Two devices, one cash drawer

[manousheh403]

It would be great if we could use one cash drawer on two devices.  I have one cash drawer, and I have both an ipad and a square register.  Both devices operate the cash drawer, but only one of them can track cash.  This means that if I take cash transactions on the one that doesn't track, the cash drawer will be off.  It would be great if it would just combine cash sales from both devices.

[LLCafe]

We have a similar challenge with this, it would be really nice to be able to have it combined!

[mewscafe]

Hello @manousheh403 & @LLCafe - We have a similar issue where our bar uses both a Square Stand and a Square Terminal to collect payments. The way we get around this is to obtain the amount of cash payments from the non-attached device using the sales report at the end of the night. Our bartender then enters the amount as a "pay in - cash" under Cash Management from the attached device. That should keep the cash drawer expected amount correct.

[manousheh403]

@mewscafe this would mean that the cashier doing their close-out would have to remember that a transaction(s) was taken on that device.  The whole point of me asking for this feature is because we can't rely on humans to not make mistakes.  Through automation we can reduce human error, and thats what we're trying to do by having these cash drawers combined.  But again, you've thought of pretty good workarounds, I just believe that any POS should have these basic functions.  I've used 4 different POS providers (Upserve, Clover, Toast, and Square) and all providers have these functions except for Square.

[mewscafe]

@manousheh403 I agree that Square for Restaurants still has many missing features. I also had requested (by email) to have more than one device connected to the cash drawer. However, until this actually happens,  we needed to use workarounds to get by. There is no remembering transactions for us because both those devices are used exclusively by the bartender. So all they have to do at the end of the night is to view the sales report on the unconnected device, get the cash payment figure and enter that as "pay in - cash" in the other device. If no cash transactions occured on the unconnected device, there would be nothing to add in.

[_Violet]

Hi there @manousheh403 👋 Thank you for submitting your request to the Ideate Board 💡

I'm happy to help but will need some more detail in order to better understand your question and your setup.

From what I understand, you have two Points of Sale and one physical cash drawer. You are taking cash payments on both Points of Sale but only one of them is actually tracking the cash sales in a report.

Is there something that's preventing you from enabling the Cash Management/Reporting feature on both devices? Even if you only have one physical drawer, you could still track cash sales separately on each device while taking out/putting in cash in the single drawer. Then, you can combine the reports at the end of the shift and compare this to what's remaining in the drawer.

Please let me know your thoughts and I'll keep an eye out for your reply!

[mewscafe]

Hello @_Violet . I believe what @manousheh403 wants is a single step process to eliminate human error. Our workaround was to take the cash sales figure from the non-connected device and do a "pay in" on the connected device so that the final figure from that cash drawer report is consolidated and correct. It is, however, still a two-step process and the bartender could forget to enter or enter a wrong figure. The only real solution I see, depending on how the drawer-device dependency is programmed, is either to allow multiple devices to be tied to a single drawer, or else to tie the drawer to one or more team members (in case we have multiple bartenders using the same drawer). That way ALL the cash transactions which actually use the drawer will be correctly captured in the drawer report. Just my two cents... 🙂

[RoniM]

@_Violet We have the same problem here. 2 POS systems. 1 Square Stand that is on the main counter that is for walk-in customers doing takeout orders or for phone orders. 1 iPad Mini to take table side orders. Both accept cash. Cash Management/Reporting is enabled on both devices. Each device tracks cash independently of the other. So each has to be closed out on its own and there is no way to properly track the cash. We ended up turning off Cash Management on both devices.

[dzeller]

@manousheh403 @_Violet We have a similar issue still! This needs to be a mandatory feature for bars especially!