Flare's easy-to-use cash register feature can save small business retail store owners, managers and cashiers 50% or more of the time currently spent manually calculating, balancing and reporting daily cash register transactions.

Benefits of Flare’s cash register feature

You or a cashier can log in any time, quickly enter cash register inflows and outflows and balance a cash register. You can create reports for as many cash registers as needed. As you do, entries are automatically recorded to Flare’s accounting system. With the cash register feature, you’ll have a permanent record of daily cash register transactions. Reports can be exported as PDF, CSV or Excel spreadsheet and sent by email from the Flare system. You can invite cashiers to enter register reports for their shift and invite your accountant or bookkeeper.

Create a cash register report

Assumptions for this example
In the following example of a daily cash register report, we’ve made the following assumptions:

Follow these steps to record daily cash register inflows and outflows:

1. From Flare’s main menu, click “Cash Register” and click “Register Reports” (1 and 2 below).
   Click the “Create Report” button (3 below).
   
   
   
   
2. Select a cashier from the “Cashier name” dropdown menu or click "Add new Cashier" (4 below).
   
   
   
   In the “New Cashier” form (shown below), enter the cashier’s first name, last name and email address (these are required fields) and click the “Save” button (shown below).
   
   
   
   Once the cashier has been added, you’ll be able to select the cashier’s name from the “Cashier name” dropdown menu.
   
   
     When the cashier is added, they are sent an email invitation by the Flare system asking them to create a Flare account and accept the invitation.
3. Select a shift from the “Shift” dropdown menu or click “Add new Shift”. Select a cash register from the “Register” dropdown menu or click “Add new Register” (5 below). You may select “Default Cash Register” or create your own if you prefer a different name or have more than one register.
   
   
   
   If you click “Add new Register”, a New Register form will open. Enter a register name (6 below). From the "Select Account" dropdown menu, choose the default "Cash Register" category, or create your own General Ledger account. Click “Save”.
   
   
   
   

Record inflows
(sales of products/services, gift cards and other collections)

4. Select a chart of accounts Category (7 below). Usually, inflows will be recorded to a Revenue account (e.g. Services, Products).
   
   
   
   You can also create a new Revenue account on-the-fly by clicking “Add New Account” (circled below).
   
   
   
   
5. As shown in screenshot 8 below, select an optional Vendor or Customer from the “Name” column (in most retail scenarios, this will be left unselected), enter the gross sales amount in the "Amount" field, and select a tax or create a new tax by clicking “Add new Tax”. Flare will calculate the net amount (before taxes).
   
   
   
   Click “Add item” (circled below) to add other register inflows as required.
   
   
   
   
    In the example above, we have divided our sales into two broad Revenue categories: Services and Products.

Record outflows
Outflows include: cash bank deposits and expenses paid in cash from the register, non-cash collections (credit cards, debit cards, gift card and coupon redemptions), void sales and refunds.

1. Select a chart of accounts Category (1 below). For our example, we select “Credit Card Deposit Bank Account”.
   
   
   
   
     An easy way to separate the credit card/debit card sales total from the cash sales total is to categorize the credit card/debit card total to the bank account where these transactions will appear in the real-world. Our example calls the account “Credit Card Deposit Bank Account” (circled below).
2. Enter the "Total Amount" amount of credit card/debit card sales (2 below). In this example, we will not select a vendor or customer from the “Name” dropdown.
   
   
   
   
   Now that we’ve categorized credit/debit transactions, we’ll enter cash outflows (payments made in cash from the register).
   
   Click “Add new Item” (circled below)
   
   
   
   
3. Select a chart of accounts Category (3 below). In our example, we are categorizing an expense paid in cash to a “Cleaning” expense account (3).  Select a vendor (4 below) or click "Add new Vendor" (circled beneath 4 below). Selecting a vendor is optional.
   
   
   
   If you add a new Vendor, enter the vendor’s business name in the “Name” field (5 below).  “Name” is the only required field, but it is a good practice to complete as much contact information as possible as these fields will be printed on bills you record and export.
   
   
   
   Click “Save” (6 above).
   
   
4. Enter the “Total Amount” (7 below).
   
   
   
   To add another outflow item, click “Add item” (circled above).
   
   The completed outflow entries.
   
   
   
     If your business operates in a  jurisdiction where you can claim credit for Sales Tax paid on purchases, enable Recoverable Sales Tax in Flare Settings > Sales Tax. Doing so will make a tax field visible on the outflow form. See Company Tax Settings for more information on enabling and setting up recoverable sales tax.

Balance the register report

1. Enter the cash register “Balance Beginning of Shift” (1 below). This is your cash float. In our example, we had $100.00 in cash in our register at the start of the shift.
   
   
   
   
2. Enter the cash register “Balance End of Shift” (2 above). In our example, we had $1,400.00 in cash in the register at the end of the shift.
   
   If “Net Change in Cash” + “Balance at Beginning of Shift” =  “Balance End of Shift”, the cash register is balanced and the “Difference” (over or short) calculated will be $0.00.
   
   
3. Click “Save” (below) or click the “Save” button dropdown menu and click “Save and Email”, “Save and PDF” or “Save and Print (4 below).
   
   
   
   
     If the cash register is not balanced, you may want to recount cash register amounts and see if you can find the amount reported in “difference”. If you like, you can save an unbalanced register and rectify the discrepancy later by editing the cash register report.