cash-handling

---
name: cash-handling
description: Turns your current till, safe and banking routine into a written cash handling process that names who touches cash at each stage, reduces how much is ever exposed to one person or one till at once, meets the employer's risk assessment duty for the physical risk cash creates, flags the point at which a single cash transaction becomes a Money Laundering Regulations registration duty, and a log that shows the process was actually followed. Use when writing a cash process for the first time, after a till has been short more than once, or before a busy period increases the cash sitting on the premises.
---

# A cash process that protects the team and the money, in that order

You give this how cash currently moves through the business: who counts the float, how a till is topped up or emptied mid-shift, where cash sits before it is banked, who banks it and how often, and any incident where cash handling put a member of staff at risk or went missing. You get back a written process naming who does what at each stage, a target for how much cash is ever exposed to one person or one point in the building at once, the risk assessment the law already requires you to have done, a plain flag for the point at which a single cash transaction becomes a separate registration duty, and a log template that shows the process is followed, not just written down. It will not tell you a target cash float, a typical loss percentage or an average till discrepancy for a business like yours, because no published figure exists for a single independent venue and a borrowed number would tell you nothing about your own premises, your own layout or your own risk.

## What it does

1. **Treat cash as a physical safety risk to the people who handle it, not only a money control, because the law does.** Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 puts the duty in the plainest terms available: "It shall be the duty of every employer to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all his employees." That duty extends to protecting a member of staff from the risk created by being visibly responsible for cash, whether that risk is a robbery, a late-night walk to a bank with the day's takings, or being the one person a determined customer targets over a disputed bill. Write cash handling into the same risk register as a hot pan or a wet floor, because it is the same duty.

2. **Carry out the risk assessment the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 already requires, specifically for cash.** Regulation 3(1) requires every employer to make "a suitable and sufficient assessment" of the risks to employees' health and safety while they are at work, and regulation 3(6) requires a business with five or more employees to record the significant findings. For cash specifically that means writing down: who is ever alone with cash, at what time of day, in what part of the building, carrying how much, and what happens if something goes wrong at that moment. A risk assessment that covers the kitchen and the fire exits but has never mentioned the till or the banking run has not actually been done for the risk that is most likely to involve a threat to a person rather than an accident.

3. **Set the float, and write down who counts it and when, every time, with no exception for a busy day.** The opening float is counted by a named person at the start of trade, against a fixed target amount, and the count is recorded before the first sale. The point of a fixed float is that any variance from it at the end of the day is meaningful; a float that changes amount or is estimated "roughly" from one day to the next removes the one number the rest of the reconciliation depends on.

4. **Decide how much cash is ever allowed to sit in a till before it is removed, and remove it on a schedule, not only when someone notices it is getting full.** A till holding a full night's takings by 9pm is a target for the rest of the service, and it is also the single point of failure if that till is compromised. Set a trigger, either a cash amount or a time interval, at which excess cash is moved from the till to a secure point, and write down who does that removal and who checks it.

5. **Move cash to a drop safe or a locked point that the person removing it from the till cannot reopen, so no one person can be blamed for or targeted over the full amount.** Where a business has a drop safe, cash above the till's working float goes straight into it and is only reconciled when the safe itself is opened by a different, named process. This is a genuine control, not paperwork: it means a threat made against the person on the till cannot produce the whole day's cash, because that person cannot open the safe.

6. **Bank cash on a schedule that does not create a predictable, cash-heavy target moving through the same route at the same time.** Where cash is taken to a bank or a collection point by a member of staff rather than a cash-in-transit contractor, vary the time and, where practical, the route and the person, and never send one person alone with an amount the business would call significant if it were lost. This is the point in the process the Act's general duty in step 1 applies to most directly, because it is the moment a person is physically exposed away from the premises.

7. **Flag the point at which a single cash transaction stops being a till question and becomes a registration duty.** The Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 define a high value dealer as a business that "by way of business trades in goods when the trader makes or receives a payment or payments in cash of at least £10,000 in total, whether the transaction is executed in a single operation or in several operations which appear to be linked." A hospitality business rarely reaches this in ordinary trade, but a large private event or a wedding paid entirely in cash can, and the duty is to register before taking the payment, not after. Write the threshold into the process so a large cash booking is checked against it before it is accepted, not discovered afterwards.

8. **Count the till at the end of the day the same way every time, independently of the till's own recorded figure, and hand the reconciliation itself to the till-reconcile process rather than duplicating it here.** This skill sets how cash physically moves and who is exposed to it; the till-reconcile skill compares the counted figure to the till's recorded figure and the card settlement report. Running both means the physical risk is controlled and the money is checked, without either process trying to do the other's job.

9. **Hand the process document and the log template to Codex once the physical layout and the schedule decisions are made.** Put the current cash routine, the float amount, the drop-off and banking schedule, and any incident history in one working folder and run, from that folder:

   ```
   codex exec --sandbox danger-full-access --skip-git-repo-check -C "<working folder>" - < CODEX.md
   ```

   Claude hands over the float amount, the drop trigger, the banking schedule and who is named at each stage. Codex returns the written process document, the risk assessment record, and the cash handling log template. Codex never decides the float amount, the drop trigger or who is named at each stage; those are the owner's decisions about their own premises and their own staff.

10. **Review the process after any incident, and review it on a schedule even where nothing has gone wrong.** Regulation 3(3) of the 1999 Regulations requires the risk assessment to be reviewed where there is reason to think it is no longer valid, and a change of premises layout, opening hours, staffing level or a near miss is exactly that reason. A process written once and never revisited is a document, not a control.

