thread Retail App Cash Drawer Set Amount in Retail & eCommerce

Retail App Cash Drawer Set Amount

SZCMASS978 — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 19:12:15 GMT

Hi everyone. Happy Monday!

My business is in the sports trading card and memorabilia industry. I sell through trade shows only on a monthly basis with no store front location. Currently I’m only using the free version, but track my sales through an iPad and just bout the handheld scanner with integrated credit card reader.

When I use the Retail version of the Square app, I have to open a drawer (set a balance) on each device. I set the amounts for each last weekend and noticed when I closed the drawer to balance, I had different amounts and the payouts I did on the iPad did not show on the handheld. I had to close the handheld and try to figure the balances.

i have two devices as I have help at these shows and for tracking purposes, I created my own barcodes and affixed these on my items. I generally use the iPad b/c I know what to key the sales under, but the handheld is primarily used by my Team.

Am I missing something during the setup? Should I set the bank to the actual amount on one device and “zero” on the other?

I’m not at the point, sales wise yet where I can justify the monthly Square cost to get the full version as some days we are phenomenal, other days we don’t make enough to cover the table costs.

Thanks for any feedback and advice.

Re: Retail App Cash Drawer Set Amount

androo — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 19:26:33 GMT

Two devices for one cash drawer?

Short answer - Square does not natively support a single, shared cash drawer report across multiple devices. You will need to manage the over/short calculation manually.

See https://community.squareup.com/t5/Payments-Troubleshooting/Shared-Cash-Drawers/m-p/280735/
and https://community.squareup.com/t5/Archived-Discussions-Read-Only/Multiple-POS-but-one-cash-drawer/m-p/132932/

Re: Retail App Cash Drawer Set Amount

SZCMASS978 — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 22:09:11 GMT

Hi Androo. Thank you for the information. I suspected as much. Thank you for confirming.

Re: Retail App Cash Drawer Set Amount

repopgifts — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 22:25:10 GMT

You'll either have to start a separate cash drawer for each device, or what we do is keep one device as the main point of sale and the other devices are "card or tap to pay sales only". That way you won't have to worry about having a second drawer, and people paying with tap or card are usually quicker so it will speed things up!

Re: Retail App Cash Drawer Set Amount

homeprogreen — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 22:39:11 GMT

One work around to using 1 cash drawer with 2 devices is to not set a starting drawer amount for the handheld. At the end of the day pull up the sales report for the handheld and take whatever amount of cash you had in sales on it out of the drawer. Then go ahead and do your normal drawer close and report on the other device and it should match