A cash drawer session tracks the physical cash in one register — a POS device or a box-office window — from the moment it's opened with a starting float until it's closed and counted at the end of a shift.
Opening and closing a drawer
Drawer sessions are opened and closed from the Door POS app (or the web box office), not from this admin dashboard. A staff member:
- Opens the drawer with a starting float — the cash placed in the register before the first sale.
- Sells and refunds tickets as usual. Every cash sale and cash refund rung up while the session is open is tracked against it automatically.
- Closes the drawer at the end of the shift by counting the cash actually in the drawer.
Only one session can be open per register at a time — the app won't let staff open a second session on a register that already has one open.
A drawer session only tracks cash. Card and Tap to Pay sales settle through Stripe and never touch the physical drawer, so they don't affect a session's float or variance.
Paid-outs
If staff need to remove cash from the drawer mid-shift for something other than a sale or refund — for example, paying a vendor in cash — they record a paid-out with a reason. Paid-outs reduce the drawer's expected cash the same way a cash refund does.
Expected vs. counted vs. variance
When a drawer closes, Noctern computes what should be in it:
expected cash = starting float + cash sales − cash refunds − paid-outs
The staff member then enters what they actually counted. The difference is the variance:
variance = counted − expected
A variance of $0 means the drawer balanced exactly. A negative variance means the drawer came up short; a positive variance means there was more cash than expected.
Finding a variance with the Daily cash report
Go to Admin → Venues → [your venue] → Reports → Daily cash.
The report lists one row per drawer session for the selected date range: which register, who opened and closed it, the float, cash sales, cash refunds, paid-outs, expected cash, counted cash, and the variance. A non-zero variance is highlighted so it's easy to spot.
Click any session's row to see every transaction that counted toward it — the time, order, patron, tender, and which staff member rang it up. This is the fastest way to track down where a variance came from: look for a sale or refund that doesn't match what actually happened at the register (a cash sale that was really a card sale, a refund that wasn't recorded, or a paid-out nobody remembers).
Use the Register filter to narrow the report to one register, and the date range to widen or narrow the window — for example, to check a single shift or a whole week.
Closing a drawer from the web
If a device is lost or a staff member leaves before closing out, a venue admin or super-admin can close a still-open session directly from the Daily cash report: click Close on the row, enter the counted amount, and add a note if needed. This runs the exact same math as closing from the app.
Only close a drawer from the web after confirming with staff how much cash was actually in the register — closing with the wrong counted amount will report an inaccurate variance.