In the day-to-day hustle of business life, it can be hard to keep track of the receipts printed by your EFTPOS machine. The problem is, these little pieces of paper are essential to the business accounting of almost all retail-based businesses. If you’re using an
EFTPOS machine, you need to hang onto your receipts, so today we’re going to look into some tried and true ways to manage them.
Why Save Them?
Your first question here might be why on Earth you even need to save these fiddly little bits of paper. We’re surrounded by technology, so it can feel strange developing an attachment to something so small. In reality though, receipts act as proof of every face-to-face transaction in your business, which makes them essential to your accounting.
If you are a retail-based business (which most businesses that use an EFTPOS machine are), then you are most likely using a cash-based accounting system. This just means that you only recognise something as income when the money actually changes hands, rather than using an invoicing system.
EFTPOS machine receipts are essential to calculating your revenue and subsequent profit when you use cash basis accounting, as they are the proof of every cash-based or electronic transaction that has occurred that day. Thus, best practice is always to keep them and put them on the books to check everything is balanced out.
Tips and Tricks
From the professionals in all things EFTPOS NZ, here are the trade secrets of perfect receipt tracking.
1. Keep track of them.
As anyone who has worked in the retail industry knows, each individual business has their own way of handling their receipts. Some have a spike right next to their machines where merchant receipts go, others have a section in their cash-drawer, and still others transfer electronic versions of all their merchant receipts into a folder for the end of the day. Whatever your method is, step one when making sure you’re doing your accounting properly is to choose a method that works for you and institute it consistently.
2. Check-in daily.
Ideally, anyone running a business will check in with it daily, but this is especially important when you run a business that has a cash-based income. It is absolutely essential that you use your stored receipts and transcribe them into a format that makes it easier to interpret what you want from them. You have a couple of options here:
• Use a spreadsheet application to keep a ledger.
The key here is consistency, you have to go into the spreadsheet at the end of every day and input each transaction. If business is booming, you don’t want to fall behind.
• Outsource your bookkeeping.
This is a great option if you don’t mind someone else handling your receipts, because you can get them to document your daily transactions and send the finished documents to your accountant. This will save you valuable time, and you’ll be able to check-in as often as you like, try for a few times a week.
• Use accounting software.
Accounting applications like Xero are great for this, because you can use a mobile application to transfer your receipts into electronic records. Said software then calculates your daily revenue and profit for you, and stores it in a cloud-based system, so if your computer dies you can be sure that you haven’t lost any valuable data.
3. Implement an electronic method.
If you don’t already utilise an electronic POS system for your receipts, an automated process will save you an enormous amount of time and money. The right one will provide you with the option to store merchant receipts straight away for every transaction, so the end-of-day slog will suddenly become a lot shorter. Whether you’re using an EFTPOS machine or a
cash-register, hunt around for your ideal software and optimise your accounting process.
Ready to optimise?
Here at POS Technology we are the experts in all things point-of-sale. If you’re looking for advice on what hardware or software you should go for, visit us in store or
contact us through our website and we’ll happily help you find the right system for your business.
