Hey everybody Ryan Gromfin here. Author, speaker, chef restaurateur, founder of www.TheRestaurantBoss.com as well as www.RestaurantProfitandPerformance.com. Welcome to part two, How to Handle Cash in Your Restaurant Properly Video Series.

If you have not watched Part 1, whether you’re on YouTube or if you’re on my website. Below this video there will be a link so you can go back and watch Part 1.

Watch Part 1 Now

I highly suggest you watch that before we get into this because we’re going to just carry on right where we left off. In the last video series we talked about your servers banks, how many drawers you should have in your restaurant, how to handle your safe and your petty cash in the back of the house. Then I talked a little bit about setting up your actual cash registers. I use the example of $300 each, but most importantly how it’s the same every day. But what I didn’t do is tell you exactly how I get those set up and how I make the deposits. That’s what we’re going to do today.

Setting up your Cash Drawers

I like to set up all my cash registers at $300. Now that may vary for you, but what’s most important is that it’s a consistent amount like I mentioned the other video.

Consistency is key to preventing theft!

When someone comes in and they’re handed a drawer, they will fill out exactly how many pennies, nickels, dimes, etc., they have to get the total cash. Now that should be the $300 of the person the night before set up for them, but they’re going to sign it that they actually got the $300. That way there’s no confusion or employees saying “My drawer must have been short.” They’re going to go ahead and sign that they got the drawer with the right amount of money in it. Now then let’s fast forward to the end of the day. So at the end of the shift—when the restaurant’s done. The manager is going to grab all the drawers, come on into the back. If servers use a bank? Then he’s going to check out all the servers—he or she is going to check out all the servers and use that petty cash that they have if they need to pay out additional or receive money, or build that up or down.

But when it comes to drawer, first thing I like to do is enter the sales for the day by category. Because this sheet is going to get handed over your bookkeeper and it’s going to become really really important for them. So I like to break down the category sales because usually you’re POS will do that between food, beverage, draft beer, bottle beer, wine, liquor, merchandise, etc., or whatever you track. But then also they should count their drawer and get total cash. Then they should subtract the opening cash— which in this case is $300, and they should write down the actual cash that should be in their drawer from the POS system. And then you will determine whether you’re short or over.

Now if you’re short or over. Please make the deposit exactly how you should. If you’re short, make the deposit short. If you’re over, make the deposit over. Don’t start manipulating your money because in your accounting system you’re going to record your real sales and then your short and over is going to go into a short and over account. And then you can audit that to see how it’s doing. But again, please don’t adjust your actual sales or make deposits differently by adding money or taking money out. It should go in exactly how it was for that day.

Then I go through my credit cards & my checks, the rest of this is pretty self-explanatory. But what’s important is that there’s a DSR—a Daily Sales Report filled out after every single day for each drawer. Some of you may have multiple drawers and you’re going to need to use this form for multiple different drawers. Now obviously wouldn’t have the category sales that only needs to go on one of the forms. But then once our cash register drawers are checked out our shorts and overages. Then what I do is I have my manager take any of the extra money. So what is actually the deposit for that day and checks, and put them into a Ziploc bag of sorts, (the banks will usually give you those sealable bags). We put the report from the POS system and we put this daily sales report into that bag. We create a deposit slip but don’t fill it out and then we don’t seal the bag we put it into the safe. Then the manager will go back and double count the drawer—make sure the drawer has the $300 starting for the next day. He or she will make change if we have to and then we’re done for the night. We close up for the night.

Now in the morning when my opening manager would come in, they will double check the deposit, if it’s correct they’ll fill out the deposit form, seal the bag put it back in the safe. And then as people start coming for their shifts, they’ll get handed a drawer and they’ll double check their drawer. Because remember this form—the left side of this form is filled out the night before.

Going to the Bank

Now the last part of this cash handling procedure is making change before going to the bank. this is really really important.  I always have a bank change request form, where we fill out what we’re taking to the bank to get changed and what kind of change we want. And this is just so we don’t forget or make mistakes at the bank; we can kind of double check ourselves and if there is a problem we can come back to it. Once the change comes back to the restaurant don’t forget we’re going to fill out that Petty Cash Change Form because it’s going to go into ‘PETTY CASH’.

Important Tips about Making Safe Bank Runs

I bought four or five different backpacks and purses and things and I always had him in the restaurant because I never wanted someone walking out of the restaurant with the same bag every day going to the bank. Now we went to the bank twice a week in our restaurant. It was always a different day, always a different time, and often times would be a different employee. That would be me, my wife, one of our managers… Sometimes we would put the deposit bags and the change into a to-go container and just give them a restaurant bag. But we never created a pattern.

I never wanted people to notice that, “Oh every Tuesday at 2 o’clock, someone walks out of the restaurant carrying a purple bag and that’s where all the money is.”

Plus, because of the way that we do this deposits where there’s a deposit bag or every single day, we didn’t need to go to the bank every day. We had enough money in the restaurant to make change and having a daily deposit mades reconciling at the end of the month a lot easier.

You can download these forms right below the video. Here, there’ll be a button or form for you to complete the download the forms that I showed you here today. Re-watch these videos a couple times. But if you implement these cash handling procedures in your restaurant? You are going to get more money into your pocket. You’re going to eliminate theft. You’re going to eliminate confusion. You’re going to eliminate a lot of the problems that come with handling cash.