Every retail shop in Nepal ends the day the same way: count the cash, check the eSewa balance, match the Khalti statement, reconcile the card terminal slip, compare everything to what the billing system says it should be, then figure out why the numbers do not match. For many shop managers, this process takes 45 minutes to an hour every single evening - and still produces a figure that is off by a few hundred rupees that nobody can explain the next morning.
The daily sales report and cash reconciliation is the most routine financial task in a retail business and also the most error-prone. Its purpose is simple: confirm that every rupee that came in today has been accounted for, that the cash in the drawer matches what the system recorded, and that management has a clear picture of today's performance before the shop opens tomorrow. When it works correctly, it takes under fifteen minutes. When it relies on manual tallying across four or five payment channels, it consumes valuable closing time and creates a daily backlog of unexplained discrepancies.
The six-step process below walks through what a clean daily closing looks like for a Nepali retail shop - from opening float to posted accounting entries - with a practical checklist that a shop manager can follow every evening.
What a Complete Daily Sales Closure Must Cover
A complete daily closing is not just counting cash. It is a structured confirmation that your POS records, your physical cash position, and each digital payment channel all report the same total. A shop that bills rū 85,000 in a day through four channels must confirm that rū 85,000 has arrived - either in the cash drawer, in the eSewa business account, in the Khalti settlement, or in the card terminal batch. Any gap between what the POS says and what you can physically verify is a discrepancy that must be investigated and explained before the day closes.
Daily reports serve two audiences. The cashier or closing manager needs the reconciliation view - did the money arrive, and does it match? Management needs the performance view - what sold, at what margin, in which category, compared to yesterday and last week. These are different reports generated from the same underlying data, and both should be available within minutes of closing rather than assembled manually the next morning.
The daily closing is also the trigger for posting the day's entries to accounting. Until the reconciliation is confirmed, the accounting records for the day should not be finalized - so there is a direct link between a clean daily close and a clean set of books at month-end.
Count Opening Float and Verify Terminal Status
Before the first sale, the cashier counts the opening float - the cash placed in the drawer to make change - and records it in the system. If yesterday's closing float was rū 3,000 and today's opening should match, any discrepancy at this point needs to be noted before business begins. The opening check also confirms that digital payment terminals are live: eSewa QR is scanning correctly, the Khalti terminal is connected, and the card machine has a signal. A terminal that fails at 10am creates a mid-day reconciliation problem that is harder to resolve than one caught at opening. This step takes three minutes but prevents a class of errors that commonly appear in end-of-day totals.
Track Sales by Payment Mode Throughout the Day
Throughout the trading day, every sale is recorded in the POS with its payment method. A sale of rū 2,400 paid by eSewa is different from a sale of rū 2,400 paid in cash - the money arrives differently, settles at a different time, and reconciles against a different record. Modern POS systems capture this automatically: the cashier selects the payment mode at checkout, and the system accumulates running totals by channel. Any mid-day payment mode issues - a customer whose eSewa payment fails and pays cash instead - must be corrected in the system at the time they occur, not reconstructed at closing.
Nepali retailers now routinely accept four or more digital payment channels: eSewa, Khalti, ConnectIPS, and bank QR codes alongside cash and card. Each has different settlement timing. eSewa business settlements typically arrive T+1 working days. Khalti follows a similar cycle. Bank QR settlements vary by acquiring bank. Card terminal batches settle T+1 to T+2. This means money received today may not appear in your bank account for one to two days - and your reconciliation must account for these "in-transit" amounts separately from funds already received. A retailer who expects all today's digital sales to appear in today's bank balance will always see a shortfall.
Count Cash and Confirm Cashier Totals at Closing
At the end of trading, the cashier prints their session report from the POS - total sales, total refunds, and expected cash in drawer (opening float plus cash sales minus cash refunds minus any petty cash payments made during the day). The cashier then counts the physical cash and writes down the actual amount. Expected versus actual is the first reconciliation check. A difference of rū 50-100 might be a counting error or a missed small transaction - it is investigated, explained, and the explanation recorded. A difference of rū 500 or more triggers a transaction-level review before the closing is finalized.
Many Nepali retail shops allow cashiers to make small petty cash payments from the drawer during the day - tea, stationery, minor repairs. These payments must be recorded in the POS or petty cash log at the time they are made, with a receipt if possible. At closing, petty cash out reduces the expected cash balance. If petty cash is not tracked intraday, it appears as an unexplained cash short at closing, which creates a false discrepancy investigation every evening.
Reconcile Each Digital Payment Channel
After cash is confirmed, each digital channel is reconciled. For eSewa: log into the merchant portal, pull the day's transaction list, and match it against the POS records for eSewa payments. Any transaction in the POS not in the eSewa portal (or vice versa) is investigated - it might be a failed payment that the system marked as successful, or a payment the system missed. For Khalti, the same process. For ConnectIPS and bank QR, match against the bank's merchant dashboard. Card terminal batches are printed at day-end and matched against POS card transactions. This step catches failed digital payments that the cashier did not notice, duplicate payments, and channel misassignments where the cashier selected the wrong payment mode in the POS.
