Reviewing till sessions and Z reports

At the desk somebody opens the till in the morning and closes it again in the evening. What happened in between, you read afterwards in the Till sessions screen. This article is for whoever checks: the owner, the treasurer, the bookkeeper.

How to open the till itself, sell and close it is in The counter till.

What is a till session?

A till session is one shift at one till. It starts when somebody opens the till with an opening float (the change in the drawer), and it ends when that person counts the money and closes the till. On closing, the Z report is fixed: the revenue of that shift, per VAT rate and per payment method, and the difference between what should be in the drawer and what was in it.

If there are two tills side by side, each has its own drawer and so its own session and its own Z report.

What you need beforehand

• The Owner or Administrator role. Other roles do not see this screen.
• At least one till session. If the list is empty, nobody has opened the till yet.

Step 1 — Opening the screen

In the left-hand menu, click Point of sale → Till sessions.

At the top is the Revenue today block with three figures:

Box	What it counts
Desk	What was sold at the desk today, with the number of orders
Online	What was sold in your ticket shop today
Together	Everything from today together, including what came in through a reseller or some other way. Below it you see how many tills are open right now

This block always looks at today and counts today's orders. It is a look at the day while it is running, not an accounting document. What is fixed is the Z report of each session.

Step 2 — Reading the list

Below the block is every session, the newest at the top.

Column	What it shows
Z number	The number of the Z report: Z-1, Z-2, … A dash as long as the session is open
Opened at	When the till was opened
Closed at	When it was closed, or still open
Venue	Which venue the till belonged to
Device	On which till device; none if selling happened without a device
Expected	What should be in the drawer according to the till
Counted	What the cashier counted on closing
Cash difference	Counted minus expected
Status	Open or Closed

Expected is the opening float, plus what was sold in cash, minus what was refunded in cash, plus what was put into the drawer and minus what was taken out of it. The amount keeps up while the session is open.

The cash difference gets a colour:

• grey: no difference, or the session has not been closed yet;
• red: a shortfall — there was less in the drawer than expected;
• orange: a surplus — there was more in it. That is a signal too: usually something was sold that was not rung up.

There is one more column, Opened by, which is hidden by default. Switch it on with the columns button at the top right of the list. With the funnel icon (Filters) you show only the open or only the closed sessions.

Step 3 — Viewing a Z report

For a closed session, click View Z report. A window opens with five blocks:

Block	What it contains
Session	When it was opened and closed, the venue, the device and who closed it
Revenue per VAT rate	Per rate the amount without VAT (Net), the VAT and the amount with VAT (Gross), with the total at the bottom
Per payment method	How many times and for how much people paid in cash, by card or otherwise
Cash drawer	Opening float, cash sales, cash refunds, cash in, cash taken out, and below that expected, counted and the cash difference
Journal and TSE	How many lines there are in the till journal, their sequence numbers and the last check code, and whether a TSE is connected

The Z report is a snapshot. It is calculated on closing and never changed after that. That is exactly the point: what your bookkeeper reads today, they will still read next year.

The TSE is something for customers in Germany. If there is none, the report says so. For Belgian and Dutch customers nothing needs to be done; see Till compliance in Germany (TSE).

Step 4 — Exporting the till journal

Your bookkeeper wants the raw data? Click Export journal at the top right.

1. Under Day, choose the day you want.
2. Under Format, choose:
   • CSV (for the bookkeeper) — opens in Excel;
   • DSFinV-K-style JSON (German audit) — only needed for a German tax audit.
3. Confirm. The file is downloaded.

The export contains all till events of that one day, from all your tills together. The journal's check codes go along with it, so that whoever receives the file can verify that nothing has been taken out. Why the journal cannot be changed, you can read in The counter till.

What you cannot do here

• Open or close a session. That happens at the till itself.
• Change or delete a session or a Z report. That is not possible anywhere: a till from which things can disappear no longer proves anything.

What if …

What if a session has been on "Open" for days?

Then somebody forgot to close it. Open the till on that device and close it after all, with the amount that is in the drawer now. See The counter till.

What if I do not see the "View Z report" button?

The button only appears for a closed session. An open session has no Z report yet.

What if the cash difference is red every day?

One shortfall of a few euros is a counting mistake. If it goes the same way day after day, look at who opened the till (the Opened by column) and whether everybody also books money that leaves the drawer. A difference is kept, not smoothed away: that is exactly why you can see a pattern like that.

Frequently asked questions

Why is "Together" more than Desk plus Online? Because Together also counts sales through resellers and other channels, which do not have a box of their own.

Why does "Revenue today" differ from my Z report? Revenue today counts all of today's orders, from all tills together, with cash, card and online mixed. A Z report counts one session of one till, from opening to closing.

Can the desk see this screen? No. Only the owner and the administrator.