Even at 90% card, cash sessions are the single most important control a restaurant owner has. Here is what they catch and why Labtechio makes them non-optional.
Most restaurants now take 80–95% of their sales on card. It feels tempting to stop tracking cash sessions at all. Do not.
A cash session is not really about cash. It is about accountability per shift. Even one physical note in the drawer forces the same three questions every service:
1. Who opened the till?
2. Who closed it?
3. Did what came out match what went in?
What Labtechio's session actually records
When a cashier opens a session, Labtechio timestamps it against their user account. From then on, every sale, refund, and drawer open is bound to that session. At close-out, the till captures:
- Opening float
- Total cash sales for the session
- Total refunds / paid-outs
- Expected cash
- Counted cash
- Variance and reason
The session goes into the Z-report and the audit trail. It cannot be deleted, only annotated.
The three things this catches
1. Skimmed notes. If cash comes up short session after session under one user, the pattern is visible.
2. Missed sales. A pattern of over-cash usually means orders rung on the wrong tender.
3. Staff hours disputes. The session log doubles as a soft clock-in — you know who was on the till and when.
Cash sessions cost about ninety seconds a shift. They save you the one conversation nobody wants to have.