Fresh supermarket cash office - the daily takings deposit SOP: counted face to face, banked on a clock, every over/short logged to its own ledger

You are writing a cash-office SOP for a fresh-food supermarket
chain. Draft the "Daily Takings Settlement and Bank Deposit SOP."
I am the cash office clerk; the executors are me and the head
cashier. Output: an archivable page and a half, usable to train
new hires.

Scope: the full flow of each day's cash takings, from POS
close-out to bank credit. Mobile-payment streams appear only for
timing checks (section 3); channel reconciliation detail lives
outside this SOP.

Write by stage; every step states: who acts / what they do /
what to do when it goes wrong:

1. Handover (cashier -> cash office)
- After close, the cashier runs the system end-of-day, prints
  the settlement slip, and hands cash sorted by denomination
  to the cash office with the slip
- Two people count face to face: one machine recount, both
  sign the slip. "Hand it over and we'll reconcile tomorrow"
  does not complete a handover
- Any number that doesn't match gets recounted on the spot -
  nothing carries to the next day

2. Verification (cash office)
- Cash tendered + the day's mobile-payment stream = system
  daily sales. Mismatches get checked in a fixed order:
  same-day refunds posted cross-day, coupon redemptions by
  timestamp, petty-cash draws logged or not
- Difference = cash tendered - expected cash. Two tiers
  (threshold set by the store from its basket profile; the SOP
  carries a [normal-difference line] placeholder):
  Within the line: log to the over/short ledger, review the
  monthly trend, no same-day investigation
  Beyond the line: a cause by noon next day (camera review,
  entry review, ask the shift) - no cause means escalation
  to the store manager
- Petty cash reconciles separately: balance + logged draws =
  the fixed float. Short is short; "it's probably somewhere"
  does not exist

3. Deposit (cash office)
- Deposit deadline written in stone: banked within [deposit
  window] (same day, or within two hours of open next day -
  the store picks one, then never changes it)
- Large cash overnight is the exception, never the norm: if
  deposit truly can't happen - safe, amount recorded, manager
  notified in writing. All three actions or it doesn't happen
- Spending from the till is a red line: any "pay the supplier
  from today's takings / front some change" requires manager
  approval and a same-day ledger entry. The default answer is
  no; exceptions must leave a trail

4. Ledger (cash office, daily)
- Over/short ledger, one line per event: date / store /
  shift / amount (over positive, short negative) / cause /
  resolved? / outcome
- Monthly rollup page: total over, total short, unresolved
  count - for the manager. Same-direction shorts running
  for weeks are a scheduling or process signal

Output format:
- The four sections, stepwise, directly usable as training
  material
- Over/short ledger header template
- A one-page quick reference: the key times and red lines from
  handover to bank credit, for the cashier office wall

Do not:
- Write "execute in strict accordance with financial
  regulations" - this SOP is the regulation; delete
  self-referential filler
- Invent payment-channel fee or settlement-time rules - write
  "per the channel's backend statement"
- Design a "net off over/short at month-end" step - netting
  launders problems into non-problems, and the ledger's whole
  reason to exist is to forbid that

Why it is written this way

The three classic holes in store cash - handover without a joint count, overnight cash without rules, over/short wiped clean at month-end - are all failures of the default state. Nobody does wrong on purpose; there was simply no prescribed right action. This SOP invents nothing; it pins the default action at each stage so a new hire executing it verbatim on day one is doing it right.

"Two people, face to face, both signatures" is the foundation. The transfer of cash responsibility needs one moment when both parties are present; skip it and no later discrepancy can be assigned - the cashier says the clerk took less, the clerk says the cashier handed less, and the camera can't settle it. The joint count looks slow; it is really the dispute cost of the next six months paid once, upfront.

The two-tier difference rule - inside the line: log, don't chase; beyond: chase by noon - is an efficiency choice. Chasing coin-level differences daily consumes the clerk's whole day while real problems sit unattended. But "don't chase" never means "don't record": line-by-line into the ledger, reviewed monthly - small same-direction shorts stitched together become the big short, which is exactly why the month-end net-off is banned.

Spending-from-the-till is written as "default no, exception with a trail" rather than flatly forbidden, because fresh stores have real emergencies (a dawn restock from a cash-only supplier). An absolute rule gets worked around the first time reality strikes, and a rule bypassed once stops ruling at all. A narrow, approval-gated valve protects the mainline: takings go to the bank.