End-Of-Day Closing: A Critical Step To Accurate Financial Data And Mitigating Theft

To some it sounds like a no-brainer and to others it seems like an overwhelming task. Your end-of-day closing process is critical to maintain accurate financial data and mitigate employee theft. End-of-day closing refers to the process of your staff recording collections from cash, checks, and credit card payments. And, ensuring the collection maps to expected values based on billings. By doing this every night, you can immediately identify and address any discrepancies, which in turn ensures your financial data is always accurate. When a manager submits the end-of-day closure, Zenoti sends you, the accountant and any other stakeholders an sms or daily report.

You stay updated with the day’s closing numbers immediately. And, rather than using a paper-based system where a manager submits the daily collections, the SMS and email serve as a, tamper-free electronic filing system for reference at a later time. Zenoti’s built-in process for end of day closure takes only a few minutes to complete. The same process can also be used for end of shift closure as well. Additionally, this system can be integrated with inventory management, allowing you to track product usage and sales alongside your financial data.

The Mechanics of End-Of-Day Closing

The receptionist or manager first enters cash, check and credit card collections into our Close Payments screen. They should compare these values with the expected collection amounts and identify any discrepancies.

In some cases, discrepancies are because of employee theft. More often than spa or salon owners would like to think, staff can and do simply pocket cash that is paid out for a service. If you’re reconciling accounting on a weekly or monthly basis, it’s too hard to trace the issue to a single receptionist. However, with a proper end-of-day process, you hold your receptionist accountable for collections, and will quickly end this kind of employee theft.

Other times, you might trace the discrepancy to manual errors, for example a misplaced credit card slip, entering a cash payment rather than a check payment, etc... You’ll also want to record any adjustments to the collection amount that had to be made during the day.

For example, if a manager had to take cash out of the register for an unexpected payment, you can record the amount and a note – both of which are logged and can be accessed from the collections report. When collections and expected amounts align, the manager submits the closure amount, which triggers an SMS and daily report to be sent to stakeholders. And, all financial reports are updated in real-time. Finally, if you have a staff member or third party depositing your collections, it’s important that the deposits tally with your end-of-day closure amounts.

The Crux Of Why End-Of-Day Closures Are Important

As you can see, this one simple process can ensure that your financial data is always accurate. This financial data is used in your daily reports, collection reports and analytics. Accurate data helps mitigate employee theft and saves you and your accountant time and hassle. Check out our support article - Close Payments At End-Of-Day, for more details.