Opening the store: float counts and till setup for the LS Central POS

Daily operations · 8 min read

Every end-of-day discrepancy hunt starts the night before — with an opening count nobody verified. If the float was wrong at 9 a.m. and nobody caught it, the close will be "wrong" by the same amount at 9 p.m., and the evening hunt will chase a difference that was never a loss. The opening routine is short, and in LS Central it has a specific shape: the float lives in the safe, moves to the till in a traceable bag, and gets declared on the POS before the first sale. Do those three things the same way every morning and most closing mysteries never happen.

Before the doors: the safe and the float

LS Central's own Safe Management walkthrough starts the day in the safe, not at the till: at the beginning of a typical day, make sure there is the required amount of Fixed Float in the safe. (The walkthrough's examples use a fixed float of EUR 1500 — your store's figure is whatever your operation has set; the point is that it is a fixed, known amount, not "roughly what was left.") Each POS terminal is linked to one safe, so the float for a terminal comes from its own safe and returns there at close.

The float moves in a Safe Bag. Bags are the containers that hold tender between the safe and the till, a bag can be of Fixed Float type, and every bag carries a unique ID that works as a serial number for traceability. That ID matters more than it looks: when tonight's count is disputed, "the float bag" is an argument, but a bag number with ledger entries behind it is evidence.

1. Open the safe and take out the float bag for your terminal. Check the bag ID against what the safe record expects for that terminal.
2. Note the expected float amount before you count. You need it for the comparison — after the blind count in the next step, not during it.
3. Check the bag's seal and condition. A bag that was sealed at last night's close should arrive sealed. A broken seal at open is a finding, not a detail: record it before the money moves.

Count it blind, then declare it

Count the float without looking at the expected figure first. A count made while watching the target number tends to land on the target number — that is how a short float gets signed for as correct and reappears as a phantom shortage at close. Count by denomination, write the total down, and only then compare.

1. Count the bag's contents by denomination and total it on paper or on the count screen — whichever your store uses — before checking the expected amount.
2. Compare counted against expected. Match: proceed. Mismatch: stop and follow the mismatch procedure below before any sale is rung.
3. Load the drawer and make the Start Declaration (Float Entry) on the POS. In LS Central's POS Cash Management, the start declaration is the Float Entry that logs the opening of that terminal: it is recorded on the store server, and when a user logs on to a POS terminal the system checks whether a start declaration has been made for it. One user can be logged on to a terminal at a time, so the declaration belongs to the cashier who actually counted — not to whoever logs on later.
4. Declare what you counted, not what you expected. If the count and the expectation differ and the difference is being carried (see below), the declaration records the physical truth. A declaration that repeats the expected figure hides the problem inside today's numbers.

The declaration is not paperwork for its own sake. Later functions depend on it: the Pick Up Warning that tells a cashier the drawer holds too much cash is calculated from the store server's data, and the end-of-day declaration at close is the mirror image of the one you make now. Stores whose statement method is Staff (Floating Cashier) rely on start and end declarations most directly — POS Cash Management exists to control exactly whether those declarations have been made.

Set the terminal up to sell

• Confirm you are logged on as yourself. Only one user can log on to a POS terminal at a time, and declarations, pickups, and sales all carry the staff identity of whoever is logged on. Trading under someone else's logon makes the whole day's audit trail point at the wrong person.
• Check the terminal can reach the store database. If it cannot, you can still open: POS Cash Management allows a Float Entry to be made while the POS is unable to contact the remote database, and the Float Entry transaction is sent when the connection is restored. What you cannot do is assume it sent — note the outage, and verify later that the declaration arrived. Our offline mode guide covers the follow-up checks.
• Run a quick till sanity pass: drawer opens and closes cleanly, receipt printer loaded, change denominations usable (a float that is all large bills will fail the first cash customer). These are physical checks, done in a minute, that are much more annoying at the first sale.
• Know yesterday's ending state. If the terminal prompts about the last business day's Z-Report or yesterday's close, deal with it now, at open, while the store is quiet — not at tonight's close when it compounds with today's numbers.

When the opening count is wrong

It will happen: the bag is short, or over, against the expected float. The wrong response is to shrug and trade anyway — from the first sale onward, opening error and trading error are indistinguishable. The right response is short:

1. Recount from zero. Most opening mismatches are counting slips, and a from-zero recount by denomination settles them.
2. Have a second person count. If two independent counts agree against the expected figure, the count is the fact and the expectation is the problem.
3. Record the difference before trading. Manual safe entries — corrections and float entries among them — go through the Store Safe Journal, and every movement in Safe Management creates Safe Ledger Entries carrying the date, time, staff ID, terminal, bag number, and amount. The difference you record at 9 a.m. is a five-minute note; the same difference discovered at close is an investigation.
4. Declare the counted amount and notify the manager the same morning. Yesterday's close is the other half of this difference, and the manager who ran it needs to hear about it while yesterday is still reconstructable.
5. Never top the float up from another source to make it match. Borrowing from a second bag, the safe's other contents, or petty cash converts one traceable difference into two untraceable ones.

Opening setups compared: fixed float vs floating cashier

Whichever model your store runs, the opening discipline is identical: count blind, declare what you counted, and record a mismatch before the first sale. The model only changes whose name the day's money is attached to.

What success looks like

The store is properly open when: the float bag's ID and contents were verified against the safe's expectation; the count was made blind and matches — or the mismatch is already recorded and reported; a Start Declaration (Float Entry) exists for the terminal under the cashier who counted; and the terminal is confirmed selling under the right logon, online or in a noted offline state. If all four are true, tonight's close starts from a number everyone can defend.

FAQ

What if the POS is offline at open — can the store still open? Yes. A Float Entry can be made while the POS cannot contact the remote database, and it is sent when the connection is restored. The same applies at the other end of the day: an End of Day Declaration can be made offline, based on the terminal's own data, with a warning about possible differences.

Why count blind when the expected float is a fixed amount anyway? Because the count's job is to verify the fixed amount, and a count that can see its target will tend to confirm it. Blind first, compare second — the comparison is where the expected figure belongs.

Who should make the start declaration if two cashiers share a terminal during the day? Only one user can be logged on to a terminal at a time, and the declaration is logged against that user. The cashier who counted the float makes the declaration; a change of cashier during the day is a logon change and, in a floating-cashier setup, its own declaration event — not a silent hand-over of the drawer.