Guide to the cashier shift close in a hotel restaurant

In your hotel’s restaurant, the shift close almost always balances in total and almost never tells you who balanced it. Two cashiers share a drawer, one collects the terrace and the other the bar, and at eleven at night the controller receives a single envelope with a single signature. When money is missing, there is nobody to ask. The close by cashier exists so that there is always somebody to ask.

Close by cashier and close by revenue center: two different questions

The close by revenue center answers what was sold and where: how much the restaurant made, how much the bar, how much the pool. It is the number the food and beverage manager cares about and the one that feeds the USALI report. There is a separate guide on that close (A guide to the shift close by revenue center in a hotel).

The close by cashier answers something else: who collected, with which payment method, and how much cash that person must hand over at the end of the shift. It is the number the hotel controller cares about, because it is the one that turns a sale into money with a name attached. A serious hotel does both closes and crosses them: the sum of the cashier closes for a revenue center has to equal the close of that center.

In a hotel restaurant this separation matters more than in a street restaurant, because a large part of the sales generates no cash at all: it is posted to the room and collected at the front desk on check-out. The restaurant cashier should not answer for that money, but must answer for the cash that did pass through their hands. The close by cashier is the only way to separate the two without an argument.

The five numbers of the close

Every cashier close, in any hotel, comes down to five figures. If your form has more columns, somebody added them out of habit. If it has fewer, something is missing and you will notice it the day there is a shortage.

Look at the column of who produces it. The cashier counts; the system calculates; the supervisor witnesses. When the same person does all three, the close is a statement, not a control.

Step by step, from the start of the shift to the signatures

This is the order that works in a hotel restaurant with two or three cashiers a day. There are no optional steps. Skip one and the variance stops meaning anything.

1. Assignment: the supervisor assigns each cashier a physical drawer and a personal login in the point of sale. Nobody collects under someone else’s login, not even “just for a moment”.
2. Float: the cashier counts the float in front of the supervisor, both sign, and the amount is recorded in the system as that cashier’s opening, with the time.
3. Collections: every closed check is tied to the login of the cashier who collected it and to the payment method. A room charge is tied to the guest folio and does not add to cash.
4. Cash drops: when the drawer goes over an agreed amount, the cashier hands cash to the supervisor with a slip signed by both. The system subtracts it from the expected amount.
5. Blind close: at the end of the shift, the cashier counts the cash in the drawer and enters the total without the system having shown how much there should be.
6. Variance: the system compares counted against expected and shows the variance. If it is not zero, the cashier writes an explanation right then, not the next day.
7. Signatures: the cashier, the supervisor who witnessed the count, and the person receiving the cash sign, which in many hotels is the night front desk or the controller.
8. Handover: cash and tips go in separate envelopes with the close number. The envelope is opened only in front of the person receiving it.

Why the close has to be blind

If the cashier sees the expected cash before counting, the count will always match. Not out of bad faith, but because counting is tedious and when you already know the answer you tend to arrive at it. And if there is bad faith, the expected amount on screen tells them exactly how much can go missing without being noticed.

The blind close changes this at the root. The cashier counts what is there, enters it, and only then sees the variance. An honest cashier has nothing to lose. A cashier with a shortage can no longer adjust the count. It is the cheapest control there is to implement and the one that meets the most resistance, precisely because it works.

In a hotel restaurant there is an extra argument: the blind close protects the cashier. When the count is done with the expected amount in view and always balances, the first time a large shortage appears nobody believes them. With a history of blind closes that balance, that same cashier has months of evidence on their side.

An illustrative example with numbers

The figures below are made up to show the calculation. They do not belong to any hotel. Imagine a night-shift cashier in a hotel restaurant, with their own drawer and one cash drop halfway through the shift.

Card sales and room charges do not enter the expected cash, although they do enter the cashier’s total sales, which in the example is 14,300 plus 9,200 plus 6,500, that is, 30,000. Of that total, only 14,300 went through the drawer as bills. And of those, 8,000 were already dropped. What should be there at close is 8,300, and there is 8,180. It is 120 short.

One hundred and twenty is not much. The amount is not the point: the point is that it now has a name, a time, a shift and an explanation written by the cashier at the moment. If the same cashier repeats a similar shortage three shifts in a row, you have a pattern and not an anecdote. If it does not repeat, you have a change-making error and a cashier who knows the drawer is checked.

What does not enter the expected cash

Most arguments about the close in a hotel come from putting things into the expected amount that are not cash in the drawer. This is the list of what stays out and where each item goes.

• Room charges: they go to the guest folio and the front desk collects them on check-out. For the restaurant cashier they are sales, not money.
• Company accounts: they go to the agreement statement and are collected from the company at month end.
• Cards: they go to the bank, not to the drawer. They are reconciled separately, against the voucher or the terminal batch.
• Cash tips: they belong to the staff. They are counted in a separate envelope and never mixed with the expected amount.
• Authorized comps and discounts: they reduce sales, not cash. If a discount was applied after collecting in cash, it is a refund and needs its own slip.

A point of sale built for hotels separates these five things on its own, because it knows what a folio is, what an agreement is and what a tip is. How that separation is organized in the cash module is on the cash page (Cash and shift close).

Who signs and who keeps it

A close with one signature is a voluntary confession. A close with three signatures is a control. The three people who have to sign are the cashier who counted, the supervisor who witnessed the count, and the person who received the cash and took it to the safe or to the hotel’s general cash.

In a small hotel those three people can be the head server, the restaurant manager and the night front desk agent. What matters is not the job title but that they are different people and that none of them can modify the cashier’s checks after the close. The controller, the next day, does not count again: they check that the three signatures are there, that the variance has an explanation, and that the sum of the cashier closes matches the close of the revenue center. Exactly what they review is described on the controller page (Controller).

Common mistakes in a hotel restaurant

• A drawer shared by two cashiers “because there is only one register”. With a shared drawer there is no close by cashier, there is a close by drawer, and nobody answers for it.
• Counting with the expected amount on screen. The close always balances and says nothing.
• Putting tips in the drawer and taking them out at the end “from memory”. The variance stops being real from the first tip.
• Not recording cash drops in the system. The expected amount comes out higher than what is there and the cashier shows an invented shortage.
• Letting the pool bar cashier bring their cash to the restaurant drawer to “combine it”. That transfer leaves no trace and breaks both closes.
• Doing one close per day instead of one per shift. If two cashiers relieved each other, the daily close is already shared.

What to do this week

1. Count how many physical drawers you have per revenue center and how many people collect in each. Wherever there are more people than drawers, you know where to start.
2. Give every person who collects their own login in the point of sale. Eliminate shared logins today.
3. Print a form with the five numbers and the three signatures and use it on every shift, even if the system does not do it on its own yet.
4. Instruct supervisors to have the cashier enter the count before seeing the expected amount. If your system does not allow it, have the supervisor cover the screen while counting.
5. Define a cash drop threshold per revenue center and require a signed slip for every drop.
6. At the end of the week, gather each cashier’s closes and compare the sum against each revenue center’s close. Where it does not match, that is your first finding.

Inn Restaurant runs the cashier close with a blind count, recorded cash drops and the room charge kept out of expected cash, tied to the guest folio. If you want to see how a full shift is closed at your hotel, ask for a fifteen-minute demo (contact).