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The five things that make one entry, how to close and cash up a trading day, and why the takings, the drawer and what the day earned are three different numbers.
Paper packet. Every task here also exists on screen, where it is checked automatically; answers written on paper are not assessed by Nydus. When you are back at a device, enter your answers there.
You will write a trading day down so that it can still be read next month: one entry carrying the date, what it was, how much, how it was paid and who owes it if nobody has, and the day's takings, cash, card and drawer kept apart as separate figures. You will also cash up — compare the counted drawer with what the record says — and find the missing entry when they differ.
You can tell the business's money from your own, which is what makes a record worth keeping, and you know that revenue, profit and cash are three different figures. This lesson is the record itself: what one entry contains, how a trading day is closed, and which of the day's numbers each figure is — so the month can be added up later without guessing.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Entry | One line of the record: date, what, how much, how paid, and who owes it if nobody has paid. |
| Takings | What the day sold at the prices charged, whatever form the money arrived in. |
| Drawer | The cash on the premises at close. |
| Paid out | Money taken from the drawer during the day for a purchase, recorded as its own entry. |
| Owed | A sale nobody has paid for yet: still a sale, not yet money. |
| Cashing up | Counting the drawer at close and comparing it with what the record says it should hold. |
| Over or short | The difference between the counted drawer and the expected one. |
Nobody keeps a record because records are good. A record exists because in five weeks somebody will ask what last month took, what it cost and who has still not paid, and memory cannot answer any of those.
Five things make an entry. The date, so it can be placed in time. What it was, so it can be grouped with the others like it. How much. How it was paid, because cash and card do not arrive in the same place or at the same moment. And, where nobody has paid yet, who owes it — the field that gets left out and the one that costs the most.
The three figures a day produces are not the same number. What was taken is the day's sales at the prices charged. What is in the drawer is the cash that came in, less anything paid out of it — the card money was never in there. What the day earned is the takings less what the day cost. Calling the drawer either of the others understates a good day.
Another way: steps
Closing a trading day, in order:
Another way: table
A notebook page with five columns.
| Date | What | How much | How paid | Owed by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12th | 35 lunch boxes | 280 | cash | |
| 12th | 25 lunch boxes | 200 | card | |
| 12th | vegetables | −48 | from drawer | |
| 12th | office order, 10 boxes | 80 | not yet | Harbor Office |
Write each entry when it happens, or at the latest at close. An entry written the same day is accurate; one reconstructed on Sunday from the bank statement misses the cash and the unpaid.
Close the day in five steps. Work out the takings from units and price, or from the register total. Split them into cash and card, and check the two add back. List anything paid out of the drawer. Count the drawer. List anything sold and not paid for, with the name of who owes it.
Cash up. The drawer should hold the opening float, plus the cash sales, less the payments out of it. Count it. If the count matches, the record is complete for cash. If it is short or over, something moved without an entry: change given wrong, a payment not written down, a note taken for the household without a drawings entry. Find it that evening, while the day is still remembered.
Check the card figure next day. The card processor's statement should show the card takings, less its fee, arriving in the account a day or two later. If the figures differ by more than the fee, an entry is wrong.
Check the owed list weekly. Every name on it should either have paid, with an entry saying so, or be chased. An owed list that only grows is a problem the takings figure will never show.
How it was paid looks like fussiness until the first time it is missing. Cash is in the drawer now; card money arrives later, in a batch; a sale on credit has not arrived at all and will not unless somebody chases it. Three sales of the same size, recorded identically, become three different facts about the week — and the field that separates them takes one word.
It is also what lets a record be checked. Count the drawer against the cash you recorded; if they disagree, something is missing and you can find it that evening. A notebook with five columns — date, what it was, how much, how paid, owed by — does everything this lesson asks for.
The five fields are what matter, not the tool that holds them. A paper notebook with ruled columns works for a stall with thirty sales a day. A spreadsheet adds the totals automatically and makes the month easy to add up. A point-of-sale app or a bookkeeping program can record the card sales by itself and pull in the bank statement, leaving the owner to add the cash, the paid-outs and the owed list.
