It is essential to close all the registers in your store every day. If you have staff, make sure you have a closing process for every register, in every outlet, each day. This should include counting the cash takings and removing them from the cash drawer, summing up your card/EFTPOS machine, if required, and closing the register(s) in Retail POS.

This article will give you an understanding of what information is sent to Xero when you close your register and how to send your register closures to Xero. If you would like to skip to how to send your register closures to Xero, click here.

What information is sent to Xero when you close your register?

When you close a register in Retail POS, an accounts receivable invoice will be created in Xero. The invoice will include:

• Products sold: Depending on the setting you chose, this will either be summed per product or per account code, or listed per sale. The amounts will exclude tax.

• If you have Loyalty enabled:

  • Loyalty liability incurred and expense added when loyalty earned.
  • Loyalty liability reduced when redeemed (along with sale of product recorded).

• A note of the amount of payments taken for On account sales that day, (the payments will be shown on the account sale invoice instead), if the day's takings included any On account sales.

• Layaway/layby sales: These will be reported in parts, as they are paid off, as the Xero invoice for the register closure must have a $0.00 balance. Each time the customer makes a payment, the payment amount, along with a corresponding amount of the layby products, will be recorded in that day's register closures. This means you might see some strange quantities in Xero for these items. It is important to remember that the register closure report in Retail POS will still show the full value of the sale.

• Cost-of-goods-sold (COGS): If you have Retail POS's cost-of-goods-sold enabled the cost associated with the products sold will be added up and sent as part of the register closure. These will be posted to Xero as a COGS bill invoice and will also appear as a sum on your register closure summary in Retail POS. To learn more about this or about COGS in general, click here.

How does it work?

Closing the register in Retail POS:

• Click the Open/close register button on the Sell screen.
• The Close register page appears, with a summary of sales for the day, and a total for each payment type.
• Verify that the closing totals are correct by counting the cash in your cash drawer and closing your card processing machine, and then click Close register. 

Viewing and reconciling the closure in Xero:

• The register closure will now be sent to Xero. An accounts receivable invoice will be created for the register closure. Each payment total will be applied to the invoice as a payment.
• Any payments made toward On account sales will not be included in the register closure payment totals, as they have already been posted to the account sale's invoice.
• When your payment amounts are deposited into your bank account and appear in the bank feed, you'll be able to match them against the payment totals.

Check out this article for more information, too.

What about Lay-by/Layaway sales?

To keep your register closures balanced, layby sales are reported in parts each time you make a payment.

This means that the sale total may be spread across multiple register closure periods. Read more about this here.

What happens if I've made On account sales that day?

On account sales are created as a separate invoice so that they won't be included in your sales totals for the day. Otherwise, they would be counted twice. The same applies for payments. You'll see a line on the invoice created by the register closure debiting the payments taken that day so that the closure total is balanced. Read more about On account sales here.

What happens if I deposit my payments weekly (into my bank account) or for more than one register at once?

For many customers, the register closure payments will be included in a larger bank deposit, such as a weekly deposit or settlement from credit card processors. This means you'll need to match this payment to the invoice for all the applicable register closures. Check out Xero's help article for help with this.