The intent of this article is to assist with discovering the basic retail
daily procedures for a Cashier and Manager from the design point of view. While
there are many combinations of how daily procedures are performed, this article
is simply displaying some of the basic workflows in the day of a retail
store
.
Pre-requisites:
The information provided in this article
assumes that you possess basic knowledge with AX and AX Retail functionality.
This is needed to understand certain parts the material and concepts as not all
details will be provided and explained. Lastly before we get started, keep in
mind that not all available POS operations will be discussed and each business
will have their own combination of daily procedures.
List of Common Operations
and Processes:
You can also view the full POS operations
list in the following TechNet article:
Set up permissions and operations [AX
2012] - https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh597187.aspx
POS Operations
1. Time clock – Display the time
clock to clock in, clock out, record breaks and lunch breaks, and view time
clock entries
2. Declare starting amount – Record the amount
that is in the cash drawer when the day or shift starts.
3. Create
customer order – creates a sales orders or quote directly in
AX
4. Float Entry – Register a float entry to the cash
drawer, such as an addition of money to drawer.
5. Tender
removal – Record the removal of money from the cash
drawer.
6. Income accounts – Record money that is put into
the cash drawer for a reason other than a sale.
7. Expense
accounts – Record money that is removed from the cash drawer for
occasional expenses.
8. Stock Count – Record the current
inventory counts.
9. Safe drop – Record the amount of money
that is taken to the safe.
10. Bank drop – Record the amount
of money that is sent to the bank.
11. Print X – provides a
summary of the shifts transaction count and amounts
12. Tender
declaration – Record the amount counted in the cash
drawer
13. Suspend shift – Suspend the current shift. The
shift can be logged on to later.
14. Blind close – Set the
current shift to blind close, and log off the cashier.
15. Show blind
closed shifts – View a list of shifts that have been blind
closed.
16. Close shift (Print Z) – Closes the shift and
prints the Z-Report
AX Client processes
1. P-job – Syncs transaction data
from POS to AX.
2. Post inventory – Performs inventory
reservations for unposted POS transactions.
3. New statement
– Creates a new statement for the selected store.
4. Calculate
statement – Assigns the statement ID to all unposted transactions based
on the statements Setup settings and summarizes the data.
5. Post
statement – Creates sales orders, inventory movements, and journal
entries for the data captured by the calculate statement.
6. General
journal – Create a new journal entry to transfer and reconcile the
money deposited into the bank from POS sales.
Basic Setup
Configurations:
Retail Parameters for Posting
1.
Discount specific posting – Select this check box to enable
periodic offers to be posted to the ledger accounts. Periodic discounts include
mix and match discounts, quantity discounts, and discount offers
2.
Aggregation – Select the checkboxes to post the amounts as a
sum or leave unchecked to post as separate lines.
Store
1.
Default customer – This
customer is used for posting if a specific customer was not added to a POS
transaction.
2.
Statement method – The statement
calculation method that is used at the store. The value can be Staff, POS
terminal, Total, or Shift.
3.
Closing method – The
closing method that is used at the store. The value can be either Date and time
or Shift.
4.
Rounding – The general ledger account to
which any rounding differences are posted.
5.
Maximum
differences – The maximum difference amount that is allowed when
Posting, Shift, or Transactions are posted.
6.
Remove/add
payment method – The payment method that is used to add or remove money
from the cash drawer.
7.
Hide training mode – Select
this check box to hide training mode on the store’s registers.
8.
Payment Methods (Set up menu bar) – Used to set up the
payment methods used at the POS.
Warehouse setting
1. Retail
a. Store –
Checkmark this to identify the warehouse as a Retail store.
b. Negative inventory – check to allow posting to occur for retail transactions
even if there are insufficient product quantities available
Quick walkthrough of daily
POS procedures:
1. As a cashier, you log into POS and start a new
shift.
2. Select the “Timeclock” operation to “Clock-in” for the
day.
