How money works

The whole register rests on a few simple rules. Knowing them lets you read a drawer, a report or a refusal without surprise.

1. The intake is the money event

When a customer hands over money to play, the register makes an intake: that is the moment the money comes in (into the drawer for cash, or recorded outside the drawer for mobile money). The credit then sent to the machine is only an order: it no longer moves the drawer, it uses up the intake.

What happens	What moves
The customer hands over banknotes (intake)	the drawer goes up (cash) — or nothing in the drawer (mobile money, complimentary)
The register credits a machine with this intake	nothing in the drawer: the intake goes down
The customer is given back what is left	the drawer goes down
A machine is withdrawn and the customer is paid	the drawer goes down by the proven amount
A tablet withdraws “paid at the counter”	nothing: a debt is created
A main register pays this debt	that register’s drawer goes down

An amount appears only once in a drawer, always with its line in the ledger.

So one payment can serve several machines: the customer pays 100,000 Ar at once, with a single mobile money reference, and the register splits this payment over two machines. See Credit a machine.

2. Only what is proven is credited

For each order, the device sends back the proof of what the machine really accepted or paid back. Only this actual amount counts, never the amount asked for.

Fully credited: the whole planned intake is used up.
Partly credited (the machine accepted only part of it): the difference stays on the intake, to be credited elsewhere or given back to the customer.
Refused: nothing moved on the machine; the amount stays on the intake.
Uncertain (the proof is missing): the amount is reserved until operations has decided. You do not credit again, you do not refund.

A withdrawal works the same way: you pay the customer the proven amount. If the machine paid back less than asked, you pay what it paid back.

3. What is left belongs to the customer

What the customer handed over and is not yet committed to a machine is left over. It belongs to the customer. The register shows it (screen Encaissements, Intakes) and offers three ways out: credit a machine, refund the customer, or convert it into a debt. An intake with something left over blocks the closing of the register, so that nothing is forgotten.

4. What the venue owes: the debt

A debt is what the venue owes a customer. It is created:

by a withdrawal made by a tablet in front of the customer, “paid at the counter”: the tablet does not hold the banknotes;
by an intake left over and kept as a debt.

It carries a 4-character code, given to the customer. Any open main register pays it when the customer shows this code, which the cashier types in: a wrong code pays nothing. A debt survives the closing, the change of day and a restart. It never disappears on its own: it is paid, turned into a machine credit, or closed by operations with a reason. See Pay a debt with its code.

5. Payment modes: cash, mobile money, complimentary

Each payment mode of the venue has two properties, set in the back office:

	Touches the drawer?	Counts in takings?	Example
Cash	yes	yes	banknotes
Mobile money	no (outside the drawer)	yes	Orange Money, MVola — with a payment reference
Complimentary	no	no (not in takings)	goodwill gesture

A mobile money reference can be used only once per mode, in or out: reusing it is refused, and the refusal names the earlier payment.
A player is never paid in “Complimentary” (“Offert”): a payment to the player is made in cash or in a real mode.
The properties of a mode are frozen on each movement: changing a mode in the back office does not rewrite the past.

See Payment modes and splits.

6. Coin (pulse) machines

A coin machine is credited and paid in whole coins. The register takes in only the multiple of the coin and says what remains to be given back to the player: never a lost remainder, never a hidden remainder. Paying a win there goes through a manual payment with photo proof, then through resetting the machine to zero. See Coin (pulse) machines.