Electronic Journal in SAM4s Cash Registers

Electronic Journals (EJ) have replaced the traditional journal or audit tape in traditional cash registers. The way the EJ works is that it stores the transactions in memory instead of printing them on the internal audit tape like older registers.

Keep in mind this has nothing to to with your sales report. The old journal tapes and now EJ's are an AUDIT tape or record not a sales report. Even if you new cash register has an EJ you will still get your traditional X and Z reports (sales reports)

With the old school audit tapes when you had a balancing issue or massive over ring to resolve you would open the printer cover and start going through the printed audit tape or journal tape (same thing) until you spotted the problem. The EJ works in a similar way other then it prints to memory as you go rather then paper. So when you need to look into the audit tape to resolve an issue you have to print out the EJ and look at it. After it is printed it it exactly like the traditional audit/journal tape. Some registers allow you to print portions of the EJ to the screen of the register (if it has a screen) instead of printing it out.

There is one HUGE difference between between an old school physical audit tape and an EJ. A physical tape is limited by the size of the roll but when at and end the register in most cases prompts the user to change the paper. We the EJ has limits by the amount of memory in the cash register and it adjusted by programming in most cases. An EJ is sized by number of lines. So for an example a single item sale is about 7 lines (depending on the make and model of the cash register) you would have a line for date and time a line for register # Transaction # Cashier#, a line for the item and price, line for subtotal, line for sales tax, line for total, maybe a line for amount tendered and another for change. So a 2 item sale would be about 8 lines. So most registers when the EJ limit is reached the machine will start overwriting the oldest entries of the EJ. Some machines can be prompted to warn the cashier and prompt if the EJ should be printed, some machines have an option of stopping the cashier and forcing the cashier to print the EJ.

I recommend taking your Z every end of day and if the Z is good ignore your EJ and let it overwrite! But think about it before you start using your register. With some registers once you allocate that memory you may not be able to alter it without making changes you may not want to make in the rest of you program.

No one think I can tell you for sure is no one can tell you how long an EJ will last etc cause it all depends on the amount of items, number of sales etc! Every business is different. Your SAM4s Cash Register Expert can help you more