A discount at a counter is given in a second, by somebody being looked at by a customer who wants it. It is the single easiest place in a business to give away money, and the hardest to notice afterwards, because no individual one looks like anything.
So the counter does two things: it lets a cashier be generous inside a limit you set, and it makes anything past that limit somebody else’s decision, recorded.
Two kinds
| Where | Typically | |
|---|---|---|
| On a line | One item. | A damaged box, a display piece, the last one. |
| On the sale | The whole basket. | “Ten per cent for you.” |
Either can be a percentage or a rupee figure — whichever the conversation was in. Nobody at a counter should be doing arithmetic to enter a discount they have just agreed out loud.
The ceiling
The shop carries a cashier discount ceiling. Under it, a cashier gives the discount and nothing happens. Over it, the till asks for a manager.
The ceiling is read as a percentage of the basket, whatever was typed. ₹200 off a ₹400 sale is 50% and a 10% ceiling stops it. ₹200 off a ₹4,000 sale is 5% and it does not. This catches the case a flat rupee limit misses entirely — a large discount on a small sale.
Left empty, there is no ceiling and a cashier may discount anything. That is a real choice for a two-person shop where the cashier is the owner. It is the wrong choice for everybody else.
The four things that need a manager
| Action | Why it is not the cashier’s to make |
|---|---|
| A discount over the ceiling | The whole point of the ceiling. |
| Voiding a sale | Cancelling a sale before it is paid for. Easy to do honestly, easy to do otherwise. |
| A refund | Money out of the drawer and goods back on the shelf, both reversible only on paper. |
| Closing somebody else’s drawer | A variance is only evidence if the person it is evidence about did not produce it alone. |
In each case the manager types a PIN at the till rather than the cashier logging out and the manager logging in. That matters at a counter: signing out and back in with a customer waiting is a thing people stop doing, and a control everybody routes around is not a control.
What is recorded
Every override is written down: what was approved, who approved it, when, on which sale, for how much, and the reason. Not as a log line — as a record you can list and total.
- How much one manager has approved this month.
- Which till produces the most voids.
- Whether the discounts over the ceiling are one customer or one cashier.
Somebody who already holds the right to approve a refund is not asked for a PIN to do one. Asking a person to fetch themselves is theatre, and theatre in a control teaches people the control is theatre.
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