Raport kasowy to dokument wewnętrzny określający poziom środków pieniężnych w kasie restauracji — sporządzany codziennie, a często nawet po każdej zmianie. Artykuł tłumaczy, skąd biorą się rozbieżności między stanem gotówki a raportem fiskalnym: brak możliwości cofania transakcji na kasie fiskalnej, błędnie zadeklarowana forma płatności, sprzedaż na fakturę VAT, awarie urządzeń fiskalnych oraz sposób rozliczania bonifikat w systemach zintegrowanych. Autor omawia też rozliczanie sprzedaży bezgotówkowej i ostrzega przed automatycznym transferem obrotów do ksiąg rachunkowych bez kontroli manualnej.
The Cash Report — How to Avoid Discrepancies?
The cash report is an internal document which serves to determine the level of cash resources in the restaurant’s till. This document is drawn up every day, sometimes even more often. Generating it involves certain problems which are worth discussing.
The most important function of the daily cash report is the counting of the cash resources in the till and the certification of the calculated balance with a signature on the report. Neglect of the obligation to carry out a daily stocktake of the till, and the entering into the cash report of amounts taken from the fiscal report, may lead to significant cash discrepancies which after a longer time will not be possible to explain.
The basic task of the cash report is to determine the physical state of the cash resources in the till. The counting of the money takes place after each day of the restaurant’s operation, whereby it is possible, and even advisable, to perform this operation after every shift.
The state of the cash resources is compared with the fiscal report, which is generated by the cash register. The fiscal report presents the volume of turnover in the accounting period. It specifies the time which has elapsed since the printing of the last cash report. Fiscal reports can be generated many times during the day, however in accordance with the law one cannot begin selling if the fiscal report from the previous day has not been printed. This is very important information for places where sales are conducted after 24:00. For the tax office the binding date is the date on which the fiscal report was made. For the correctness of conducting daily tax settlements one should therefore, shortly before the end of the clock day, make a printout from the cash register and generate the next fiscal report after the closing of the shift. Both fiscal reports will then be attached to the cash report, which will make it possible to determine the fiscal sales during the restaurant’s day of operation.
The restaurant’s sales, being the basis of income tax, should be booked on the basis of daily fiscal reports. After counting the cash it may turn out that the sum from the fiscal report differs from the state of the cash resources in the till. It is the duty of the person closing the daily cash settlement to explain the fiscal–cash discrepancies and to describe them in the cash report.
Why may differences occur? The first reason is the lack of any possibility of reversing transactions on the cash register. The legislator did not provide for the possibility of reversing or cancelling transactions which have been fiscally registered. It happens that, as a result of complaints or returns, transactions are cancelled. In order to withdraw a fiscally registered sale, one must draw up a withdrawal protocol, an internal document which describes the withdrawal of the transaction and contains the customer’s signature together with the fiscal receipt. On the basis of such a document it is possible to correct the fiscal report1.
Discrepancies may also result from human mistakes; the most frequent of these is the incorrect declaration of the form of payment. If the barman declares the form of the transaction as cash, but the customer nevertheless pays by card, a theoretical shortfall will arise in the till, which can be explained after comparing all the transactions with the register of cashless sales obtained from the bank card terminals.
A further example of a mistake is a sale on the basis of a VAT invoice. The issuing of an invoice is sufficient fiscal evidence, which releases one from the obligation to print a fiscal receipt. Theoretically a copy of the sales invoice should be attached to the cash report, however this does not always happen — the service may have been performed on the basis of a contract, the invoice may have gone to the accounting department through an earlier shift, and so on. In order to avoid problems of this type, it is a good idea to adopt the principle that absolutely every transaction must be registered on the cash register.
It happens that the reason for a discrepancy between the state of the cash resources and the fiscal report is a malfunction of the fiscal device; there may be a power cut, a breakdown, or a lack of paper for printing receipts. All such events, which entail a break in the registration of sales transactions, must be described, together with a determination of the volume of unregistered sales, by the person conducting the sales, and attached in the form of a declaration to the daily cash report.
Large restaurants possess an integrated sales system; the daily printout from the system should then also be reconciled with the state of the cash and with the fiscal report. Since in this system the withdrawal of transactions is possible, and it is considerably less susceptible to breakdowns than cash registers, the number of discrepancies is usually smaller.
