POS screen and cash register in Skyline Nexus ERP

Running the POS screen and cash register, in brief

A cash register in Skyline Nexus ERP is the shift a cashier works: it opens with a starting float, tracks every sale and payment made at that till, and closes with a cash count that is checked against what the day's takings say should be there. The POS screen is where the sales themselves happen, from adding items to taking payment.

This guide covers the till itself, not the ledger behind it: opening and closing a register, the buttons on the POS screen, the payment methods on offer, holding a sale instead of losing it, and the report that lists every register a business has ever run. Our guide on how to record a sale covers what a finished sale posts to the general ledger, line by line.

Before you start

A cashier needs sell.create or direct_sell.access to open a sale at all, and access to the business location the till belongs to. View cash register and Close cash register are separate permissions that decide who can inspect or close a till mid-shift, and are usually kept away from junior cashiers on a till where a supervisor does the count instead. Decide each till's starting float before the first shift, and check that Business Settings, Payment Methods for that location has the payment types the till actually accepts switched on, since only enabled methods appear at checkout. A business running more than one till at the same location should also agree who counts which drawer, so a variance is never split across two cashiers by accident.

• sell.create or direct_sell.access, to open a sale at all
• Access to the business location the till belongs to
• View cash register, to see a running total mid-shift
• Close cash register, to close the till and submit the count

Opening a cash register

Choose Sale, then POS. With no register already open, Skyline Nexus ERP shows Open Cash Register instead of the till: pick the Business Location (skipped automatically with only one), type the Starting Cash in Drawer, then choose POS, R-POS or S-POS. All three open the register with that starting float at that location; they only differ in which screen opens next, standard retail, restaurant or supermarket. Only one register can be open per user at a time, so choosing POS again mid-shift goes straight back to the same till instead of asking to open a new one.

The starting float typed in is recorded against the register itself, as an opening cash entry on that register, not as a ledger entry; it is simply the number the closing count is measured against later.

The POS screen: building a sale

Search or scan a product into the cart, adjust its quantity or a line discount, and pick or add a walk-in customer. Beyond an ordinary sale, three buttons hold work instead of finishing it: Draft keeps an incomplete cart for later, Quotation raises a price quote with no stock effect, and Order on Hold parks the ticket. None of the three uses up an invoice number; our guide on quotations, sales invoices and returns covers what each is for and how one becomes an invoice. Where a business weighs products at the till, our guide on weighing-scale barcodes covers scanning a scale label into the cart.

When the cart is ready, Finalize Payment opens the payment screen. Skyline Nexus ERP calculates line tax and any order-level charge the same way whether the sale started on this screen or on the plain Add Sale screen, which our guide on how to record a sale explains in full.

Payment methods and finalising the sale

The payment screen offers Cash, Card, Cheque, Bank Transfer, Other and up to seven Custom Payment types a business can rename, plus Advance to apply a customer's existing credit; only the methods switched on for the till's location appear. A sale can be split across several of these in one Finalize Payment, useful for part cash and part card. The payment itself is recorded as its own document, separate from the invoice, exactly as our guide on how to record a sale describes.

• Cash, Card, Cheque, Bank Transfer, Other
• Up to seven Custom Payment types, renamed per business
• Advance, to apply a customer's existing credit balance

Suspending and resuming a sale

Suspend holds a part-built sale instead of losing it: it asks for a Suspend Note, then files the ticket away with its items and any customer already chosen intact. View Suspended Sales, a button in the POS header, lists every held ticket with its date, customer, note, item count and total; Edit Sale loads a suspended ticket straight back into the cart to finish, and Delete removes it for good.

Suspend is for a genuinely interrupted sale, a customer stepping out or a queue that needs clearing quickly. A sale that is simply unfinished business, a customer deciding overnight, is usually a Draft or a Quotation instead, both covered in our guide on quotations, sales invoices and returns.

What a POS sale posts to the ledger

A finished POS sale posts exactly like any other final sale. With Auto-post Sales Transactions on, Skyline Nexus ERP debits a cash-sales clearing account (or Accounts Receivable when the sale is not fully paid), credits revenue per product category and output VAT, then debits cost of goods sold and credits inventory at the consumed stock lot's cost. Our guide on how to record a sale walks through that posting in detail; here is one worked example specific to a till.