## Then it checks

1. The risk assessment names cash handling specifically, not only general premises safety, and states who is exposed to it, when, and how much.
2. The float amount is fixed, counted by a named person at the start of every trading period, and recorded before the first sale.
3. A trigger for removing excess cash from the till is stated as a specific amount or time interval, not left to judgement in the moment.
4. Where cash leaves the premises for banking, the schedule, route or person varies, and no single person is sent alone with an amount the business itself would call significant.
5. The £10,000 single-transaction cash threshold is stated in the process, and a route exists for checking a large advance booking against it before the cash is accepted.
6. The cash handling log has entries that could only come from the process actually being followed, not entries that could have been written after the fact from memory.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules
- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Anything sent in someone's name says whose name it is.
- Never state a target float, a typical cash loss percentage, an average till variance or any other benchmark for a single independent UK hospitality business. No published figure exists, and a borrowed target has no relationship to this business's own layout, footfall or risk.
- Never recommend a specific security product, safe brand or cash-in-transit contractor by name. The process states what the control must achieve; which product achieves it is the owner's purchasing decision.
- Never treat this skill's log as the VAT or tax record of takings. That record is the till-reconcile skill's daily gross takings figure; this log records that the physical handling process was followed.
- Never advise sending a lone member of staff to a bank or collection point with an amount the owner has not explicitly assessed as acceptable to lose. The point of the risk assessment in step 2 is to make that judgement in writing, in advance, not in the moment.
- This output is a working document prepared for the owner to check against their own premises, and for their insurer and, where the business employs five or more people, to satisfy the recorded risk assessment duty. It applies published health and safety and money laundering duties to the facts supplied. It is not a security audit of the premises and it is not a determination that any insurance condition is met.

## Built from
- Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, section 2, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/37/section/2, read 23 September 2026: the general duty to ensure employee health, safety and welfare "so far as is reasonably practicable," in step 1.
- Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, regulation 3, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1999/3242/regulation/3, read 23 September 2026: the risk assessment duty and its review trigger, in step 2 and step 10.
- The Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017, regulation 14, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2017/692/regulation/14, read 23 September 2026: the high value dealer definition and the £10,000 single or linked transaction cash threshold, in step 7.

# cash-handling

## You are given
A description of the current cash routine: the fixed float amount and who counts it, the trigger the owner has set for removing excess cash from the till (an amount or a time interval), where cash is held between removal from the till and banking, who banks it and on what schedule, and whether a drop safe or equivalent locked point exists. The business's employee count, to determine whether the regulation 3(6) recorded-findings duty applies. Any incident history involving cash, with dates and what happened, where the owner supplies it. Whether the business has ever taken or expects to take a single cash payment, or linked cash payments for one transaction, of £10,000 or more, and if so what the owner's decision was about registering as a high value dealer. All judgement calls, including the float amount, the drop trigger and who is named at each stage, have already been made by the owner and are supplied to you as finished decisions.

## Produce
Write into a `./cash-handling-output/` folder:

1. `risk-assessment.md` recording, on separate lines: who is ever exposed to cash and at what stage (till, drop, banking run); the time of day and location for each stage; what happens if something goes wrong at that stage, as supplied by the owner; and the date of this assessment. Where the employee count supplied is five or more, add a line stating the regulation 3(6) recorded-findings duty applies and that this file is that record.
2. `cash-process.md` the written process, in the order cash actually moves: float count, till operation, excess cash removal trigger and method, safe or locked point, banking schedule and method, and who is named at each stage. Every named person, amount and schedule is copied from what the owner supplied; you do not invent a float amount, a trigger figure or a schedule where none was supplied, those go in `gaps.md` instead.
3. `hvd-check.md` one paragraph stating the £10,000 single or linked transaction threshold, whether the business has ever reached it, and the owner's stated registration decision. Where the owner has not stated a decision and the business has reached or expects to reach the threshold, this is listed in `gaps.md`.
4. `cash-log-template.csv` with columns: `date`, `stage`, `amount_gbp`, `performed_by`, `checked_by`, `notes`. `stage` is exactly one of `float count`, `till removal`, `safe drop`, `safe reconciliation`, `banking run`. Pre-populate one row per entry supplied in any existing log; leave the template ready to extend for a business with no existing log.
5. `gaps.md` a numbered list of: any stage in the cash process with no named person; any amount or trigger left unspecified by the owner; whether the employee count was supplied; whether the HVD registration decision was supplied where the threshold applies; and the date the risk assessment is due for review, left blank if no review date was supplied.

## Rules
- Codex assembles and records decisions already made. It never sets a float amount, a drop trigger, a banking schedule or names a person for a stage that was not named in the brief.
- Never state a target float, a loss percentage or a benchmark figure for a comparable business, in any file.
- Never recommend a named security product, safe brand or cash-in-transit contractor.
- Never write a cash log entry as if the process was followed where no entry was supplied. An empty log stays empty and is noted in `gaps.md`, not filled with assumed entries.
- Use British English, GBP written as `GBP` or the pound sign, and DD Month YYYY dates. No em dashes in any file you write, and any supplied text containing one is recorded verbatim and flagged in `gaps.md`.
- Every name, amount and schedule is copied exactly as supplied.
- Every file ends with this line: this is a working document prepared for the owner to check against their own premises, and for their insurer to check before it is relied on to satisfy any policy condition. It applies published health and safety and money laundering duties to facts supplied and is not a security audit of the premises.

## Return
The absolute path of every file written, whether the risk assessment names every stage supplied, the float amount and drop trigger recorded, the row count of `cash-log-template.csv`, whether the HVD threshold applies and what the recorded registration decision is or that none was supplied, and the `gaps.md` item count.