A reason for discrepancy which occurs between the fiscal printer and the integrated system is the manner of settling rebates and reductions. It often happens that information about reductions on selected products and goods is entered into the integrated sales system. This information is taken into account in the transaction price. This information travels to the fiscal printer, where the receipt is generated. However, the daily fiscal report does not take the rebate into account, and in such a situation a shortfall of cash resources will appear, which has to be explained by means of a declaration. According to most tax interpretations2, the basis of taxation is the actual amount of the sale, which nevertheless has to be documented with a fiscal receipt, in the information section of which the amount of the transaction will be indicated3.
At the end it is worth emphasising once again that the most important function of the daily cash report is the counting of the cash resources in the till and the certification of the calculated balance with a signature on the report. Neglect of the obligation to carry out a daily stocktake of the till, and the entering into the cash report of amounts taken from the fiscal report, may lead to significant cash discrepancies which after a longer time will not be possible to explain.
While discussing daily sales settlements it is also worth mentioning the settlement of cashless sales. This settlement is made later than the fiscal report. For controlling purposes one may introduce a new internal document, into which will be entered the transaction balances obtained from the reports of the payment card terminals and the daily reports of cashless transactions obtained from the operator, as well as on the basis of daily bank statements. Cashless transactions should be systematically analysed and reconciled.
In order for the process of controlling turnover to be conducted systematically and effectively, a good, though labour-intensive, solution is the introduction of a new account in group 1 — daily sales settlement — on which a sales register would be kept every day.
In many restaurants possessing an integrated sales system, the turnover register is exported directly to the accounting program. This is a solution which significantly reduces costs and is in accordance with the Accounting Act. It should however be emphasised that, despite the automation of the work, every day of sales registered in the system must be compared with the daily cash report. That is why the use of an automatic transfer of turnover from the integrated system to the accounting books, in the absence of manual control, may lead to errors in calculating the basis of taxation.
Experience indicates that it is better to enter fiscal sales manually, doing so systematically day after day on the basis of reconciled cash reports.
1 The principles of keeping records by means of cash registers were laid down in the provisions of the Regulation of the Minister of Finance of 28 November 2008 on the criteria and technical conditions which recording cash registers must meet and the conditions of their use (Journal of Laws no. 212, item 1338, as amended). Furthermore, cash registers record transactions on the basis of art. 111 par. 1 of the VAT Act. The provisions do not provide for the possibility of correcting sales and output tax recorded by means of a recording cash register (as is the case with VAT invoices); it is however possible to make a correction if it is possible to demonstrate that the turnover from a given transaction was different from the amount appearing in the fiscal report. This follows indirectly from art. 29 par. 1 of the VAT Act, according to which the basis of taxation is turnover, understood as the amount due by virtue of the sale, less the amount of tax due. Individual interpretation of the Director of the Tax Chamber in Katowice of 4 January 2012, no. IBPP4/443-1480/11/AZ, published on the website of the Ministry of Finance.
2 Individual interpretation of the Director of the Tax Chamber in Łódź of 27 January 2012, no. IPTPB1/415-329/11-2/MD. Individual interpretation of the Director of the Tax Chamber in Łódź of 22 September 2011, no. IPTPB3/423-119/11-2/IR.
3 The Tax Ordinance does not indicate the manner of documenting rebates. In this situation, pursuant to art. 22 par. 1 of the Act of 29 September 1994 on accounting (Journal of Laws of 2009 no. 152, item 1223, as amended), it must be documented reliably, that is, in accordance with the actual course of the economic transaction (containing at least the data specified in art. 21 of that Act). This is a necessary condition for taking into account the reduction of the income tax base referred to in art. 12 par. 1 and 3 of the Corporate Income Tax Act.
Wojciech Moszczyński, Chief Financial Officer, A. Blikle
Wojciech Moszczyński — graduate of the Department of Econometrics and Statistics of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń; specialist in econometrics, finance, data science, and management accounting. He specializes in the optimization of production and logistics processes. He conducts research in the area of the development and application of artificial intelligence. For years he has been engaged in the popularization of machine learning and data science in business environments.