You're closing the shift. Amari says the drawer should have ₱5,000 but you're counting ₱4,850. You're ₱150 short. Or maybe you're ₱75 over — the opposite problem. Either way: don't close the shift yet. Run through this checklist first.
Small differences are normal
A discrepancy of ₱1–₱5 from coin rounding is normal — nobody is stealing. Discrepancies of ₱20+ are worth investigating. Discrepancies of ₱100+ are definitely worth investigating before you close the shift.
The math Amari uses
Expected Cash On Hand is calculated as:
Opening Cash
+ Cash Sales (sales paid in cash only)
− Expenses (money taken OUT of the drawer during the shift)
= Expected Cash On Hand
GCash and other non-cash payments are excluded — that money never went into the drawer in the first place.
If you're SHORT (drawer has less than expected)
Most shortages have a simple, recoverable cause. Check these in order:
1. Did you forget to log a shift expense?
This is the #1 cause. Staff takes money out for ice or water and forgets to tap the Expense button. Amari thinks the cash should still be there, but it's not.
Fix: Tap Cancel on the close dialog, go back to the POS, and log the missing expense via the Expense button. Then return to Close Shift — the Expected COH should now match.
Prevention: Train staff to log expenses immediately when they take cash out. Even a ₱20 jeep fare for the delivery rider needs to be logged.
2. Did anyone make change wrong?
A cashier giving ₱100 in change instead of ₱50 will leave the drawer ₱50 short. Hard to reconstruct after the fact, but if you can review the last few transactions and ask the cashier what they remember, sometimes you spot it.
3. Did someone deposit cash to the bank without telling?
If your shop does mid-shift bank deposits to keep the drawer light, that money should be logged as a shift expense (or as a special "Bank Deposit" category). If it wasn't, the drawer looks short.
4. Did you start with the wrong opening cash?
If the previous shift left ₱2,500 but the current cashier entered ₱2,000 as opening cash, you'll be ₱500 short at close. Cancel, go back to the open shift action, and re-enter the correct opening cash if Amari allows it (or make a note for the owner).
5. Did a sale pay GCash but the cashier marked it cash?
Less common, but possible. The customer paid via GCash app, the cashier accidentally tapped Cash, so Amari now thinks ₱150 of cash came in that didn't actually arrive. Check the recent sales for the right payment method.
If you're OVER (drawer has more than expected)
Less common but still annoying. Causes:
1. Did you forget to ring up a sale?
Customer paid in cash but the sale never made it into Amari. The cash is in the drawer; the sale isn't in the system. Reconstruct it from the customer's order if possible and ring it up before closing.
2. Did you log an expense that wasn't real?
Cashier tapped Expense by mistake or entered a wrong amount. Have the owner check the expenses list on the close shift page — anything that looks fishy can be edited or deleted from the Accounting page.
3. Did the previous shift leave the drawer with extra change?
Sometimes the closing cashier from yesterday left ₱500 in coins for change-making but didn't mark it. The opening cash for today should include that ₱500.
4. Tip jar money?
If your shop has a tip jar and tips accidentally got mixed with the drawer, the drawer will look over. Separate them.
If you can't find the difference
Sometimes you genuinely can't reconstruct what happened. Here's the sane way to handle it:
- Close the shift with the actual count. Don't fudge the number. Amari records the variance and that's information for later.
- Add a note for next shift explaining what you saw — the next shift can keep an eye out for the same pattern.
- Tell the owner. One unexplained ₱150 is a rounding error. Three of them in a week is a pattern that needs investigating.
Patterns matter more than single events
One bad day means nothing. Five days in a row of being ₱100 short means something is going wrong — bad training, bad handovers, or theft. Look at variance over a week, not a day.
Where Amari helps
- Live variance feedback — when you type the actual cash on the close shift page, Amari immediately tells you Over/Short/Match before you commit
- Audit log — every void, edit, and expense is timestamped with who did it
- Shift report receipt — printed at close, captures the variance for paper records
Related articles
- Closing a shift
- Logging an expense during a shift
- Reading the Audit Log