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I’ve been working on a WordPress plugin called Retail Cash Manager (RCM), and it’s now available free on WordPress.org.

The idea is fairly simple. Proper cash management systems can cost a business thousands to implement, often followed by a substantial recurring subscription. At the other end of the scale, plenty of businesses are still managing daily cash with Excel sheets, paper forms and manual processes.

I wanted to build something in between.

RCM is for businesses that handle physical cash and need to keep track of what should be there, what was actually counted, where the cash went afterwards, and who was responsible for each step.

Despite the name, it isn’t limited to retail. The same processes apply to cafés, restaurants, hospitality, service businesses and plenty of other cash-handling operations.

The current version includes:

• Daily cash-ups with cash and card discrepancies
• Denomination counting
• Till expenses
• Safe balances and safe counts
• Cash drops and recounts
• Lodgements using safe cash, cash drops or both
• Lodgement collection and cancellation
• Cash and change deliveries from a bank or supplier
• A cash movement ledger
• Staff signoff and audit history
• Multiple branches

It’s not a POS system and it’s not accounting software. It handles the operational cash management that happens around those systems.

Why WordPress?

That’s probably the obvious question.

WordPress gave me a lot of the underlying application infrastructure without having to build it all from scratch: users, permissions, database handling, email, localisation, hosting flexibility and a well-established update system.

The update system is particularly useful. As RCM improves, updates can be distributed to installations in the same way as any other WordPress plugin rather than every installation becoming its own bespoke piece of software.

Publishing through WordPress.org also means there are standards to meet around security, compatibility, packaging and Plugin Check before releases go out.

RCM doesn’t require WooCommerce, and you don’t need to have an existing WordPress website. It can run on a completely separate WordPress installation used only for RCM.

The current release is 0.4.5. At this stage the core workflow is there and working, although there’s plenty more I plan to add.

One area I’m particularly interested in next is more advanced multi-till cash management. For example, separately tracked tills, change given from a safe to a till, change returned at the end of the day, and outstanding change that has to be resolved before the till can be closed.

The plugin is free, so I’d be very interested in feedback from people who work with WordPress, retail, hospitality or cash-handling businesses. Particularly if you can see something obvious that I’ve missed or have experience with how other cash management systems handle things.

WordPress.org:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/website-guy-retail-cash-manager/