Till vs takings: why the day close and the reports differ

For each payment method, the money that went through that shop's till that day: what its sales took, plus layaway deposits and instalments taken that day, less what its refunds gave back.

It never expects the Opening float: the takings are counted without it, so a day nobody opened is measured on the same figures (Close the day).

A sale paid with a gift card or store credit shows under Gift Card or Store Credit too, though the drawer holds no money for it. Those boxes start at that amount: leave them as they are, or the close reads Short.

Net total at the top is the day's sales less its refunds, leaving out layaways still open. With counting on, the count must match the payment methods, which do include that layaway money.

Sales adds up validated sales and refunds by the day each invoice was made, at the shop it belongs to. A layaway counts on the day it is completed; a gift card when it is sold, not when it is spent, except grouped or filtered by Payment method, where spending one has its own row (The Sales report: sales, refunds, VAT and margin).

Payments splits the money by payment method on the day it was taken: a layaway's deposit and each instalment on the day it was paid, even while the layaway is still open.

Day closes keeps each close as it was recorded: what the till expected and what was counted at that moment. If the day is opened again with Open day and closed again, the new close replaces it (Review the day closes: counted against expected).

Layaways: the close and Payments count each deposit and instalment on the day it is paid; Sales counts nothing while the layaway is open, then all of it on the day it is completed, so completing one never raises a past month (Layaway: hold items while a customer pays over time).

An instalment counts at the shop where the layaway was opened, and a refund at the shop where the sale was made, whichever counter takes or hands back the money. Paid at another shop, one drawer reads over and the other short by the same amount: tell a manager before either closes (Close the day).

Refunds don't part them: the close and the reports both count a refund on the day it is made, never back on the sale's day. A card refund bigger than the day's card sales leaves the card method below 0 in the close.

After the close, a shop that doesn't ask for the day to be opened keeps selling, and those sales are in no close: a day closes once. Where it does, the till asks for Open day again before the next sale. An invoice can still be cancelled or corrected (Edit an invoice), which changes Sales and Payments but not Day closes.

Gift cards: Sales, by day, leaves out what a gift card paid for, since the card counted when it was sold, while the close shows it under Gift Card. On a day gift cards are spent, the close's Sales reads higher than the report's.

In Expert accounting, INSIGHTS › Reports compares, for each payment method, what the invoices say with what reached its account: Gross sales less Refunds less Processor fees is Expected net, and Ledger net is what the account received (Cash and bank accounts (Expert)).

Variance is the gap between the two, and some gaps are expected: gift card and store credit rows never reach an account, and a method with no account in INSIGHTS › Accounting › Payment methods posts nothing. A layaway's payments count on the day each was taken, the day it reached the account.

The accounts don't know which shop money came from, so narrow it with Regions, not Locations: with one shop picked, its invoices are set against the whole region's accounts.

A cancelled sale, refund or layaway leaves no gap when it was cancelled in the same period. Cancelled in a later month, it shows a gap in both months, in opposite directions: the money stayed where it was until the cancel moved it back.