Closing the till

[Cavecloth]

How do you manage your coin change at the end of the sales day? I was told by a neighbor to never leave money in your store overnight and to leave the empty cash drawer on the checkout counter in plain sight to be safe.

The bills are easy to manage, but taking care of the coins is a pain.

What's the most efficient way to do it?

Thanks for any advice you can send my way.

[tinker9696]

I was told to leave the bank in the draw in hopes that if you are robbed they will take that and be satisfied and maybe go on their merry way..not a large bank of course and was told to leave the draw open so they don't have to destroy the register to open it. Its half a dozen of one and six of the other..just a matter of preference I suppose. Sophisticated Security/alarm systems are definitely a deterrent and now a days you can see your business from home with the cameras. Not really that expensive for the peace of mind that it provides in my opinion.

[Freelancier]

All this depends on the type of store and location.

[Patrysha]

Everywhere I worked with a till emptied the tills and put the $$ in the safe. All of the places I worked had small safes on site but there wasn't much in them, just the floats as the deposits were always taken to the bank at the end of day/shift.

[Harold Mansfield]

I've never worked anywhere that left money in the register over night. Most bars I've worked at only had quarters. I know that's not possible with retail with the sales tax and all. Normally we just had a coin separator and rolled them. Back in the day when video poker machines actually took coins, we had an auto coin roller.

[billbenson]

Ya, a good coin counter was the first thing that came to my mind.

Somewhat unrelated, but when I was selling on the East Coast of the US I went to Roanoke VA. Arrived late, got my rental car, went to the hotel and bed. The next day when I woke up, opened the car, and there was a bank drop bag in the door jam. Guess an employee forgot to go by the bank. I took it with me to the customer and we counted the money together. Then I called the manager for National Rent a Car. He gave me a lifetime free rental in Roanoke for as long as he was manager. I've never been back. There was over $2k in cash in that bag BTW.

[Brian Altenhofel]

Most (if not all) large retailers empty the registers at the end of each employee's shift. Some leave the empty tray on top of the counter, others put it back in the register. It really depends.

Some empty their registers on a regular basis throughout the day, usually at the employee's discretion with a guideline policy in place (as in "we'd like you to reset your till when you've got $2K in cash, but just call a manager when you have an uncomfortable amount because we can't really expect you to always know how much you have), though the high traffic registers (tobacco) didn't get switched out for each employee. I remember doing a $35K midnight cash pull on one of those in a store that did ~$1M in daily total sales.

Some retailers do their deposits at the end of the day, others wait until first thing in the morning. I'll never forget the experience of being a $7.60/hr employee getting to do a six-figure drop for a large retail store that had a shortage of management due to illness on the morning after one of the busiest days before Christmas...