Safe drops, cash paid out and banking the takings
How a shop should record cash moved from the drawer to the safe, small expenses paid from the till, and the deposit that takes the takings to the bank.
By Achekam · · 5 min read · For Retail businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
By the middle of a busy Saturday the drawer is stuffed with notes. One cashier has paid the bread driver from the till, another has fetched extra coins from the back office, and at closing someone will take the day's cash to the bank. None of these are sales, yet each one changes how much money should be in the drawer, in the safe and in the bank account.
Shops that leave these movements unrecorded get cash-ups that never balance and bank deposits that do not match the takings. Shops that record them can say, on any day, where every note went.
This is how to handle safe drops, cash paid in, cash paid out and banking in a shop in South Africa, Nigeria or Kenya.
A full drawer is a target
Cash in an open drawer is exposed to robbery, to mistakes when giving change, and to temptation. The more it holds, the bigger the loss when something goes wrong, and the longer the count takes at the end of the shift.
The usual answer is a safe drop: taking notes out of the drawer during trading, counting them, and locking them in the safe. A sensible house rule is to drop whenever the drawer passes an amount you choose, leaving enough change to keep trading.
Recording drops and cash paid in
In Achekam, safe drops, cash paid in and cash paid out are recorded on the server, and each one posts its own journal. Because the movement sits on the server with the till session, the record explains why a drawer is lighter or heavier than its sales alone would suggest, and the cash-up does not have to rely on someone's memory. Achekam also keeps track of what the safe holds.
Cash paid in is the reverse movement: extra change brought to a till, or a float topped up. Record it when it happens. A top-up that is not recorded will show as cash over at the end of the shift, and someone will waste an evening looking for a sale that never happened. The count itself is covered in cashing up a till and explaining the difference.
Small purchases paid from the drawer
Every shop pays for small things in cash: milk for the staff room, a locksmith, a bag of cleaning cloths. Taking that money from the drawer is cash paid out, and in Achekam it needs a supervisor or manager. A cashier cannot pay money out of the till on their own authority.
Each payout should come with a slip, ideally the supplier's tax invoice, and a reason anyone could understand a month later.
When the VAT on a payout can be claimed
Achekam records input VAT on a payout only when a tax invoice number is given. Without one, no input VAT is recorded on the payout.
That is the cautious treatment. A slip from a stall with no VAT number on it is not a tax invoice, and claiming VAT on it invites questions. In Kenya the bar is specific: since 1 June 2023, input VAT can be claimed only against a TIMS or eTIMS invoice, so ask small suppliers whether they can issue one. In South Africa and Nigeria, ask your accountant what a valid tax invoice must show before anyone enters a number at the till.
Banking the takings from the safe
When cash leaves the safe for the bank, Achekam records it as a deposit from the safe, and the deposit can never be more than the safe holds. If someone tries to record a bigger deposit, it will not go through. That usually means a safe drop was missed earlier in the day, or that two people are trying to bank the same money.
Habits that keep banking clean:
- Two people count the deposit before it leaves the premises.
- The bank's deposit slip or reference goes into the day's paperwork.
- When the deposit appears on the bank statement, someone ticks it off against the deposit recorded from the safe.
Who does what
| Movement | What Achekam enforces | House rule for you to set | Paperwork to keep |
|---|---|---|---|
| Safe drop | Recorded on the server with its own journal | When to drop, who witnesses | Drop slip signed by two people |
| Cash paid in | Recorded on the server with its own journal | Who may bring cash to a till | Note of where the cash came from |
| Cash paid out | Needs a supervisor or manager | What may be bought from the till | Supplier slip or tax invoice, reason |
| Deposit to bank | Cannot exceed what the safe holds | Who banks, how often | Bank deposit slip or reference |
Only the payout approval and the deposit ceiling are enforced by the system. The rest are yours, and worth writing down so every shift follows the same routine. Discounts work on a similar principle of who may approve what; see setting cashier discount limits at the till.
What the ledger shows
Because each drop, pay-in, payout and deposit posts its own journal, the ledger shows them as separate entries rather than one netted figure at the end of the day. Till sales post alongside them: cash takings go to the cash account (1050), card and QR payments to their own account (1060), and so on through each payment method. What a till sale posts to your books goes through those journals line by line.
At month end, your bookkeeper or accountant should be able to take every deposit recorded from the safe and find it on the bank statement. A deposit recorded but never banked, or money banked but never recorded, is the first thing to chase. A payout without a slip is the second. AccountingTools walks through the bank reconciliation process of comparing your cash records with the bank statement and adjusting the books.
If none of this happens in your shop yet, start with the payouts: no cash leaves the drawer without a slip and a supervisor's approval. Once the team sees drawers balancing because the payouts are recorded, safe drops and banking records are an easy next step.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
