Counting a drawer, getting out an invoice the purchasing department will not send back, following an opened can, taking a mobile payment without getting caught. Six methods you can apply tonight, with a notebook if that is all you have to hand. At the end of each guide, what COMZA does in your place.
At 7 pm, every dollar in the drawer must be explainable. Most of the time, the gap comes from money paid out that nobody wrote down. Count three minutes before the first customer, three minutes before pulling the shutter down.
The drawer is not your wallet, and nobody has a good memory at the end of the day. What comes in and what goes out gets written at the moment it moves.
Always the same starting amount: 120,00 $ in small notes and coins. Count, write, compare with last night. At 7:40 am, a gap can still be explained; at closing, nobody remembers anything.
Cash, card, transfer, mobile payment. Without that line, you have no idea what the drawer should hold. A customer who pays 30,00 $ in cash and 40,00 $ by phone: note both amounts, not the 70.
A can of cleaner bought from the neighbour, an advance of 20,00 $ to an employee, the taxi to go and fetch a part. Three words and an amount, straight away: −12,00 $ plastic bags. The payout nobody writes down looks, in the evening, like money gone missing.
By denomination, in piles of ten: you make fewer mistakes than in a heap. Write your total before looking at the expected figure. Otherwise the count adjusts itself to the hoped-for number, and you are no longer checking anything.
Expected 902,60 $, counted 900,60 $, gap −2,00 $. Write the reason, or "I do not know", and sign. Two dollars a night make 60,00 $ by the end of the month.
In COMZA, steps 1, 2 and 4 take one move on screen, and the evening gap is already worked out. You are left with the reason to type.
See COMZA's registerSeven details. One is missing, the customer's purchasing department sends the document back, and you are paid the month after. One forgotten registration number costs you thirty days of cash.
Hand the sheet to someone who knows neither you nor the customer. If he cannot find who sold, to whom, what, when, how much and how to pay, the document will come back to you.
The exact name you are registered under, the address, the phone, the email, your registration numbers. The legal name, not the sign painted on the window: that is the one the customer's accountant looks for.
Exact name, address, registration number if it is a company. An invoice addressed to "Mr Ibrahim" cannot be booked as an expense, and you will learn that three weeks later. Ask before you deliver.
Number in order, without skipping. A gap in the run suggests an invoice was pulled, and that is the first thing an inspector looks at. To cancel, do not rub out the number: issue a credit note.
The day you issue it, and the day you expect the money. Write the due date in full, 30/10/2026, rather than "30 days" that everyone counts their own way. With no due date, no invoice is late and you have nothing to chase.
One line per item or service, with the name the customer recognizes, the quantity and the unit price. " 4 h of fitting at 18,00 $ " goes down better than "labour: 72,00 $ ". For a practice, " 2 sessions at 34,00 $ ". The customer who redoes the sum in his head does not pick up the phone.
The discount in money, −5,00 $, never as a percentage: a calculation the customer redoes, he will end up disputing. Subtotal, discount, total to pay, on three separate lines.
Ask your tax administration once for the list of required details, taxes and late penalty included, and put them in your template. Finish with the means of settlement: transfer, mobile payment, or cash against a signed receipt.
In COMZA, those details are set once and for all: every invoice comes out complete, numbered in order, in the customer's language.
See COMZA's invoicesA drum of engine oil of 200 L sold by the litre, a carton of 24 bottles sold by the bottle: that is the most common case at the counter, and the one software handles worst. Five settings, once and for all.
The classic mistake: creating two separate products, "oil by the drum" and "oil by the litre". The two stocks each go their own way, and a month later neither is right.
Write what is inside: 200 litres in a drum, 24 bottles in a carton, 40 bags on a pallet. If it is not written, everyone does the conversion in their head, and two employees do not do it the same way.
Purchase price of the container, your margin, then the division. A paint can of 20 L bought at 28,00 $ and sold at 34,00 $ gives 1,70 $ per litre. Round off afterwards: you will see what the rounding takes from you or brings you.
That is the unit you buy in and the one you store in. "There are 12 cans left" can be checked by looking up. "There are 240 litres left", no.
There is always an open can at the counter, and that is the one people forget. Note what is left: 12 closed cans, plus 8 litres in the open one. That single line explains most stocktake gaps.
