Show-day settlement
What this is for
It’s midnight Sunday. The last dancer left an hour ago. Somebody is
standing at a folding table with two cash drawers, a card reader receipt,
and a pile of unsold shirts. This page is the one sheet that closes the
weekend.
You count. You type. You hit Finalize. The weekend’s money lands on the
event’s profit and loss, and the merch you sold comes out of your stock
counts. Then everyone goes to bed.
The Settlement tab appears on an event only if your company has the
Finance add-on and you personally are allowed to see money pages.
Counting merch also needs the Inventory add-on — without it you’ll see the
line Merch counting needs the Inventory module and the rest of the sheet
still works fine.
Every box on this page is labeled right where it sits, the targets are big
enough for tired thumbs, and there’s no Save button to hunt for. Each field
saves the moment you tab or click away — you’ll see a little spinner, then
a green check. Press Enter to save, or Escape to put the last saved
value back.
Starting the sheet
Open the event and click the Settlement tab
Read the card and click Start settlement
The page says: Count the cash boxes, add the card batch totals, and
check the merch table. Nothing hits the books until you finalize.Check the date
The new sheet is dated the last day of the event. Underneath the button
it says so, and adds: You can change it.
Who counted
At the top of the sheet is a card titled Who counted. Fill it in first
while you remember.
- Settled on — the date the counting happened.
- Counted by — a name. This one is required; you can’t finalize
without it. - Verified by — the second pair of eyes. The box even hints
Second pair of eyes. - Cash bag # — the number on the deposit bag.
- Notes — the hint says it best: Anything the numbers don’t explain —
a short drawer, a comped table, a reader that went down.
The person counting at midnight often isn’t someone with a login. That’s
fine — Counted by and Verified by are just typed names. Once the
sheet is finalized, those names print as a signature line on the record.
Counting the cash boxes
One row per drawer you floated.
Click Add box
Your first box is named Door and your second Concessions,
because that’s what most shows run. Anything after that gets a number.
Type over the name to change it.Enter the Starting float
The money you put in the drawer before doors opened. Leave it blank if
the drawer started empty.Enter Counted at close
What you actually counted out of the drawer at the end. Until you type
something here it reads Not counted.Look at Received
Herding Cats does the subtraction for you and shows it in the grey box:
what you counted, minus the float you put in. That’s the money the show
actually took in that drawer.Pick where it Posts to
Which revenue bucket this drawer belongs to. Leave it alone and it goes
to your default ticket sales account.Type a Deposit reference
The slip or bag number, so a bank statement can be matched back to this
drawer later.
Need to get rid of a row? The trash button at the end asks first, and tells
you plainly: Its float and count come off the sheet. Nothing is posted
yet, so nothing is undone on the books.
Entering card batches
One row per reader batch-out. Click Add batch. Your first one is named
Square; rename it to whatever you actually used.
- Batch total — the number off the reader’s batch report. You can paste
it with the dollar sign and commas; Herding Cats will tidy it up. - Batch reference — the batch number from the report.
- Posts to — same idea as the cash boxes.
Unlike a cash box, a card batch has no “not counted yet” state. The reader
already knows. An empty total means zero.
Counting the merch table
This is the single most important thing to understand about this page. The
card reader at the boutique already counted those dollars — they’re in your
card batches. Merch counts exist to fix your stock, so you know what’s
left in the cases. The page says it out loud: These move stock, not money.
That’s why you can never double-charge yourself: money only ever comes from
cash boxes and card batches, and counts only ever touch inventory.
Use the Add an item picker
It’s labeled Pick an item to count, and each choice shows how many you
have on hand. Items already on the sheet are greyed out — one row each.Check Opened with
Filled in for you from your stock records. Correct it if the truck
actually had a different number.Enter Left at close
What’s still on the table. This is required before you can finalize.Leave Sold (tally) blank unless you counted separately
The box is marked Optional. Leave it blank and everything gone counts
as sold — the honest default. Fill it in only if somebody kept a real
tally at the table.Read the chips
Under each row you’ll see how it worked out: {n} sold, plus
{n} short in amber if units went missing, or found +{n} if you
somehow have more than you started with.
The running totals
A bar sticks to the bottom of the screen no matter how far you scroll:
Cash received, Card, and Total taken in big type, plus how many
units sold and any short or found counts. The answer to “how much did we
take?” is never more than a glance away.
Finalizing
Finalize is the moment the weekend’s money becomes real.
Click Finalize in the top right of the sheet
Read the confirmation
It says: Posts the cash and card revenue to the ledger and writes the
merch sale/shrink movements. The sheet locks.Click Finalize again to confirm
Check the green banner
The sheet turns read-only and shows a lock icon with the words
Finalized {date} — posted to the ledger.
After finalizing:
- The cash and card money appears on the event’s Financials tab as
revenue, and in the Ledger. - The merch you sold comes off your stock on hand, and its cost is written
to your books too. - Anything short shows as shrinkage.
- Your typed Counted by / Verified by / Cash bag # turn into a
one-line signature that reads like a receipt.
If Finalize won’t let you click it
The button will look faded but still be clickable. Click it and a little
list pops up headed One thing first (or 3 things first, and so on).
It will name exactly what’s missing, for example:
- Count the “Door” cash box before finalizing.
- Enter a closing count for — naming the merch item you haven’t counted.
- Record who counted (the attestation line).
- Add at least one cash box, card batch, or merch count.
It also catches counting that doesn’t add up — if your tally says you sold
more than actually left the table, it’ll say so and ask you to recheck one
of the numbers before anything reaches your books.
That faded-but-clickable button is on purpose. A dead grey button would
just leave you guessing. Click it and it tells you what it needs.
Fixing a mistake after finalizing
You can undo a finalized settlement completely. Nothing is stuck.
Open the Settlement tab on that event
Click Void in the top right
It’s the small red-tinted button.Read the confirmation carefully
Removes this settlement’s ledger postings and counter-writes its stock
movements, then reopens the sheet as a draft for correction.Click Void settlement
Fix the numbers and finalize again
The sheet is a draft again, fully editable, with everything you typed
still there. Correct what was wrong and click Finalize a second
time.
In plain terms: voiding takes the money back off your books and puts the
merch back on the shelf, dated to match the original entries, so your
history stays straight. Then you get the sheet back to fix and re-post.
If your bookkeeper has already closed the accounting month that settlement
falls in, you’ll be told: That date’s accounting period is closed — reopen
it first. Go to Finance, the Ledger tab, and click Periods. In
the Fiscal periods box, click Reopen next to that month. Then come
back and void.
Statuses at a glance
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| No banner, everything editable | Draft. Nothing has touched your books. |
| Green bar, Finalized {date} — posted to the ledger | Done and locked. |
| Grey bar, Voided {date} — nothing on the books | Reversed. |
If something couldn’t post
Finalizing is honest about partial trouble. If one line couldn’t be filed —
usually because no revenue account was picked and your company has no
default — it still finalizes everything it can, then shows you a warning
naming exactly what didn’t post. Fix the account on that row and void /
re-finalize.
If the Posts to box on a row reads
No default account — pick one, that’s your warning ahead of time. Pick
a real account before you finalize.