An Ontario hardware store sells one garden hose for CAD 40.00 plus 13% HST, CAD 5.20, for CAD 45.20 cash; the hose cost CAD 22.00 to buy. Skyline Nexus ERP labels the tax account VAT Output Account in Settings even where, as in Canada, the local tax is called GST or HST.

• Dr Cash-sales clearing 45.20 / Cr Sales - Hardware 40.00 / Cr VAT output 5.20
• Dr COGS - Hardware 22.00 / Cr Inventory 22.00
• Check: 40.00 + 5.20 = 45.20; margin on the line is 40.00 - 22.00 = 18.00

Register Details while you work

Register Details, a button in the POS header, opens a running total for the shift so far without closing anything: Payments received, Total Refund and Expected Cash as headline figures, then a Payment Method table splitting Cash, Cheque, Card, Bank Transfer, Advance and Other into what came in from sales against what went out as expenses. Checking it mid-shift is the easiest way to catch a miscounted float or a missed refund before it turns into a bigger variance at close.

The same screen also shows a short Purchase and Sale summary scoped to this cashier's own register period, useful on a till that also takes small cash purchases or supplier payments during the day. None of this changes anything: it is a read-only view built from the same figures Close Register uses later, so a busy cashier can check the drawer is on track without interrupting the queue to close and reopen the register.

Closing the register: the cash-drawer reconciliation

Close Register opens the same breakdown as Register Details, then asks the cashier to count the drawer. Skyline Nexus ERP works out what should be there with one formula: Expected Cash in Drawer equals the Opening Float, plus Cash Sales, plus Opening Balance Receipts, called cash in, minus Cash Refunds, minus Cash Expenses, minus Cash Purchases, called cash out. The cashier types Counted Cash, Total Card Slips and Total cheques, can count the drawer by denomination, and sees a live Over / Short figure before submitting.

A till with a CAD 200.00 opening float that took CAD 1,340.00 in cash sales and CAD 60.00 towards an old balance, and paid out CAD 25.00 in cash refunds, CAD 40.00 in cash expenses and CAD 150.00 in cash purchases, should hold CAD 1,385.00. If the cashier counts CAD 1,370.00, the till is CAD 15.00 short, and a Closing Note is the place to record why before Close Register is submitted.

Closing a register never creates a ledger entry by itself: the update only changes the register's own status and stores the count, the card-slip and cheque totals and the note. Every debit and credit behind the day's takings was already posted, document by document, when each sale and payment was saved.

• Expected Cash = 200.00 + 1,340.00 + 60.00 - 25.00 - 40.00 - 150.00 = CAD 1,385.00
• Counted Cash 1,370.00; Over / Short = 1,370.00 - 1,385.00 = CAD 15.00 short

The Register Report

Reports, Register Report lists every register session a business has run, filterable by User, Status and Date Range: Open Time, Close Time, Location, User, Total Card Slips, Total cheques, Total Cash, Total bank transfer, Total advance payment, each Custom Payment column, Other Payments and a Total, with a link into that session's own detail view. It is the fastest way to see which shift, which cashier and which till a variance belongs to, across a week or a month rather than one till at a time.

Common mistakes and how to fix them

Most till discrepancies come down to timing or habit rather than anything more serious, so work through the obvious causes before treating a variance as a loss or asking a cashier to make up the difference from their own pocket.

• Starting a shift with the wrong float typed in: the whole day's Over/Short shifts by the same amount, so fix the float once at the start rather than adjusting the count at close
• Treating Suspend as a way to remove an unwanted sale: Delete removes it properly, while a suspended sale keeps counting towards Payments received until it is finished or deleted
• Choosing POS, R-POS or S-POS out of habit rather than what the shift needs: the choice only decides which screen opens, but switching mid-shift means opening a second register
• Closing the register without checking Register Details first: a surprise Over/Short at close is often a refund or a cash expense nobody wrote down during the shift
• Expecting Close Register to balance the books: it records a cash count against the register, it does not post or adjust any ledger account