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Quicken isnt set up very well to work with a cash drawer or cash register till. In fact, if you use a cash drawer or cash register, this condition indicates that you may want to step up to Quickens big-brother product, QuickBooks. QuickBooks supports point-of-sale accounting, which means it works with cash registers to record sales.

Basic Cash drawer mechanics

In simple situations, however, you can use Quicken for cash drawer accounting. What you want to do first, is set up a cash account (as described earlier in the chapter) for your cash drawer balance. As you collect money from customers, you store the cash or checks in the cash drawer. At the end of the day, you take the following steps:

1.Remove and then count your cash drawer balance. This balance includes both your starting cash drawer balance and the money you received from customers during the day.

2. Replenish your cash drawer balance by replacing the original, start-of-the-day cash balance.

3. Tally the sales for the day and then record a deposit into your bank account register for the sales proceeds that you received for the day.

4. If you have some way to audit your sales for the daysay, as by comparing the days sales receipts to the actual total daily salesattempt to do so. If theres a discrepancy, explore whether the discrepancy stems from an honest error in collecting cash from or in making change for a customer (which is very common) or from employee or customer theft (which is also, unfortunately, very common).

Preventing Cash Drawer Embezzlement

If youre a business owner and youll be manning the cash drawer, you dont have to be as careful in tracking your sales and receipts. By definition, you cant steal from yourself and all of your mistakes will be honest.

If, however, youll have employees manning the cash drawer, you need to create some method for reducing the opportunities for employee theft. One of the most common ways to do this is to require the person keeping the cash drawer to issue receipts to customers. As long as you keep a copy of any receipts issued to customers, you can total these receipts and compare them to the sales for the day. One tactic that businesses use to ensure employees issue receipts is putting up a sign that says, If you dont get a receipt, your purchase is free. This gambit tends to force even dishonest employees to prepare receipts if, as part of preparing a receipt for the customer, the employee also prepares a copy of the receipt for you.

Note also that cash registers typically prepare two receipts as part of every saleone thats given to the customer and the other thats safely locked inside the register. You can also use a simpler methodthose pads of receipts sold by office supply stores. However, you want to make sure that a dishonest employee cant easily obtain a duplicate pad of receipts. Why? A duplicate pad of receipts could be used by a dishonest employee to issue fake receipts for occasional sales.

About the author: CPA Stephen L. Nelson is the author of numerous best-selling books about small business accounting and the popular downloadable do-it-yourself guides Incorporating a Business in Arizona, Incorporating a Business in Nebraska and Incorporating a Business in New Jersey.