Erasing a transaction

[justadoode]

Using Aloha version 5.3.20 and I had two different servers ring up the same customer twice and then close out. One of them just lost the money but I have duplicate transactions from a couple of days ago. How do I delete a transaction or a ticket that's been closed for a few days. I went into the folder with the correct date under the aloha folder but I don't know what to look for. I can't do it from the front of the house. Please help. Thanks!!

 

[zahead31]

From my understanding, you cannot go back and make changes to a past date. What you can do is ring up a refund for the exact bill that was rung in error. This should create the reverse transaction for your POS and accounting purposes.

Hope this helps,
Matt

 

[justadoode]

I had assumed that since I can pull up the individual ticket through the reports in the back of the house, that naturally the information MUST be housed somewhere, so I should be able to just delete that ticket or transaction. So, you're saying there's no access to that, right?

 

[bigblok403]

Besides being a pain to reverse something from several days ago, I think it's also illegal.

 

[zahead31]

Bigblok is correct as well. I am my company's accountant, and being a small business, I inherit the POS maintenance as well.

If you ring a ticket in error on any date of business and refund the ticket the next, the transactions reverse each other, and your company's books will balance with your daily sales activity in the POS. There will also be an audit trail in your POS to that effect (affect?).

To go back and delete a transaction from a prior day will, of course, remove that transaction from existence and your books will still balance. However, there is no audit trail, and you will never know if anyone else has been in your system deleting past transactions. It is not best practice.

Matt

 

[justadoode]

Oh, I hadn't even thought of that! My waitresses were teaming on a big party and they simply double rang everything. Luckily it was all premade, they just had not worked out who was to ring the order. When they turned in their check outs, they both turned in their money, so when I realized they'd turned in too much, I started checking and realized they rang up two identical tickets for one party. I just figured to erase one to balance out the product mix and finances. If I refund the money evens out, but not the product but I don't want to do anything that may be construed as ethically questionable.

 

[zahead31]

I hear you! Even with the best intentions, when it comes to dealing with the IRS, you always want a paper trail!

I do believe that in Aloha, if you perform a refund, it will record a negative sale quantity for the particular menu item being refunded. It's been a while since I have done a refund, so I may be wrong here.

Now, if you are using a third party inventory software, I am not sure how that would handle a refund from Aloha, but I would think that the software should pick that up as well.

I hope I was able to help!
Matt

 

[justadoode]

Thanks for your help, Matt. You saved me alot of time from going back in for hours and trying to figure out how to remove the transaction. Thanks.