Cash Drawer Imbalance

[Squarious]

So we use square at two locations and have had this issue at both. We've found workarounds but the issue itself is still there. I'm wondering if anyone has a solution. 

When a bartender is running her close of day at the end of the night. Let's say she made $150 in cash sales and $100 in tips (using simple numbers here for sake of the example), it will the bartender owes $50 to the house. However, that bartender has all her money in the drawer so in reality we owe her $100. 

Now we tried having the bartender hold a pocket and keep her cash on her. When we did this and tried to close the drawer at the end of the night (same example as above) it would say that the cash drawer should have $350 (200 starting + 150 in cash sales). 

We can't seem to figure out a way to get this right. Now sure if we're just doing something wrong here but shouldnt the bartenders be putting their cash in the drawer? 

[JJ_]

This definitely looks like something our Restaurants team needs to look at for you @Squarious.

They can take a look at your account with you to help shine a light here, as they can look at your account alongside you to pinpoint what's going on here. Please reach out by phone or email when you have a moment by logging into your Square account and heading here.

P.S. Welcome to the Seller Community 

[Squarious]

I've talked to the team about it and they just tell me to have the abrtender use a pocket or ignore the cash owed issue. 

There has to be a better solution. 

[JJ_]

I'm tagging some of our Super Sellers hopefully they can share their input on this situation @Squarious. 

@JamesSandbar @Donnie-M @LLCafe @GoGoGuest Have any of you ever experienced a similar situation with Cash Drawers and Tips?

[LLCafe]

What we do which isn't ideal is just have a tip jar by the till and ring in sales as normal and put the cash sales in the till is it ties out to the reports and then any tips go in the jar. At the end of the night we count the till so it balances and then count the tips which are kept separate. I know Square is aware of the the cash tip tracking issue but I don't think that anything has been released yet to address it.

[Donnie-M]

@Squarious Just looking at this, the way the math is working seems to be where an issue is.  If a sale is in cash say 5$.  The customer pays 6$.  The change would be 1$ and the customer says "keep the change".  So if the bartender did not remove the cash, he would  be owed 1$.  If the bartender kept the cash, the drawer would be short 5$, hence he would owe 5$ to the house.

This is where I think cash drawer tracking is really crap for any kind of restaurant.  It only really works if each employee has their own drawer and 1 point of sale for that drawer.  IT is much easier to declare the cash tips at the end of the night and tip out your bussers/hostesses etc.

The way I managed that in the past is, if a bartender/wait staff is declaring low cash tips...they are either undercounting to keep cash for themselves(stealing from the staff) or they stink and no one tips them because they are horrible...either way, they gotta go.

I would just skip cash drawer counting and make the person responsible for the bank (drawer starting balance) plus the expected cash in the drawer.  Then have them just declare their tips or the overage between the drawer and cash expected is their net tips.