A cash drawer is the physical box that holds your business's starting float amount and any cash payments you receive for orders. In Lightspeed Restaurant, you must add your cash drawer to the Back Office in order to track its balance during each sales period.

Here, you'll find support articles and frequently asked questions about cash drawers to help you understand how to set up and use them with your Lightspeed POS. 

If your wait staff hold cash payments instead of putting them into a physical drawer, you can use the default User Bank cash drawer to track this activity. See our FAQ for more information.

Cash drawer articles

Use these guides to set up your cash drawer hardware, manage daily operations, and access relevant reports in Lightspeed Restaurant.

Setting up a cash drawer

Operating a cash drawer

Reporting on cash drawers

Frequently asked questions

You've got questions, we've got answers. Here's what merchants like you often ask us about their cash drawers.

• What kind of physical cash drawer should I use with Lightspeed Restaurant?

  When you order a Lightspeed Restaurant hardware bundle, we'll send you one of our supported cash drawers. This model will be capable of opening automatically when connected to your receipt printer.

  If you don't mind opening your cash drawer manually with its key, you can use any cash drawer or box.

• How do I set up my cash drawer?

  If you want your cash drawer to open automatically, connect the drawer to your receipt printer. But no matter how you use it, you'll need to add your cash drawer to the Back Office to track its balance and the movement of cash in and out of it.

• How are non-cash payments handled with regard to my cash drawer?

  Non-cash payments are not included in your cash drawer's total balance, unless you enable the optional Use this drawer for non-cash payments setting.

• What if my wait staff holds the cash payments they receive until the end of their shift?

  If your staff carry and manage their own cash, you'll need to enable the User Bank cash drawer for their user group. This virtual cash drawer is available in every Lightspeed Restaurant account by default, but it is only visible from the User Groups page.

  When an employee processes a cash transaction at a POS device that's not assigned to a drawer, the cash is tracked in their dedicated user bank (also called a user wallet). At the end of their shift, they can print a User Report at the POS to see the amount of cash payments that are their own (i.e. attributed to their user bank) and the amount they placed in a physical drawer.

• Does each POS device require its own cash drawer?

  No. You can use the same cash drawer with multiple POS devices as long as you assign the drawer to each of those POS devices. If you configure the drawer to pop open automatically, be aware that it will do so for transactions processed on all of these devices.

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