refused, because the money moved hours earlier.

In practice: a Nairobi supermarket sets refunds above KES 5,000, any refund after 14 days, and every cash refund to need approval. A cashier refunding KES 1,200 by M-Pesa on yesterday’s sale needs nobody. A KES 2,000 cash refund needs the shift supervisor’s PIN. At the end of the week the store manager can see every approved refund, who approved it and why.

Changing a line’s price at the till is not a discount. It needs the Change till prices permission and a reason under Why the price changed, or a supervisor’s PIN. Set Second person needed above (%) and even a cashier who holds the permission needs a supervisor for a bigger change. The sale line keeps the original price, the new price, the reason and the approver, separately from discounts.

When a scanned code matches no item or serial, the till opens Barcode not found with three choices. Search the item by name. Sell as an open item, with a Description and a Price, if the workspace has chosen an open item (a service item, since it takes nothing off a shelf) and the cashier holds the Sell open items permission; Also needs a supervisor’s PIN can be required too. Or Ask a manager to register it, with a note such as “Blue 500ml bottle, shelf C”, and Send to a manager.

Every unknown scan is counted. Managers open Unknown barcodes from the Till controls page and see each code with its Scans, Last seen, counter and cashier, and note, under Waiting, Assigned and Dismissed. Choose an item and click Assign: the code then scans as that item. If the item already has a barcode, tick Replace its barcode to swap it. In practice: a Kampala pharmacy’s new supplier ships a cough syrup with a different barcode; the cashier sells it by name, sends the code to a manager, and by the afternoon it scans normally.

Loyalty is off until a workspace ticks Customers earn and redeem points at the till under Loyalty points. Set the points earned per unit spent (0.01 gives one point per 100 spent, in whole points, earned on what the customer paid), the Value of one point when redeemed, the Smallest redemption, and Points expire after (days), or leave expiry blank for never. Oldest points expire first. A customer’s balance and recent entries are on their customer page, where someone with access can adjust the balance with a reason.

At the till, Find a customer looks a customer up and shows their points, and Purchase history lists their last ten sales. To redeem, enter the points; their value comes off the sale like a discount, spread over its lines, so the sale’s revenue, tax and eTIMS receipt all carry the reduced figure and there is no separate tender or liability account. A customer must be chosen before points can be redeemed, and the smallest redemption applies. When a sale is returned, the redeemed points are given back and the earned ones taken back in proportion to what was refunded.

Sold by credits the sale to a salesperson while the cashier stays on it as the person who rang it up. In practice: in a Mombasa electronics shop a floor assistant sells a television and the cashier at the counter takes payment, choosing the assistant under Sold by. The assistant is credited for commission, and the customer redeems 400 points worth KES 400 off the price.

The POS Risk Report is on Sales Reports, for people with the permission to view it. For a period, grouped by cashier or by counter, it shows Sales, Voids, Returns, Discounts, Cash shortage, Price overrides, After hours and No sale. AWRA has no void button, because a POS sale is never deleted, so a void here is a sale fully returned on the day it was rung up. After hours counts sales outside the trading hours set at the foot of the report, per counter or for all. No sale counts drawer opens with nothing rung up. Returns are charged to whoever processed them and discounts to whoever gave them.

A flag means a rate is above twice the median of the other cashiers (or counters) and above a small floor, so one return against a median of zero does not raise a flag. Rates are not flagged below five sales. The multiplier and the shortage tolerance per drawer can be changed in the filters. The report shows one currency at a time, the base currency by default, and cash shortages only on the base-currency view. Click a figure to drill into the sales, returns or drawers behind it.

Every Monday, people who may open the report receive a digest by email and in the bell listing who stood out the previous Monday to Sunday. If nobody did, nothing is sent, so a digest that arrives is worth reading. In practice: an Addis Ababa café chain’s digest shows one cashier with five same-day full returns against a median of one, all just after cash sales. The area manager drills in, matches them to the drawer counts and finds the pattern behind a recurring shortage.

POS to Ledger Reconciliation, also on Sales Reports, compares four figures for each day, counter and payment method. Taken is what the till recorded, net of change and less refunds in that method. Posted is what reached that method’s settlement account in the ledger. Counted is the drawer count less its float plus cash drops. Settled is what the M-Pesa or card gateway confirmed. Posted − taken shows the gap, and each currency is reconciled on its own. Card and bank transfer share one bank account in the ledger, so they share a row. Unposted sales lists every sale in the period with no revenue line in the ledger.

Each counter’s settings choose how receipts print: Browser print dialog, QZ Tray (installed on the till’s computer, with an optional printer name), or USB serial from Chrome or Edge, which needs Connect printer once. QZ Tray and USB serial send the receipt straight to a thermal printer and can open a cash drawer on the printer’s drawer port. The drawer opens only for a sale that took cash, and only when the counter has Open the cash drawer on cash sales ticked. If the printer cannot be reached, the till falls back to the browser print dialog. Test your own printer and drawer on one counter before rolling out.

On a counter using QZ Tray or USB serial, a cashier with the permission to open the drawer sees No sale / open drawer with an optional reason. Every press is logged, with who, when, the counter and the reason, before the drawer is opened, and counted in the risk report’s No sale column. In practice: a Kisumu hardware store reconciles Tuesday and sees M-Pesa Posted 3,400 below Taken; the unposted list shows one sale waiting on a missing account mapping. The same week the risk report shows ten no-sales for one cashier, each logged “change for the float”.