Your cash drawer doesn't match at closing. Here's how to find the gap.
You count the drawer at closing and it's ₹340 short. Nothing was stolen, nobody made a big mistake, the money just doesn't add up. Almost always it's one of a handful of very ordinary things.
Count the same way every night
Notes by denomination, then coins, then whatever's tucked under the tray. A fixed routine turns counting into something you finish in three minutes instead of something you redo twice because you lost your place.
Write the figure down before you compare it to anything. If you look at the expected number first, you'll count towards it without meaning to. Everyone does.
The usual suspects
Roughly in the order they turn out to be the answer:
- A UPI sale rung up as cash. The most common one by a distance. The money is in your phone, not in the drawer.
- Money taken out and not noted. Paying the delivery boy, sending someone for tea, giving change to the shop next door.
- Udhaar marked paid when it wasn't, or a payment received and never entered.
- Change given wrong during a rush. Usually small, usually honest.
- Yesterday's closing was wrong, so you've spent tonight chasing a gap that started before you opened.
Note the small takings when they happen
The ₹200 you pulled out at four o'clock is invisible by nine. Every shop has these, and they're the single biggest reason an honest drawer doesn't tally. Note them as they happen — at closing you genuinely will not remember.
Keep cash and online separate in your head
The day you started taking UPI, "today's sales" and "today's cash" became two different numbers. A drawer that's ₹5,000 light isn't short if ₹5,000 came in by UPI. Plenty of shopkeepers spend an hour hunting a gap that was never a gap.
Let the book keep itself
What makes this quick is a day book that fills itself as you bill — sales, udhaar received, expenses paid, money taken out, all in one running balance with cash and bank kept apart. Then closing is a single comparison instead of an investigation.
BazarBook has a cash book that works this way: sales, udhaar payments, expenses and supplier payments flow into it as they happen, and deposits or withdrawals take a second to note, so the expected cash figure is already sitting there when you close. (Cash book is on the Medium plan.)
Try BazarBook free for 7 days and stop hunting for the gap.