I recently had a bookkeeping enquiry from a cafe business owner in Perth, Western Australia.  It is a common query with cafe owners that I wanted to share with you.  

"Why is the total daily cash takings not making it to the bank - why doesn't my bank statement show the same amount?"

If you are a new cafe owner then you need to get on top of this bit of your bookkeeping quickly.

Here it is:

1.  Your daily takings must include every single item sold and include this on a 'Takings Sheet'.  Say for example your eftpos sales is $500, cash sales is $300 and show these two lines separately on your 'Takings Sheet'.

2.  On your 'Takings Sheet' make a separate line for cash payments made from the till.  Say for example you take $100 cash to buy fresh salad from a specialist supermarket and show this on your 'Takings Sheet'.

There you have it - the cash balance between the two will be $300 - $100 = $200, gets deposited to your bank and will always be less than your total sales for the day.

If you would like a FREE copy of my 'Takings Sheet' that I supply to my clients then let me know and I can email that to you.

The common BAS error that I see happen is the business owner uses the amount that was deposited ($200) at the bank from the bank statement and puts this at G1 on their BAS for total sales when it should have been $300.  Usually, if this has happened then they have also incorrectly reported purchases and gst credits may have been missed.  Repeated every day and the knock-on effect is that you will never get a meaningful profit and loss (junk in, junk out, as the saying goes).