How much float in a till? A simple way to size it
- operations
A till float should be enough change to get through your first busy stretch of the day without running out, and no more. For most small shops that means enough to give change on your first ten to twenty cash sales, paid with the notes your customers usually carry, weighted towards coins and small notes. There is no single right figure: a newsagent and a furniture shop need very different floats. What there is, is a method.
What a float is, and what it is not
The float is the fixed sum of change that sits in the drawer before the first sale. It is the shop’s money, lent to the till for the day. It is not takings, and it should never be counted as takings.
At the end of the day the float comes out first, back to its fixed figure, and only what is left over is the day’s cash. Mix the two up and every count after that is wrong by however much the float drifted. The full end-of-day routine is in how to cash up a till.
Sizing it from your own sales
You need three things, which a week of receipts or one watched morning will tell you:
- Your typical cash sale. Not the average across the whole day, but what a normal small purchase looks like.
- The notes customers pay with. Which note do most people hand over? Which is the largest one you see regularly, not just occasionally?
- How many cash sales before you can top up. Usually the first hour or two, or until whoever holds the safe key arrives.
The float is roughly the change you would give out over that stretch, in the worst ordinary case: small purchases paid with large notes. Later on the takings help, because notes customers hand over go back out as change. Coins recycle far less well, which is why floats run out of coins first.
A worked example
Take a small café and convenience shop. The figures below are in plain units, so read them as whatever your currency is.
- A typical cash sale is around 6.
- Most customers pay with a 10 or a 20. A few pay with a 50 for something small.
- The first hour brings about 15 cash sales.
Change on a 6 sale is 4 from a 10, 14 from a 20 and 44 from a 50. If, in that first hour, five people pay with a 10, eight with a 20 and two with a 50, the till hands out about 20, 112 and 88: around 220 in change. But the 10s and 20s taken from early customers go back out to later ones, so the float only has to cover the gap before the takings start doing the work.
A float of about 150 covers this shop’s first hour comfortably. A float of 50 would run dry within a few customers paying with a 20. A float of 500 would just sit in the drawer as a target.
Start with your estimate, then adjust from what actually happens. If you are borrowing coins from the safe before eleven every day, the float is too small. If the float comes back at close in exactly the same notes it went out in, it is too big.
The denomination mix
The total is only half the answer. A float of 150 in three 50s is useless, because nobody can give change from it.
A sensible float leans towards what you hand out most. For the café above:
| Denomination | Count | Value |
|---|---|---|
| 20 | 1 | 20 |
| 10 | 5 | 50 |
| 5 | 6 | 30 |
| 2 and 1 coins | mixed | 30 |
| Smaller coins | mixed | 20 |
| Total | 150 |
A few rules hold whatever your currency:
- Leave out the largest notes. You almost never give a large note as change, so they only add risk.
- Coins and the smallest notes do most of the work. They are what customers need back and what you run out of.
- Write the mix down, not just the total, so whoever makes up the float makes up the same one.
One float per till
Every till gets its own float, counted into its own drawer. Two tills sharing one float, or a float topped up from the other till’s drawer, means neither drawer can be checked on its own. When one comes up short, there is nothing to compare it against.
Count it in, count it out
Count the float into the drawer at the start of the day, by denomination, and write the figure down. Count it back out at the close before you touch the takings.
Never carry the float forward on trust. If last night’s closer left 145 instead of 150, and this morning’s opener assumes it is fine, today’s count is out by five before the first sale. That kind of fixed daily discrepancy is one of the most common reasons a till never quite balances, and there is a longer list in why your till never balances.
Topping up rather than oversizing
Once a till runs out of change, the temptation is to double the float. It is usually the wrong fix. A large float is more cash on the counter to lose, miscount or have taken, and it hides problems: a drawer holding 500 can be 20 short without anyone noticing. A small float runs out sooner and gets topped up deliberately.
Two separate movements happen during a day, and both should be recorded:
- A change swap. Large notes from the drawer go to the safe, and the same value comes back in coins and small notes. The drawer’s total does not change, only its mix.
- A cash lift. When the drawer is holding far more than it needs, some of the takings go to the safe. Write down how much went, when, and who took it, so the close can account for it.
Keeping a bag of made-up change in the safe, in the same mix as the float, makes both quick.
When the float is wrong
If the morning count does not match the fixed figure, do not quietly make it up from your pocket or the takings. Record what was actually there, top it up to the right figure from the safe, and note it. Then look at last night’s close to find out why.
Once is probably a counting slip. The same day every week, or after the same person closes, is a pattern. The Z report for that shift is the first place to look, and our guide to cash handling procedures covers the wider routine of who touches the drawer and when.
Keep the figure fixed and written down
Decide the float, write the total and the mix on a card in the safe, and use the same figure every day. Review it when your prices or your customers’ payment habits change: a shop that has moved mostly to card can usually shrink its float.
Where StoreWave sits
In StoreWave each register opens a shift with a float the cashier counts and types in. It is never carried forward from the previous shift, so each shift starts from what is actually in the drawer, not from what the last closer said they left. Money paid into or out of the drawer, such as a cash lift to the safe or a top-up of change, is recorded as a pay-in or pay-out and cannot be saved without a reason, and every drawer opened without a sale is logged.
Closing the shift asks for a count for each payment method and shows the expected amount, the counted amount and the difference, with the opening float on the Z report that prints on a receipt printer. With blind close on, the person counting does not see the expected figure first. There is more on shifts and cash-up.