Register

This standard governs the register: the point of sale where counter sales happen at the salon front desk, at pop-up events, and anywhere staff sell face to face. The register produces the fullest bookkeeping of any sale path on the Platform and carries the strictest safeguards, because counter sales move fast and mistakes at the counter accumulate by end of day. Register Operators run sales and the end-of-day drawer count; the Accounting Operator reviews register totals against the books; the Accounting Manager owns every drawer difference that cannot be explained on the day. The sale entry the register builds is described in Sales.

What the register computes

A register sale produces one balanced journal entry built from the sale's components. The register computes total debits and total credits independently, and if they differ by even a cent, the sale is stopped: no partial posting, no unbalanced entry. The safeguard exists because an unbalanced sale once passed through earlier handling and concealed understated revenue: balance cannot reliably be verified after the fact, so it is enforced at the moment of sale.

The entry, every time

1. Payment-method accounts debited: cash and check to the cash drawer, card to checking, and a gift-card tender relieves the gift-card liability instead of touching cash. The gift-card routing is deliberate: an older practice recorded gift-card tenders to checking, which overstated the bank and left the liability standing after redemption. The debit is the sale total, not the tendered amount; change due is a separate cash-out, not part of the revenue entry.
2. Customer deposits debited for any booking deposit applied: the deposit was collected earlier and has been held in the liability account; applying it relieves the liability against the revenue below. Without this line the entry is short by exactly the deposit amount and the safeguard stops the sale. See Deposits.
3. Cost of goods sold debited, inventory credited: the register is the only sale path that recognizes cost at the moment of sale.
4. Sales discounts debited: kept separate so gross revenue stays visible; net revenue is gross minus discounts.
5. Revenue credited at the gross subtotal, and sales tax payable credited for the tax, under Taxes.

A tip folded into the tendered amount is limited so it cannot unbalance the entry.

Tenders and card payments

1. Cash and check are simple: the drawer opens, the money goes in, and the record keeps the tendered amount and the change.
2. Card payments follow one of four paths: keyed entry, payment link, card on file, manual entry: and each passes through a pending-charge record: authorize first, finalize on success, with the same journal posting as a completed cash sale.
3. A card payment that authorizes but never finalizes is not a sale; it is an authorization that will expire. Where a receipt printed but the sale never completed, the operator checks the pending charges for an orphaned authorization before running the card again. Running it again creates a duplicate, and the customer receives two authorizations.
4. Double-submission protection records each sale attempt for 24 hours and blocks the same submission twice. Where the register appears to do nothing on a second tap, the protection is working; the operator checks whether the first attempt completed before retrying. The protection covers the register submission, not the card authorization: a re-run card after an unclear failure is a separate risk, addressed below.

The end-of-day discipline

1. Count the drawer before closing. Expected cash equals the opening float plus cash sales minus cash refunds minus cash paid out, all from the register's shift records.
2. Record any difference in a cash over/short record: never in the sales figures. A drawer that does not balance is investigated, not adjusted: recount; check for tenders keyed to the wrong method (a card sale rung as cash is the classic); check for refunds paid from the drawer without a record.
3. Mid-day spot check. On busy days, count the drawer mid-shift without closing it. A mid-day count that agrees means the morning was clean, and any end-of-day difference belongs to the afternoon. The spot check takes two minutes and halves every investigation that follows.
4. Reconcile payment methods. The register's card totals shall match the processor's payout for the day, and the gift-card redemption totals shall relieve the liability by the same amount. Where card totals match the processor but the books do not, the sale posted operationally and its journal entry failed; the entry is posted manually under Troubleshooting (Accounting Troubleshooting).

Failure modes

1. Sale stopped by the balance safeguard. Something in the sale does not add up: usually a discount or tax line applied to one side, or a deposit applied whose amount does not match the held deposit. The operator corrects the components; the safeguard is reporting that the entry is wrong, and forcing it would post the wrong entry.
2. Duplicate charge from a re-run card. The submission protection blocks a repeated register attempt, but re-running a card after an unclear failure can authorize twice. The operator always checks pending charges for an orphaned authorization from the first attempt before re-running.
3. Drawer short with no explanation. After recounting and checking tender types, look at refunds: a cash refund paid from the drawer without a record is the most common unexplained shortage. Every cash movement requires a record, including the movements that feel like exceptions.
4. Gift-card tender that does not relieve the liability. Where a card was accepted but the liability balance did not fall, the tender was recorded to the wrong account somewhere in the sequence. The operator verifies the sale's journal lines by their source reference, under Gift Cards and Credits.

Controls

• No operator overrides the balance safeguard, edits a completed sale entry, or recreates a payment to produce a receipt; corrections follow Books by reversing entry.
• Every cash movement: sale, refund, payout from the drawer: carries a record at the time it happens. A refund from the drawer without a record is a control failure, not an informality, and refunds themselves are governed by the Returns and Refunds Policy.
• Separation of duties: the Register Operator who counts the drawer does not reconcile the register totals to the bank; the Accounting Operator performs that reconciliation under Banking.
• Drawer differences are recorded as over/short and investigated the same day; they are never absorbed into sales, discounts, or tips.

Records created and where they are kept

Register sale records and their journal entries, pending-charge records, submission-protection records, shift and drawer-count records, and cash over/short records are kept in the commerce and accounting records and retained under the Regulatory Record Retention Policy.

Escalation

An unexplained drawer difference, a duplicate customer charge, or a sale the safeguard repeatedly stops goes to the Accounting Manager the same day. Register or card-payment system failures go to support@aapawz.com. Suspected theft or legal process goes to legal@aapawz.com on the day it arises.

Review cadence

Drawer counts happen daily and at mid-shift on busy days. The Accounting Manager reviews over/short records weekly and reviews this standard whenever the register's posting or tender handling changes.