3. Count the amount of money in the cash drawer and use “Declare start
amount” to enter the amount.
a. If needed during the day, use the
“Declare start amount” for additional money added to the till. Example: Started
with $150, but now want the till count to be $200 (using sales cash for other
$50).
4. Perform sales transactions and customer orders.
5. When the cash
drawer obtain a certain threshold, select “Bank drop” to remove funds from the
drawer as needed. This is put into a numbered back deposit bag and is taken to
the bank.
6. When the cash drawer obtain a certain threshold, select “Safe
drop” to remove money from the drawer and take it to the safe in the back
office.
7. Go to lunch by selecting “Timeclock” and selecting the option to
“Break for lunch”.
8. Log off the shift using one of the following:
a. If someone is taking over the POS station and the shift, simply Log Off the
user account.
b. If someone is taking over the POS station but not your
shift, select “Suspend shift” to log out of POS to go to lunch.
c. If no
one is using the POS station or shift, you can use either of the two options to
simply Log Off or Suspend shift..
9. Return from lunch and log into POS with
your user account selecting to “Resume shift”.
10. You run out of quarters
and select “Float Entry” to add a new roll of quarters obtained from
the back
office.
11. Another cashier needs $10 bills. Instead of running to the back
office, you select “Tender Removal” to remove money from your till and give that
to the other cashier.
12. A local community club uses the parking lot for car
wash and provides you with payment. Select “Income Account” to add the funds to
the cash drawer.
13. You and your co-workers work on a holiday. Your
manager orders pizza for the team and uses elevated privileges at your POS
station to perform an “Expense Account” transaction to pay for the pizza.
14. At the end of your shift, select Print X to print the current shift
tender balances to the receipt printer to help balance the tender
declaration.
15. Select the “Blind close shift” operation and take the cash
drawer to the back office for counting.
16. Log into POS in the back office
or another location to enter counted amounts.
17. Select “Show blind closed
shifts” to recall your shift.
18. Count the money in the cash drawer and
select “Tender declaration” to enter the amounts.
19. Select “Close Shift” to
close out the shift, which also prints a Z-Report.
20. Select the “Timeclock”
operation to “Clock-out” for the day.
21. Put the counted money and Z-Report
in a deposit bag for a Manager to review (do not perform a bank drop
operation).
22. Manager logs into AX client in the back
office.
23. Runs the P-job to upload the transactional data from POS to the
AX database.
(normally done in batch throughout the
day)
24. Throughout the day the “Post inventory” process may have been
running. But this is not needed as an end of the day procedure, it is normally
used for updating inventory on-hand quantities during the day.
See
Blog Post:
Using
Post Inventory along with Calculate and Post Statement
25. Create a new
statement for the store.
26. Calculate the statement by “Date and Time” or
“Shift” (normally done in batch each night).
27. Manager then audits the
counted money with the Z-Reports for all cashier shifts, performing any
reconciliation as needed and updating the calculated statement. (normally not be
performed when batch processing is used for Calculate and Post Statement unless
posting difference are outside of thresholds).
28. Post statement to create
(normally done in batch each night)
29. The money is then taken
to the bank that night and put in the bank's deposit drop box.
30. During reconciliation by an accountant or manager, General Journal
entries would be created to move funds from the Retail Ledger accounts (cash,
credit card, etc) to Bank accounts to account for the money deposited into the
bank.
For additional walk through details with amounts and screenshots,
see the attached Word document "Example Scenario of Stores Daily
Procedures".
I recommended, not require, setting up
payment methods with their own Ledger accounts and not Bank accounts. You can
utilize the Bank account option, but all transactions will affect the Bank
account directly and usually causes Bank reconciliation nightmares. When using
Ledger accounts you can reconcile this with Bank accounts by creating journals
entries to move deposited funds into their respective bank accounts. This is a
better process for moving money to the bank than having all transactions
automatically written directly to the bank account.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The Safe drop and Bank drop were designed to
be used when the till amount reaches a certain threshold. At that point, money
is take to the bank or back office safe to reduce the amount of cash in the
drawer for security purposes. Based on the payment method (normally Cash-Cash)
you chose at the POS that you were taking funds from, you can assign specific
accounts to the Safe drop or Bank drop in that payment method to show the amount
taken out of the till. If no account is assigned to these entities, it is
assumed that the cashier is taking this money back out from the safe to count as
part of the drawer amount at the end of the day which affects the Cash payment
method account.