The threshold is not a round figure: it is what you sell while the order is on its way. 3 cans a day, 4 days on the road, so an alert at 12. Add enough to cover a late delivery, because there will be one.
In COMZA, the container is described once; the register converts at every sale, open one included.
See stock in COMZAThe money arrives on a phone, not in the drawer. In the evening, you no longer know whether the repair at 28,40 $ was paid or only promised. Five moves make that payment as solid as a note.
No transaction reference and no proof attached: the payment does not exist. A customer in good faith gives you his code without arguing.
Never in the same column as cash: the money is not in the same place and is not checked the same way. In the evening, you announce 842,60 $ in the drawer and 316,00 $ on the phone.
The customer gets a confirmation code. Ask for it, note it on the sale with the time. That is what saves you when the transfer is disputed two weeks later.
Photograph the confirmation screen and file the image on the sale, not in the phone gallery between two family photos. A proof you cannot find is worth nothing. On paper: the reference on the back of the copy, filed by date.
The mobile account statement against the list of sales paid that way. Both totals come out right, or else there is a sale taken with no reference, or a transfer that never left. Ten minutes.
A transfer started in front of you may only arrive the next morning. Neither paid nor cancelled: mark "payment pending" with the reference announced, then settle it the next day, confirmation or reminder.
In COMZA, the reference and the attachment are on the payment screen, and the "pending" state already exists.
See payments in COMZAMost register problems are organization problems. When three people touch the same drawer, the evening gap belongs to nobody. Four decisions to take once, then a quarter of an hour of review a week.
Everyone must know what he can decide alone and what he must get approved. An employee who has been given the rules in writing is also an employee nobody suspects when 40,00 $.
One person per drawer per day. Two in the same drawer, and the evening gap has no owner. To hand over at midday: close, count, reopen in the next one's name. Two minutes, and you know which half of the day the problem comes from.
Write them and post them near the register: a seller gives up to 5,00 $ alone, a floor supervisor up to 20,00 $, above that it is you. As an amount, never as a percentage. With no written cap, every discount becomes a negotiation with the customer, then with you.
A discount above the cap, a cancellation, a return or credit note, a cash payout. The rest slows the counter down without protecting anything. An approval that takes more than ten seconds will be worked around on the first busy Saturday.
Every sale, every discount, every cancellation, every cash-up carries a name and a time. Not to accuse anyone: so you can ask three days later what happened, and get a precise answer.
A quarter of an hour, the same day every week. Three figures per person: total taken, total of discounts, number of cancellations. Say what is going well too, otherwise the review turns into a tribunal and the figures start getting dressed up.
In COMZA, discount caps are attached to roles, the approval request reaches the manager's phone, and the report by seller is already ready on Monday.
See the roles in COMZAOne stocktake a year, eight hours on a Sunday, throws up gaps ten months old that nobody can explain any more. Count one aisle at a time, while the shop works.
One aisle a week instead of everything in one day. You count as many products over the year, but each gap is three days old and someone still remembers it.
Pull that aisle only, in shelf order, with an empty column for the count. Shelf order and not alphabetical: you count twice as fast. Hide the expected quantity, or it gets copied out without anyone looking at the shelf.
Before opening, or in the lull of the afternoon. Treat the stockroom and the sales floor as two different places, or the same cartons get counted twice. For open containers, note what is left inside.
A gap with no reason corrects a figure and teaches you nothing. Always the same words: breakage, expiry, theft, receiving error, register error. Five is enough; with fifteen reasons, nobody picks the right one.
Three causes cover nearly everything: a delivery received but never recorded, a retail sale badly converted from the container, goods thrown out without being noted. Look at those three before adjusting stock. Correcting straight away wipes out the trace of the problem, which will be back next month.
The 20 most expensive or most stolen items, every week. The bulk of the catalog once a month. The rest twice a year. A quarter of an hour a day covers most of the money you have in stock.
At the end of the month, add the gaps up in money, reason by reason. If expiry weighs 180,00 $ and all the rest 40,00 $, your problem is not theft: you are ordering too much, or taking batches out in the wrong order. Next month, order accordingly.
In COMZA, the list comes out in aisle order, the gap reasons are already in place and the cost of the month's losses is added up for you.
See losses in COMZAThese six guides fit in a school notebook — plenty of shopkeepers manage just fine that way. COMZA keeps them for you from the free plan on, which is never charged and ties you to nothing.