Generate Daily Sales Report for Management
With reconciliation confirmed, the daily sales report is generated. A useful daily sales report for retail management shows: total gross sales and net sales (after returns), sales by product category, top-selling items for the day, payment mode split (cash vs each digital channel), average transaction value, number of transactions, and comparison to the same day last week. This takes seconds to generate from a system that has captured all the underlying data. The manager who receives this report at 7pm has everything needed for tomorrow's buying decisions, promotional planning, and staffing. A retailer relying on a manually tallied cashbook gets the total revenue figure - nothing more.
Post to Accounting and Lock the Day
The final step is posting the day's confirmed transactions to the accounting system. The sales total posts as revenue, split by VAT-included and VAT amounts. Cash received posts to the cash account. eSewa receivable posts to a digital payments receivable account (cleared when the settlement arrives T+1). Khalti the same. Card terminal receivable posts separately. This is not a manual journal entry - it is an automated posting triggered by confirming the daily close. Once posted, the day is locked and cannot be edited without a supervisor override and a logged reason. This audit trail protection means month-end financials are built on daily closings that were verified and confirmed, not reconstructed from incomplete records.
A daily closing that takes 15 minutes and produces confirmed accounting entries is the foundation of clean monthly financials. Every unexplained discrepancy at month-end traces back to a daily closing that was not completed properly. Build the habit of a structured close every evening and the month-end becomes a confirmation, not an investigation.
The Daily Closing Checklist for Nepali Retail Shops
The checklist below is what a retail closing manager should run through every evening. It takes 10-15 minutes when the underlying systems are in order. Print it, post it near the till, and require the closing manager to sign off on each step.
Opening checks (done at start of day): Count opening float and record in system. Confirm float matches yesterday's agreed closing float. Verify eSewa QR scanner working. Verify Khalti terminal live. Verify card machine connected. Verify POS counter session started.
Closing checks (done at end of trading): Print cashier session report showing expected cash balance. Count physical cash (all denominations). Record actual vs expected; if gap over rū 200, investigate before proceeding. Pull eSewa merchant portal - match day's transactions to POS. Pull Khalti merchant portal - match day's transactions to POS. Print card terminal batch - match to POS card transactions. Note any digital payments in transit (T+1 settlement) in system. Record petty cash paid out during day with receipts. Generate daily sales report and send to owner/manager. Confirm daily close in system. Review that all returns processed today have corresponding credit notes. Lock the day's records in POS.
Frequently Asked Questions
Record eSewa and Khalti sales as a receivable on the day of the sale - the revenue is earned even though the cash has not arrived yet. When the settlement arrives in your bank account (usually T+1 business day), the receivable is cleared against the bank credit. This keeps your sales figures accurate by day and your bank balance accurate by day - they just differ by the in-transit amounts. Trying to record digital sales only when the settlement arrives distorts your daily and weekly revenue figures and makes it impossible to match individual transactions to settlements.
The most common causes are: unrecorded petty cash payments from the drawer, a payment mode selected incorrectly in the POS (customer paid eSewa but cashier selected cash), a digital payment that failed but the cashier did not notice, and counting errors during the physical cash count. A secondary cause is change-giving errors - the customer got too much or too little change, especially during busy periods with large denomination notes. Most of these causes are preventable with good POS discipline: select payment mode correctly, verify the digital payment notification before handing over goods, and record petty cash at the time it is paid out.
VAT-registered businesses using IRD's fiscal receipt system generate daily transaction records that are submitted electronically through the fiscal receipt device or software. This is the IRD's primary monitoring mechanism, not a separate daily report submission. Your obligation is to ensure that every sale generates a proper fiscal receipt through an IRD-approved system, and to file your VAT return monthly or trimester as required. The daily sales report described in this article is an internal management tool, not a regulatory submission - but it should be consistent with what your fiscal receipt system has recorded.
Daily Closings That Post Themselves
MISAC's accounting-first design means that every transaction recorded at the POS counter already has a complete double-entry journal behind it. When the closing manager confirms the daily reconciliation in MISAC, the day's accounting entries are posted automatically - cash receipts, digital payment receivables, revenue by category, and VAT output. There is no separate data entry step the next morning. The accounts team opens to books that are already current as of last night's closing.
MISAC's built-in pivot reporting means the daily sales report is configurable by any dimension: product category, cashier, payment channel, hour of day, or comparison period. A manager who wants to see which product category performed best this Tuesday compared to last Tuesday runs the pivot in seconds rather than constructing it in Excel. For multi-counter or multi-branch retailers, the pivot collapses all locations into one consolidated daily view while still allowing a drill-down to individual counter performance.
The closing checklist described in this article maps directly to the MISAC daily close workflow. Each step has a corresponding action in the system - opening float entry, session totals, channel reconciliation, report generation, and day lock. MISAC Intelligence Pvt. Ltd. built the daily close workflow around the actual end-of-day practices of Nepali retailers, including the eSewa and Khalti in-transit tracking that most accounting systems handle poorly.
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