Anywhere you can collect a Cash payment — Quick Sale's payment step, and the "Record" tab of the invoice Collect payment dialog — you get the same tender-and-change calculator instead of a plain "amount collected" field.
Entering what the customer handed over
Two entry modes, toggled at the top of the panel:
- Total — type a single dollar amount. Below the field, quick-tender buttons appear: an "Exact" button for the precise amount due, plus up to three more presets rounded up to the next $5, $10, $20, or $50 — the same "hand them a $20 for a $13.40 sale" shortcuts a real register offers.
- By denomination — count out what was actually handed over, bill by bill and coin by coin, in a grid from pennies through $100s. The tendered total sums itself as you type and shows just below the grid.
Whichever mode you use, the calculator reacts as soon as you've entered enough to cover the sale.
Reading the result
Once tendered covers the amount due, a colored panel appears:
- Exact change — "Exact change — nothing owed back," no further breakdown needed.
- Change owed — the change amount, plus a bill/coin breakdown of exactly what to hand back (largest denomination first), computed the same way a till would count it out.
- Short — if what's tendered doesn't cover the sale yet, the panel shows in red how much more is needed rather than letting you submit early.
That change breakdown is for your convenience at the counter — it's calculated again independently on the server from the amount tendered, so a display glitch or a miscount on your end can't corrupt what actually gets recorded against the sale.
What happens behind the scenes
The moment a Cash payment completes — from Quick Sale or from the invoice payment dialog — the amount your shop actually keeps (tendered minus change given back) is automatically logged as a SALE event against your shop's open cash-drawer session. You don't have to separately log a Cash drop for it.
If no drawer session happens to be open at that moment, one opens automatically with a $0 starting float, so a shop that never explicitly "opens the drawer" each morning still ends up with an accurate running cash log. If more than one drawer session is open at once (a multi-register shop running simultaneous sessions), the sale attaches to whichever was opened most recently — worth knowing if your shop runs more than one register and wants per-register accuracy.
See How cash drawer sessions work for opening a drawer on purpose, logging drops/payouts/pickups, and closing out with a counted-cash variance check.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Does a cash sale automatically update my cash drawer?
A: Yes — as soon as a Cash payment completes on Quick Sale or the invoice payment dialog, the amount your shop keeps (tendered minus change) is logged against your open drawer session automatically. You don't have to log a matching Cash drop by hand.
Q: What if I haven't opened a cash drawer session yet?
A: One opens automatically with a $0 starting float the first time a cash sale needs to log against it, so you don't have to remember to open the drawer before ringing up cash.
Q: Can I count out the cash bill by bill instead of typing a total?
A: Yes — switch the tender panel to "By denomination" and enter counts for each bill and coin; the tendered total sums itself as you type.
Q: How does the app know how much change to give back?
A: It computes the standard largest-denomination-first breakdown from the amount tendered minus the amount due, and shows it as a bill/coin list. The same calculation is independently redone on the server, so it can't be tampered with from the browser.
Q: What happens if my shop runs more than one cash drawer session at the same time?
A: A cash sale attaches to whichever drawer session was opened most recently. If you run true multi-register with several simultaneous open sessions, that's the one case where a sale could attach to the wrong drawer — worth keeping in mind until a dedicated drawer picker exists.