How a shift starts and ends, written down for once

Ask a store owner how a day on the till should start and finish and you'll get a confident answer. Ask a new staff member in their second week and you'll get a shrug. Clock in, open the till, count the float, check the orders, sync anything sold offline, cash up, clock out - the order matters, and it's almost never written down anywhere staff can see it.

The result is predictable: shifts left open overnight, tills that are never cashed up, offline sales sitting on a tablet, and a morning person who finds the drawer in a state nobody can explain.

A checklist that ticks itself

Budstack's My day card sits at the top of every staff member's home screen. To start the day it shows three steps - start your shift, open your till with a counted float, and have your till PIN if the store uses them. To end it, End my day lists the rest: finish or hand over open orders, make sure no offline sales are waiting, cash up, end the shift.

• Each step ticks itself off from what actually happened - nobody ticks a box by hand
• The next step has a button that goes straight to the right screen
• It spots a till left open from an earlier day, so it gets cashed up before a new one opens
• It guides rather than blocks - ending a shift early asks once, names what's left, and then does what it's told

What the last shift knew

The other thing that goes home at the end of a shift is everything the person knew. Till 2 was twenty rand short. The fridge is low on one drink. A customer is collecting an order at ten. At End my day, anyone can now leave a short handover note, and it shows at the top of the next person's My day, with the writer's name, until they press Got it.

Learning the rest

The checklist covers the shape of the day. The detail lives in the training built into the app, and staff can earn Till Certified - 30 questions, about 20 minutes, 80% to pass - once they know it. Someone not certified yet gets a gentle reminder on their My day, never a block on the till.