tills- do you count or somebody else

[danegrous_21]

well im starting to realize that places have you count your own till. im puzzled my this. at my first job cashier job at a grocery store(HEB, if you live in texas), i never counted any of my money, unless i needed change. all we had to do was pick up our till from a central till place that counted and did regular audits. this is the way its run to this day. but where i work now(im not a cashier, but know them) they have to count there own till and all of that stuff. wouldnt this cause problems and why not do it the way at heb, what do you do at where you work?

[symposes]

i worked at a grocery store that had us count our tills.
The office staff would recount them.
After a rash of thefts, they made us stop counting them.
But they said if the til came up short, we wouldnt get in trouble.
...weee...

[CanadaGirl]

We count our own tills at the beginning of our shift, and then balance at the end. Since our names go on our cash out envelopes at the end of the shift, I'd rather count mine myself, because if someone steals a twenty from my till and I don't realize it, and then I cash out at the end and I'm twenty short, I'd be the one to get in shit. Of course this is a small store, we only have 5 employees.

[Sofar]

I've never counted my register myself, and I have the suspicion that the register never actually does get completely counted, Boss-Man just grabs all the twenties and drops them off at the bank next door. And he only does that once every two or three days, so the register frequently has upwards of two thousand dollars in the drawer. Overnight. And we leave the key in the lock. And we don't have a surveillance system to speak of. My burger joint is very poorly-managed. I'd take advantage of this if my shoulder angel hadn't killed my shoulder devil two years ago.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

At the Kitty, the closing office person counts the tills, as they are left out from open until close. We're not assigned a particular till, we sign onto a register, run that register until breaktime/time to home/switch with someone else/whatever and then log off for the next person to sign on.

I was so used to one cashier/one till (as WD did for years and the cashier was responsible for the accuracy of the assigned till) but hey, I didn't create this polcy - I just follow it.

[CrazedClerk]

Where I work two people close up at night. Each counts their own till, then they swap and double check the counts. Seems to work pretty well.

[Greenday]

Well, at the pharmacy, the only time you counted money from the till was when we needed to get change. Otherwise, we had no business counting the money in the till.

At the racetrack on the other hand, we had to count our inventory at the beginning of the day for our stand, count the money at the beginning of the day to make sure we had the correct amount, count our stock at the end of the day, then count our money at the end of the day and see how much we were off. I liked to see how much I was off before going to the bosses and having them do it. If I was under, I could recount and save time. If I was over, well, yea, bosses were happy...If I was REALLY over and could find NO mistake, my co-workers and I would take a lil bit off the top to somewhat even it out. We wouldn't get yelled at for being so off and it'd make up for the less than minimum wage we got.

[Drakstern]

DGoddess: That sounds pretty much like how it was at Big Bear and Giant Eagle.

Big Bear you had an assigned till(with your name on it, even). You were responsible for making sure it was balanced at the start of your shift, then the office staff did pickups, counted it on your breaks and lunches, and balanced it at the end of the shift(though my understanding is some of the older stores had cashiers count pickups).

Giant Eagle was that the *register* had it's own till, pickups were done when necessary and fresh tills got switched in and out for audits.

Got to count on both systems, have to say that Giant Eagle's was far less frantic, but Big Bear's was more likely to catch thieves. It was also more insane because cash office had to A.) count the tills, B.) watch the service desk, C.) Do overrides, D.) answer the phones, E.) Run the break schedule and get people out on time and F.) Everything else. Especially if we had one particular manager who liked to sod off for about an hour at a time and responded to pages once in a blue moon.

Fun.

[Maevis]

When I first started working for the video store, the Opener would count all the tills and sign off on them. Later in the day, whenever a till was closed, the MOD would take it in the back, count it down and sign off on it.

Then the corporate policy changed, and whoever was on the till, counted the till before opening their register, and then counted the till down when they closed their register.

While this could be a PITA during shift changes, particularily if someone was a slow counter...I ended up liking the change of policy. Mostly because it made the person on the till responsible for their till. (You would be assigned a till and you would be the ONLY person allowed in the till). If I was going to be over or under, I didn't want to get in trouble for someone elses counting mistakes or sleights of hand.

Then again, we only had 5 tills. I would imagine that a store running 20 or more tills that were being manned by multiple people, counting your own till would not be very effective.

[AFpheonix]

We used to have to do it, and whenever I float to another store, especially a non-24 hour one, I count down my own till for the night. We got to the point where we couldn't LEAVE to take our tills back, it was so stinkin' busy.
So now, the closing AM handles it for us, we try to make sure all our credit/debit slips are organized and stapled for them.

[Retail Associate]

At my store the drawer is left in the register and any number of cashiers will work off that drawer during the day. Twice a day they do pick-ups of the larger bills so the amount of money in the drawer doesn't get too out of hand.

It was made very clear to us in training that we were not to count the money. The Service Coordinators are the only ones who do the counting and they actually weigh it rather than count it.

We used to have people in the cash office til at least 11:00PM but it closes at 1:00 or 1:30 in the afternoon now. So, from that point on the money/drawers are put in a podium that's right across from the check lanes. It's the most stupid thing I've ever seen. All that money sitting there in that podium.

[purplecat41877]

Where I work, the checkers aren't allowed to count their tills. Only the service desk employees are allowed to do that.

[Becks]

I've only worked at one place where I didn't count my own drawer. I didn't like it. I much preferred the places where I was the one counting.

Maybe I'm just paranoid?

[Kiwi]

we have one person count at the beginning of the day, and one at the end of the day, we usually have two people in the room, but theres only ever 3-4 people working on any given day, so cash up mistakes are pretty easy to trace back!

although I hate being on a shared register, my own tills have always always balanced (I triple check my change) I prided myself on a 100% balance rate....some of my co-irkers are so blaaze about the money!

[SuperDan]

At my current store, the tills are generally shared, then counted by the cash office person (who works overnight when the store is closed). If a drawer is over or short by $10 or more, every cashier that used that drawer gets a white slip of paper informing them of this. Three of these white papers to any one person will put you on audit. If you're on audit, you get your own till and both you and the CSM count it in and out. I think the over/short limit is lower when you're on audit, but I'm not sure since I'm never on audit and if I were it wouldn't matter because it's rare for me to run register more than once in a 30 day period anyway. If you're not on audit, you're still welcome to count your drawer as long as you can do it within the last five to seven minutes of your shift (the register can run a report at any time with a CSM code, and the cash office person leaves a calculator tape showing the starting balance), but nobody does this.

Oh yeah, and if so much as one hand not belonging to you comes near your till, you're not on audit that day. The CSM counts in, you count in, you work your shift, you count out, the CSM counts out while you watch. You know if the drawer is balanced, and you know nobody else screwed it up.

When I worked at K-mart, each person was responsible for their own cash. You had the option of counting it in and out if you wanted, but ultimately your over/shorts would be decided by the cash office's count. Still, unless you were under 18 and had someone else take over your drawer for an age restricted purchase, you were the only one who touched that money.