Daily Till Reconciliation Checklist for Pub Managers

By Zynthio. Published 7 October 2026. Editorial policy

General information for UK hospitality operators, not legal advice. If something here is wrong or out of date, the editorial policy explains how to report it.

A till reconciliation checklist for pub and restaurant managers, covering floats, lifts, X and Z reads, card batch totals, voids and variance.

A till reconciliation checklist is the fixed sequence of checks that turns a trading session into one signed figure: what the till says was sold, what is physically in the drawer and the safe, and what the card machine will settle. Working the same sequence every day makes a difference visible while the shift is still fresh.

What a till reconciliation checklist has to prove

Three things have to agree before a trading day closes: the sales the EPOS recorded, the money that arrived, and the reason for any gap. Where the business accounts for VAT under a retail scheme, that agreement has a legal shape and a name. HMRC's Point of Sale retail scheme notice says a daily gross takings record includes all cash payments as they are received and the full value, including VAT, of all credit or other non-cash retail sales at the time the supply is made. It adds that it is this figure, and not simply cash on hand, that a retail scheme uses to work out output tax due.

A checklist that only counts cash is not a reconciliation. One trading date has to leave behind:

• The trading figure from the till, split by VAT rate.
• The money by tender: cash counted, card settled, account and voucher sales.
• Every adjustment, with the evidence behind it.
• The names of the people who counted and who checked.

HMRC's record keeping notice counts records of daily takings such as till rolls among business records, and those are generally kept for at least six years. The background sits in cash handling and till reconciliation in hospitality.

Stage one: the opening float

The float is what makes every later figure attributable. If nobody proved what went into the drawer at open, a shortfall at close cannot be pinned to a terminal, a session or a person.

• Count the float by denomination before the first order, not during service.
• Use the same standing float every day, so the expected figure never has to be looked up.
• Record which terminal the float belongs to and who signed for it.
• Have a second person witness the count and initial it.
• Treat a shortfall at open as an incident in its own right, before trading buries it.

A float discrepancy is one of the few differences a retail scheme business may take off its daily gross takings, which is why it has to be written down when it is found. HMRC requires evidence to support any adjustment to that figure.

Stage two: mid-shift lifts and the X read

Cash left in a drawer all evening is both a security problem and a counting problem. Lift it when the drawer passes an agreed ceiling, and again at every handover.

• Set a drawer ceiling per terminal and lift above it, rather than when somebody remembers.
• Bag and seal the lift, and write the time, the amount, the terminal and both names on the docket.
• Take an X read at the lift: it reports takings so far and leaves the trading day open.
• Book the lift into the safe as its own movement, separate from the night's takings.
• At handover, count the drawer back down to the standing float before the next operator starts.

Two totals then exist for the same session: the till's running figure and the sum of the lift dockets. Where they disagree at close, the docket times narrow the search to a window rather than a whole trading day.

Stage three: the Z read and counting cash by denomination

The Z read closes the trading day. HMRC's record keeping notice describes it as showing the sales totals and a summary of relevant till actions for a trading day, sometimes known as the end of day report, with the takings recorded from it on a daily takings sheet.

• Take one Z read per terminal, after the last transaction and before any cash is counted.
• Count away from the floor, where the count cannot be interrupted or overlooked.
• Count by denomination and write the denominations down, not a single total.
• Lift the standing float back out and set it aside for the next session.
• Add the lifts already in the safe to the drawer count to reach cash takings.
• Have a second person recount and sign, and never let anyone witness their own count.

The denomination breakdown earns its extra minute: a shortage sitting entirely in twenty pound notes reads differently from one spread across coin.

Stage four: card batch totals against the EPOS card total

Card is where most unexplained differences live, because two systems record the same sale and only one knows about the gratuity. Close the day on the terminal, print the batch or settlement report, and set its card total against the card tender total on the Z read.

