Count the drawer blind,
then see the difference.
Finance → Cash close opens each drawer with its float and counts every tender your store takes there. At the end of the day you count the bills and coins first, then see what the drawer should hold. Every lease-to-own sale waits on a list of its own until the provider pays.
One drawer, from the float to the count
Finance → Cash close has three tabs: Today, History and, for the owner and managers, Drawers.
Open the drawer,
and the Register follows it.
Open the drawer in the morning with its float, and the Register’s header reads “Drawer: Front counter · open 9:00 AM · $200.00 float”. From then on every tender the store takes at that location belongs to it, whichever screen takes it. Cash that moves without a sale is recorded as it happens — Paid in, Paid out and Safe drop — with a note and a name on each.
Count first,
then see what it expected.
Close drawer asks for the bills and coins, $100 down to 1¢ plus rolled coin, then the checks and the batch total from your own card machine’s slip. While the count is open the strip reads “Expected totals stay hidden until the count is saved (blind count).” Save count, and the screen shows expected, counted and the difference for each tender, with the expected cash worked out line by line.
The difference posts once,
and the Z-report prints.
The close posts its difference once, dated the drawer’s business day and named for whoever counted: “Short $5.00 · counted by Amy W · posted to Cash Over/Short”. Print the Z-report on letter paper or an 80 mm receipt printer. A close is final for staff; the owner or a manager can Adjust one from this month with a reason, and its books entry is replaced, never doubled.
A lease is money owed,
not money in the drawer.
Ring a lease on the Register as a Lease-to-own tender and it is recorded as awaiting funding, not as money in. The close lists it greyed as not counted, and the History tab keeps every lease at the location that the provider has not paid yet, with their total and View on Transactions, until each one is marked paid.
Why a lease gets a list of its own.
When a customer leases a washer, the store has not taken a payment: it has sold the washer to the provider, and the money follows on the provider’s terms. Here is what the providers themselves say.
The money comes on delivery, not on the sale
Acima says most transactions are paid within two business days of the merchandise being delivered or picked up. Snap Finance says funding is typically within 48 hours of delivery or a completed invoice. Progressive’s developer documentation says a lease is funded once the contract is signed and the final delivery has been confirmed.
The deposit is not the ticket
Snap’s merchant help says there are merchant discounts that are mutually agreed upon, so the amount that arrives is not the amount that was rung.
A missed confirmation can pull the money back
Progressive’s documentation says a prepayment reversal happens when no delivery confirmation is sent within a set number of days, or the order is cancelled before delivery is confirmed.
The provider bought the goods
Upbound Group’s Form 10-K describes its Acima segment as buying the merchandise the customer chose from the retailer when the customer enters the lease and the product is delivered. The store is owed by a company with terms, not by a customer with a card.
From each provider’s own published documentation and Upbound Group’s Form 10-K, checked in September 2026. The timings are each provider’s stated expectation, not a guarantee. In the same check, Square’s developer reference filed any tender it had no category for under OTHER, and Clover’s custom tenders recorded an amount without moving or verifying funds: a lease rung as a button there is a number, not a receivable. Enterprise furniture and appliance systems such as STORIS do connect to lease providers, on a custom quote.
Your change fund is an account. Treat it like one.
A change drawer is an imprest fund: a fixed amount replenished back to the same fixed amount, where only documented spending is replenished. That discipline is why over-and-short means anything at all. The moment somebody tops up the till with $200 from the safe on a busy Saturday and nobody writes it down, every over-and-short figure after it is noise.
Point-of-sale systems record the float as a number attached to a shift, so nothing can answer how much change cash the store owns or how much was pulled for coin last month. UpChannels records it as an account with a running balance — what the drawer should hold, every refill in, every sweep out, and a monthly ledger a small retailer can hand straight to a bookkeeper.
Month-end is the same principle one level up: stating where every dollar of the month actually sits — what became cash, what was deposited, what is still a lease waiting on a provider, and what came back. That produces a settled position rather than a bank balance: the cushion you are deliberately holding for float, payroll and supplier terms, and what is genuinely free to take out. Owner distributions are recorded as equity, not as an expense, so the books still make sense when your accountant opens them.
You should not decide what to take out of the business until you know how much of last month is money and how much is still a promise.
After the close
Supplier bills
Pro & PremiumVendor bills checked against the purchase order and what you received, recurring bills for rent and running costs, and what you owe by age are kept in Bills & Payables, not in the drawer.
See Bills & PayablesThe bank
Paid add-onThe close is the store’s account of the day. Bank Reconciliation, a paid add-on, matches the lines on your bank account against what UpChannels recorded.
See Bank ReconciliationThe Profit & Loss
Pro & PremiumA short or over drawer is one Cash Over/Short entry, and the Profit & Loss shows it under Other Operating Expenses on the drawer’s business day.
See FinanceThe day’s notes
Every planThe Daily Journal’s close of day lists each drawer closed that day with its difference and a View Z-report link, beside the day’s door traffic and calls.
See the Daily Journal
What Cash Close does not do
- A close is final for staff, and there is no reopen. The owner or a manager can Adjust a close from this month, with a reason; its books entry is replaced, never doubled.
- Check and card differences do not post to the books. They reconcile against the bank and the processor.
- UpChannels does not connect to Acima, Snap, Progressive or any other provider. The application runs on the provider’s portal, and you mark the lease Completed when the money arrives.
- A drawer movement is never edited. A mistake is put right with its opposite, such as a paid in for a wrong paid out, or by adjusting the close.
- Sales are not stopped when no drawer is open; they are simply not counted against a drawer until one is.
- UpChannels does not sync to QuickBooks or Xero. The History tab exports the closes as CSV, Excel or PDF.
Cash close questions, answered
What is a blind count, and why would I want one?
Do the sales have to go through the Register?
Can one location have more than one drawer?
What happens when the drawer is short?
How do I keep track of lease-to-own funding?
Why doesn’t my bank deposit match what I sold today?
How do I track the cash in the register drawer separately from sales?
Which plans include Cash Close?
Cash Close is one part of UpChannels
UpChannels Cash Close is the end-of-day drawer count for small retailers and service businesses, on every plan. Each location has one or more drawers, each opened with its float; every tender the store takes at that location counts in the open drawer, whichever screen takes it; paid in, paid out and safe drops are recorded as they happen; and the close is a blind count by bills and coins, then expected, counted and the difference for each tender. A short or over drawer posts one Cash Over/Short entry to the books, and the Z-report prints on letter paper or an 80 mm receipt printer. Lease-to-own tenders from Acima, Snap, Progressive and other providers are recorded as awaiting funding, never as cash, and listed until the store marks each one paid. UpChannels is not a payment processor or a lender and does not connect to the lease providers.
UpChannels is an all-in-one platform for small retailers and service businesses — sales, inventory, customers, scheduling, delivery, payments and finance in one system — and a real team that builds your website, runs your ads, and automates the busywork. The parts below share one set of records, so there is no integration to wire up between them; the pricing page shows which plan includes each one.
The product moves faster than this page. UpChannels ships updates most weeks, so a description here can lag what is already in the software. Where the two disagree, the running product is the current version — tell us if you find one and we will correct the page.
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