Whatever the tool, three habits keep it reliable. Use the same categories every time — stock, pitch, fuel — so the month can be grouped without reading every line. Keep the receipts for every payment out, in date order, so any entry can be checked against the paper. Close every trading day, even the quiet ones; a gap of a week is where entries go missing.
Many owners start with a notebook and move to software when the number of entries makes adding up by hand slow. The move is easy if the notebook already has the five columns, and painful if it does not, because the software will ask for exactly the fields the notebook left out.
Daily entries are only half the point; the other half is that they add up. At the end of a month, the record should let the owner produce four figures in an hour, without guessing.
Total sales: every sale entry in the month, paid or owed. Money received: the cash and card entries, plus any owed sales that were paid during the month. Costs by category: the payments out, grouped by the categories written on each entry — stock, pitch, fuel, phone. Still owed: the owed list at the month's end, with a name against every amount.
These four are the raw material for the next lessons: the profit and loss statement is built from sales and costs, and the cash forecast from money received, money still owed and the bills to come. An owner whose daily entries carry all five fields finds both of those lessons easy; one whose entries do not finds they cannot be done at all, because the figures they need were never written down. The daily habit is small, and it is what every later calculation stands on, and the one thing no later calculation can make up for once the month has gone by.
A cheese-maker sells at two farmers' markets a week. For her first season she writes only the takings on a calendar: Sat 640, Wed 310. At the end of the season the calendar adds to 19,400, but her bank account received only 15,900 of it, and she cannot work out why.
The next season she keeps a five-column notebook. By the first month's end the difference is visible. About a third of her takings were card sales, which arrived two days later less a 1.7 percent fee — small, but 110 dollars a month she had never counted. She had been paying the market fee, ice and parking out of the cash box, around 180 a week, none of it written down. And two cafés buying wholesale had been paying at the end of the month, sometimes late: 460 was owed at the end of June by one of them, which she chased and received.
With the paid-outs, the fees and the owed list on the page, her takings and her bank account reconcile to within a few dollars each month. More usefully, she can see that Wednesday markets take half what Saturdays do but carry the same fee and the same day of her time, which is a question she could never have asked of a calendar of totals.
Shops cash up every register at close, comparing the counted cash with what the register system says should be there. Small differences are recorded as over or short, and a pattern of shortfalls on one register or one shift is investigated. The reason is the one in this lesson: a difference found that evening can be explained, and one found at the end of the month cannot.
The drawer is the day's takings. It is the cash that came in less what was paid out of it, and the card money was never in it.
Takings are what the day earned. Takings are money in; what the day earned needs the costs taken off. Two questions, two figures.
I will remember it. Not in five weeks, across sixty small transactions. The entries that vanish first are the unpaid ones, because nothing moved in any account.
An unpaid sale is not a sale yet. It is a sale, and it is not yet money. Record it, record that nobody has paid, and record who.
A short drawer is bad luck. It is a missing entry, and the evening is the only time it can be found.
Taking money out is an expense. It is the owner taking money out, on its own line. Among the costs it makes the week look like a loss.
Find the takings: 14 crates at 25.
$14 \times 25 = 350$
Units and price, before any question of payment.
Find the cash part: 9 crates paid in cash.
$9 \times 25 = 225$
The cash sales.
Find the card part.
$350 - 225 = 125$
Everything else arrived by card.
Take off the 120 paid from the drawer to restock.
$225 - 120 = 105$
The drawer at close.
Name the three figures.
$350 \text{ taken}, \ 105 \text{ in the drawer}, \ 125 \text{ to come}$
Counting the drawer and calling it the day would lose most of it.
Find the counter takings: 60 boxes at 8.
$60 \times 8 = 480$
The counter's sales.
Split them: 35 paid cash, 25 by card.
$35 \times 8 = 280; \quad 25 \times 8 = 200$
The split must add back to 480.
Take off 48 of vegetables paid from the drawer.
$280 - 48 = 232$
The drawer should hold this.
Record 10 boxes for an office that pays monthly.
$10 \times 8 = 80 \text{ owed by Harbor Office}$
A sale with no money yet, and a name beside it.
Find the day's total sales.
$480 + 80 = 560$
Everything sold, paid or not.
Count the drawer: 232.
$232 - 232 = 0$
No difference, so the cash record is complete.
Write the day's cash sales from the record.
