SortKai keeps the books for retailers: shops, stores and other businesses that sell through a point-of-sale (POS) system. We connect to your POS platform and pull the end-of-day reports ourselves. Daily sales, card settlements and payouts are reconciled against what the bank actually deposited. Each month, a person reviews and signs a trial balance and P&L, which is handed to your accountant.
This page explains why retail books are harder to keep than they look, what a POS reconciliation service actually checks, and what stays with you.
Retail businesses whose sales are recorded by a POS system. We work with Square, Shopify POS, Clover, Toast, Lightspeed and most others. The books live in QuickBooks Online or Xero. That can be the file you already have, or one we set up and manage for you, which transfers into your name whenever you ask.
If an accounting firm already looks after you, that doesn't change. SortKai does the bookkeeping, and your accountant receives clean, reconciled books to file and advise from.
In retail, the POS report and the bank statement almost never show the same number for the same day. That is normal, and it is the whole reason retail bookkeeping needs reconciliation. The gap has a few ordinary causes:
| The POS says | The bank shows | Why they differ |
|---|---|---|
| Gross card sales for the day | A smaller deposit | Processing fees are taken out before the money is sent. Square states its “processing fees are deducted before funds are transferred to your linked bank account.” |
| Sales dated Friday | A deposit dated the next business day or later | Settlement timing. Under Square's standard transfers, payments taken before 5 PM PT “will be available in your bank account the next business day.” |
| Many individual sales | One combined deposit | Payouts are batched. Stripe's payout reconciliation report exists to match “the payouts you receive in your bank account with the batches of payments and other transactions that they relate to.” |
| Cash sales | A cash deposit, if one is made | Cash goes through the drawer, not the processor, so the only check is the count against the deposit. |
A common mistake is to record the bank deposit as the day's sales. The deposit is the net figure: recording it as sales leaves your sales short of what customers actually paid and hides the processing fees from your P&L. Recording sales at the gross amount and the fees as a separate cost keeps both visible. It also lines up with how card income is reported in the US: the IRS explains that the gross payment amount on Form 1099-K “isn't adjusted for any” fees, and lists fees among the items you can deduct from that gross amount. How your own sales and fees should be treated is a question for your accountant.
During onboarding, you grant Kai, our AI agent, read-only access to your POS platform's reporting. From then on, the end-of-day reports are pulled automatically every day. You don't need to export or email anything.
Each card batch is then matched to the bank deposit it becomes, with settlement timing and processor fees accounted for. When a deposit and a batch don't agree, the difference is reported with references, so you can see which day and which batch it belongs to. You won't just get an unexplained number in a suspense account.
This is the core of a POS reconciliation service. POS, cash, card and bank end up in one set of books that agree with each other.
“Cash over/short” is the gap between what the register says you should have taken in cash and what was actually counted and deposited. A drawer that is over by a little on one day and short on another is ordinary. A drawer that is short every week is something you want to know about early.
SortKai compares the register count with what was actually deposited and reports the gap, if any. Cash over/short becomes a number you see each month, not a surprise at year-end. What to do about it — a till procedure, a conversation with staff — stays your decision.
POS reports are one channel among several. The same service covers the rest of the paperwork a shop produces:
Every ledger entry is linked to the report, invoice or receipt behind it. Anything the agent isn't sure about waits for a person, and nothing is guessed.
| Included | Not included |
|---|---|
| Daily posting of POS reports, bills and receipts | Sales tax or income tax filing |
| Card batches matched to bank deposits, net of fees | Payroll |
| Cash over/short reported | Audit |
| A reconciled ledger in your platform, or one we manage | CFO or advisory work |
| A trial balance and P&L by the tenth business day, reviewed and signed by a person | Chasing your customers for payment |
| Written close notes: corrections, open questions, flags | Tax or legal advice |
The excluded items belong with your accountant or other providers. If you don't have an accountant, we can recommend firms that like receiving clean ledgers.
You grant read-only access to your POS reporting, and bookkeeper access to your QuickBooks Online or Xero, where Kai works as a named user under its own login. If we run the books under a SortKai-managed subscription, you don't share platform access at all. Every action is logged, access is limited to bookkeeping, and you can switch it off in about a minute. Your documents are used to keep your books, not to train anything.
You pay a fixed monthly fee sized to your document volume, quoted in writing after a free consultation. The fee does not rise because your sales grow. It follows the bookkeeping workload, not your turnover. Your quote names a document-volume band, and that band's rate is held for twelve months. A one-off busy month, such as the holiday season, never changes the fee. If volume runs above the band for two months in a row, the next band is proposed in writing at least 30 days before it applies. There is a one-time onboarding fee, quoted in writing. After that, service is month to month and you can cancel any month.
Behind on the books? A backlog is quoted separately as a one-time flat fee, in writing.
Processor payout mechanics above are taken from the processors' own documentation, and the Form 1099-K point from the IRS:
Fees and transfer timing vary by processor, plan and country. Check your own processor's terms. This page is general information, not tax or legal advice.
Kai pulls your end-of-day reports, matches every card batch to the bank, and a person signs every monthly close. A fixed monthly fee, quoted in writing.
Square, Shopify POS, Clover, Toast, Lightspeed and most others. During onboarding you grant Kai read-only access to your POS platform's reporting, and from then on the end-of-day reports are collected daily without anyone exporting or emailing them.
Because processors deduct their fees before paying out, and they often combine several days or many sales into one deposit. SortKai matches each card batch to the deposit it becomes, with settlement timing and processor fees accounted for, and reports any difference with references.
It is the gap between the cash the register says you took and the cash actually counted and deposited. SortKai compares the register count with what was deposited and reports the gap each month, so it is a number you see rather than a surprise at year-end.
No. SortKai keeps the books only. Tax filing, payroll, audit, and CFO or advisory work stay with your accountant or other providers, who receive a reconciled trial balance and P&L with every entry linked to its source document.
No. The end-of-day reports are pulled from your POS platform through read-only access. Supplier invoices and receipts can be forwarded to your dedicated SortKai address, and bank and card feeds and vendor-portal invoices are collected directly, so most documents never need forwarding.
