Reporting and Quick Access

This standard governs the working reports at the point of sale: today's sales, the transaction log, the session report, voids and refunds, and the end-of-day summary. It applies to cashiers and shift leads, who read these reports during the day and reconcile the drawer against the session report, and to managers, who sign the end-of-day summary and correct records the reports expose as wrong. These are the views that answer "how are we doing" and "what went wrong" while there is still time to act. Every figure traces to a specific sale, payment, or refund record; nothing is estimated.

Today's sales

This view shows every completed sale today: number, time, total, tender breakdown, and receipt number. Use it to answer the mid-shift question of whether the store is on track, and to surface problems early. A sale count that looks low for the foot traffic usually means sales are being rung under the wrong source. A revenue figure that looks wrong usually traces to one large sale; find it, open it, and check for a misapplied discount or void. The tender totals: cash against card: are calculated separately from the sale totals so that a sale paid with two tenders is counted once, not twice. The tender split on this report may be relied on for that reason.

Transaction log

The log is the complete, unfiltered list of everything the registers did today: sales, voids, refunds, no-sale drawer openings, and manager overrides: newest first, each row carrying its tenders in readable form, such as "Cash + Visa." Where today's sales is the scoreboard, the log is the play-by-play. Use it when something needs explaining: the drawer is short, a customer disputes a charge, a discount looks unauthorized. Each entry links to its full record. The log is append-only; entries are never edited or deleted, only corrected by new entries. If a transaction that is known to have happened cannot be found, check the filters first: wrong register, wrong date, voids hidden: before concluding it is missing.

Session report: the close-out tool

This report is what the drawer is reconciled against. For the open session it shows the session itself (opening float, expected cash, who opened it, and when), every cash movement in order, the sale count and total, the cash-sales total, and the refunds total. The cashier shall run it before counting the drawer, not after; the report states what the count should find, and counting first anchors the cashier to a number they then defend. Expected cash is calculated, not estimated: opening float, plus the net cash each sale kept (cash tendered minus change given back), minus cash refunds, plus or minus recorded cash movements. The close-out procedure itself is stated in Register Basics.

When the report and the count disagree, investigate in this fixed order

1. Re-count the cash. Most variances end here.
2. Review the shift's voids and refunds.
3. Check for sales rung to the wrong tender. A cash sale recorded as card is the classic case: the drawer holds the cash and the report does not expect it.
4. Review cash movements for missing reasons or missing entries.
5. Only then escalate to a manager.

Voids and refunds

This view shows the money that went backward: voided sales with timestamps and reasons, and refunds with amounts, reasons, and methods, separated by method because cash refunds remove money from the drawer with no card trail and deserve extra attention. Staff shall watch for pattern, not volume: a spike in voids on one shift, refunds clustering around one product (a possible defective batch), and void reasons that say nothing, such as "other" or blank. Every void and refund shall carry a reason that makes sense in six months, as required by Post-Transaction. If the cash-refund total for a shift looks high, reconcile it against the physical cash before the shift closes, not after.

End of day

The day's final accounting is built from the session reports: total sales, tender splits, discounts given, tax collected, refunds and voids, and expected cash per drawer. It is generated from the day's records, not typed by hand, which is why the records must be right. The manager shall sign the summary when it balances. The signature states that the day's money is accounted for.

Controls

• If the session report shows sales the cashier did not ring, the cashier is looking at another session on the same register: the previous shift's session was never closed and has been inherited. Stop, get a manager, close it properly, and open a new session. Staff shall not keep selling into another cashier's session.
• If the tender split does not match the drawer, a sale was rung to the wrong tender type. Find it in the transaction log, where tenders are shown per row, and have a manager correct the record. Staff shall not "fix" it with an offsetting cash movement.
• The refunds view sums completed refunds linked to the session's sales. A refund on a sale from a previous session appears in its own session's report, not the current one.

Records

The reports are generated from the session, sale, payment, refund, void, and cash movement records kept in the point of sale system. The signed end-of-day summary is the store's record that the day's money was reconciled.

Escalation and review

Managers review variances, void and refund patterns, and unsigned or unbalanced end-of-day summaries. A reporting fault that the store cannot resolve shall be reported to support@aapawz.com. Legal process concerning a sale record shall be directed to legal@aapawz.com.