• Batch every terminal, including the spare used on a busy Saturday.
• Compare terminal by terminal rather than as one pooled figure.
• Strip gratuities added at the machine out of the card total before comparing.
• Check that a refund taken on the terminal has a matching refund on the till.

Card sales belong in the takings figure at their full value including VAT on the day the supply is made, not the day the money lands. Where a payment is later reversed, HMRC lists chargebacks among the items that may come off a retail scheme's daily gross takings. Sales data that lands during the day rather than the following week makes this a same-day check, as real-time EPOS data and restaurant decisions sets out.

Stage five: voids, refunds, no-sales and discounts

A Z read carries a summary of till actions as well as sales, and that summary is where a loss hides. Read it every day, by name.

• Go through voids, refunds, no-sales, price overrides and manual discounts line by line.
• Match each one to a person, a time and a transaction, never to a shift total.
• Require manager authorisation and a written reason for a refund taken after the customer has left.
• File the paperwork behind every adjustment, because HMRC requires evidence to support it.

There is a hard limit on what a reconciliation may do with a shortage. HMRC states that a business on a retail scheme must not reduce its daily gross takings for till shortages which result from theft of cash, fraudulent refunds and voids or poor cash handling by staff. Genuine till adjustments are treated differently: correcting mechanical faults, staff training and voids where a mistake has been made and corrected at the time of the error may be deducted. Where discrepancies between stock and sales stay unexplained, HMRC expects the business to consider whether unrecorded sales lie behind them and to add that value back.

Stage six: tips, variance and the banking run

Tips belong to the staff, and a cash-up that folds them into the sales figure gets both numbers wrong. Count cash tips separately, take card gratuities off the card total before it is set against sales, and record service charge on a line of its own. Whether a service charge sits inside the takings figure is not the same question as whether a voluntary tip does, and the venue's accountant should settle it.

The Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023 is an Act to ensure that tips, gratuities and service charges paid by customers are allocated to workers. Where they are paid on more than an occasional and exceptional basis, the employer must have a written policy on dealing with them for that place of business, and must maintain the record of how each one was dealt with for three years from the date it was paid. The Act extends to England and Wales and Scotland; fair tips and tronc allocation covers the distribution side.

Variance comes next. Set a tolerance in money, decide who hears about it at each level, and write both down before the first argument rather than after it.

• Inside tolerance: record the amount and the likely cause, and move on.
• Outside tolerance: recount, read the exceptions report again, and write a note naming the terminal and the session.
• Repeated variance on one terminal or one operator: escalate whatever the amount.
• Banking: no tolerance at all, because the bag and the paying-in slip have to agree.

Then prepare the banking: bag, seal, deposit reference, and the bag into the safe until the run. Carrying cash to a bank puts the carrier at risk. HSE guidance is that an employer must carry out a risk assessment to identify significant risks to workers and implement effective control measures, record the findings and review the assessment periodically. Varying the time and the route, and not sending one person out with a predictable bag, belong in that assessment.

The record an inspector will ask for

What survives is the file, not anyone's memory of the evening. One trading date should produce a Z read per terminal, a cash count sheet with denominations, the card batch reports, the exceptions report, the tips line, a variance note, the paying-in slip and two names against the sign-off. Business records for VAT purposes are generally kept for at least six years, and till rolls and Z readings are among the underpinning records that have to be retained.

Zynthio's cash office writes one append-only ledger of typed rows, with no edit, no delete, corrections as adjustments and all balances derived. It holds multiple safes per site plus rolling till floats tied to a specific EPOS terminal, records counts with a denomination breakdown that move no money under a rule that nobody witnesses their own count, and carries a £5 variance tolerance by default with zero on banking. The daily cash-up runs per site with takings by tender, payouts, covers, labour from the rota and a Z-read photo. Zynthio's own till runs with pilot sites and is not on general sale, so the cash-up works alongside the EPOS the venue already has. See how the cash office and the daily cash-up fit together.

See how Zynthio handles this