IMPORTANT NOTE: I highly recommend assigning a certain set
permissions to each employee. For instance, you may want a manager or
supervisor approval to perform any sort of bank or safe drop.
Process
questions:
- At the beginning of the day, I declare a start amount. Throughout the day I
have several transactions and do some Safe Drops when the till is full to move
cash from the till to the safe. At the end of the day, I need to do a Tender
Declaration and then a Bank Drop to bring money to the bank. How should I
perform this process?
- Bank Drops were designed for money taken to the bank throughout the day to
track money that was taken from the till. If you want to perform another Bank
Drop at the end of the day for the till count, then you would not include that
amount in the original Tender Declaration. The only amount in the Tender
Declaration at this point would be for any amounts left in the drawer for
tomorrow.
Option 1: If you the Store setting is to use the “Last” Tender
declaration calculation, then in the above scenario, you would need to perform
an additional tender declaration after the Bank Drop to count how much money is
now left in the drawer after the bank drop. This would record both the full
till before the bank drop and the till after the bank drop.
NOTE: You cannot perform a $0 Tender declaration, so you would not be
able to perform a second Tender declaration if all funds were put into the Bank
drop.
- Option 2: If you the Store setting is to use the “Sum” Tender
declaration calculation, then in the above scenario, you would need to perform
an additional tender declaration after the Bank Drop to count how much money was
removed for the bank drop. This would record the full till before the bank drop
and then add that to the secondary (negative) tender declaration after the bank
drop.
During the day, if I need to move money from the safe back to the till, how
do I do that?
- Perform a Float Entry to add money to the till. For this to be accurate, it
would be advisable to set the Safe Drop posting account to be the same as the
Cash payment method posting account. Therefore, a Float Entry and Safe Drop
would be affecting the same account.
At the end of the day when I do my Tender Declaration, does that include the
Bank Drop and Safe Drop amounts? I’m assuming no as that seems to be calculated
in the difference already.
When performing the Tender Declaration at the POS, this should not include
the Bank/Safe drop amounts. These are auto calculated with the Cash-Cash
payment method and offset by the Tender Remove/Float payment method. This money
is not meant to be taken back out for counting again, it was considered
“counted” when the Bank/Safe drop was performed.
Do I need to do the Bank Drop and Tender Declaration in any particular
order?
No, but make sure you do both and do so before the close shift in order for
the reconciliation to be accurate.
I don’t see a way to move the amounts in my Safe Drops anywhere. When I run
my P job to bring in transactions, they always show up as a Safe Drop. How do I
move that from the Safe Drop to a Bank Drop?
If you are using different ledger accounts for Safe Drops than you are with
the Cash payment method, then this is not possible at the POS.
Once that money is in the safe, you would normally not want to go back and
record further movement of that money through each POS stations shift. But if
you do want to record that at the POS, you cannot simply perform a negative Safe
drop. If the Cash, Safe drop, and Bank drop use the same ledger account, the
recommended workaround would be to first perform a Float entry to put that money
back into the POS and then perform a Bank Drop to take that money along with
other funds out for the Bank Drop.
If you are in the back office and sending Safe money to the bank and have
access to the AX client, my recommendation would be to perform a General Journal
entry to record the safe to bank amount. You would also want to record the
money taken from the tills as a Bank Drop and include a second line in the
General Journal entry to that amount as well. This will help with reconciling
the bank statements.
Using Cash-Other or Cash-“CAD” (or other currencies)
It is highly recommended due to the back end processes that Tender
Removal/Float and other Cash operations all use Cash-Cash versus a Cash-Other
payment method such as when entering Tender Removals, Floats, Tender
Declarations, Declare Start Amounts.