$\text{cash sales} = 260$
Repairs paid in cash.
Add the opening float of 50.
$260 + 50 = 310$
The drawer started with change in it.
Take off the 35 paid from the drawer for adhesive.
$310 - 35 = 275$
What the drawer should hold.
Count the drawer.
$\text{counted} = 255$
Twenty dollars short.
Find the difference.
$275 - 255 = 20$
Money that moved without an entry.
Check the receipts from the day.
$\text{a 20 receipt for screen wipes, not written down}$
The missing entry, found the same evening.
Add the entry and recount.
$310 - 35 - 20 = 255$
The drawer and the record now agree.
Find the takings: 18 mugs at 20.
$18 \times 20 = 360$
Units times price.
12 were paid in cash. Find the cash and the card parts.
$12 \times 20 = 240; \quad 360 - 240 = 120$
The split adds back to 360.
She paid 30 from the drawer for the pitch. Find the drawer at close.
Four entries from one week's record. Say what each one is.
| A sale | A purchase | Money the owner took out | Money the owner put in | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Twelve mugs sold at the stall on Saturday | ||||
| A sack of clay bought from the supplier | ||||
| Two hundred dollars moved from the business account to the household account | ||||
| Three hundred dollars of the owner's savings paid into the business account |
Complete the worked solution: a stall sells $65$ items at $10$ dollars; $12$ are paid in cash and the rest by card, and $38$ dollars is paid out of the drawer for supplies. Close the day.
Find the takings.
$65 \times 10 =$ t
Units times price, before any question of payment.
Find the cash that came in.
$12 \times 10 =$ h
The cash sales at the price.
Find the card money.
$(\text{takings}) - (\text{cash}) =$ k
Everything not paid in cash arrived by card.
Find the drawer at close.
$(\text{cash}) - 38 =$ d
The drawer holds only cash, less what left it.
Name the three figures.
$\text{taken}, \ \text{in the drawer}, \ \text{with the card processor}$
Three different numbers from one day.
Takings at Northside Repairs were $300$ dollars, the drawer holds $10$ at close, and $90$ was paid out of the drawer during the day for five screens from the supplier. How many dollars came in by card?
Answer:
One line of a record has five things in it. Put them in the order you write them down.
Number the steps in order (write the number in the box):
Monica's record for Saturday shows $167$ dollars of cash sales and $51$ dollars paid out of the drawer for bags and change. At close she counts $98$ dollars in the drawer. By how many dollars is the drawer short of what the record says it should hold?
Answer:
One trading day at Maya's Ceramics, written up at close. The units, the price and the one payment made out of the drawer are given. Fill in the rest, in dollars.
| Amount | |
|---|---|
| mugs sold | 12 |
| Price of one mug, dollars | 25 |
| Takings for the day, dollars | |
| Of which paid in cash, dollars | |
| Of which paid by card, dollars | |
| Paid out of the drawer for a sack of clay, dollars | 30 |
| Cash in the drawer at close, dollars |
A tutor gave $8$ lessons this week at $60$ dollars each. Her record now has a *how paid* column, and it shows that $5$ of the lessons have not been paid for yet. How many dollars did the week actually bring in?
| Amount | |
|---|---|
| Lessons paid for | |
| Money received this week, dollars | |
| Still owed for the week, dollars |
Lesson test: one question per skill, one attempt each, no hints. Your answers are checked when you submit.
One trading day at Bright Home Cleaning, written up at close. The units, the price and the one payment made out of the drawer are given. Fill in the rest, in dollars.
| Amount | |
|---|---|
| standard cleans sold | 4 |
| Price of one standard clean, dollars | 64 |
| Takings for the day, dollars | |
| Of which paid in cash, dollars | |
| Of which paid by card, dollars | |
| Paid out of the drawer for cleaning solution and cloths, dollars | 22 |
| Cash in the drawer at close, dollars |
You can write one entry with all five of its parts, separate a day's takings from what is in the drawer, and cash up. Tell someone why counting the drawer at close understates a day that was mostly paid by card. Next: how the money arrives — cash, card and digital payments, and what each one costs the business.
15. Your turn: Maya closes a market day, step 3
$240 - 30 = 210$
Not the takings of 360, and not what the day earned.