You carry the week’s takings to the bank, sign a slip, and leave. The operation looks too simple to deserve a procedure. Yet it is the one where the trail is lost most often: between the moment the money leaves the till drawer and the moment it appears on the statement, nobody can say which sales it corresponds to unless you wrote it down.
The essentials in five points
- A cash deposit carries a J+1 value date: the money is on the account the next day, not the same day.
- The deposit slip is your only proof of the amount handed over and of the day you handed it over.
- Cash deposits are free at most banks, but the stamp duty on the operation remains payable.
- A deposit does not justify itself: it has to point back to an identifiable till period.
- Cash payment ceilings do not concern your deposits, but rather the payments you receive from customers.
1. Preparing the deposit before leaving the shop
A deposit prepared at the counter is a deposit whose composition you can no longer prove. Everything is decided before you leave, and it takes five minutes.
- Close the till on a precise period: a day, a week, never “since last time”.
- Count the cash and reconcile the total against the figure your till expects, before it goes into the bag.
- Note the discrepancy if there is one, and its cause if you know it; a gap explained the same day is an incident, a gap discovered a month later is a hole.
- Set aside the float that has to stay in the drawer, and deposit only the difference.
- Write the amount to be deposited on an internal document before leaving, so you can compare it with the slip on your return.
That last step is the one everybody skips, and it is precisely what separates a controlled deposit from a trusting one. The slip proves what the bank received; your internal document proves what left the shop. It is the comparison of the two that carries value.
2. The value date, and why your balance lies every other day
A cash deposit is credited with a J+1 value date. In practice the money appears on the statement on the day of the deposit, but it only counts for interest from the following day. If your account is overdrawn, you pay interest on a sum you have already handed over.
| Operation | Value date | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C | a | s | h | d | e | p | o | s | i | t | |
| J | + | 1 |
The practical consequence is simple: if you have to cover a cheque presented tomorrow, a deposit made today is not always enough to avoid it. Pay in the day before the need, not on the day itself.
3. What a deposit does not justify on its own
A deposit slip proves that a sum entered the account. It does not prove where it came from. For the tax administration, as for anyone buying the business later, a deposit with no identifiable counterpart in the till is an anomaly — and the kind that invites a question.
- The link to the till: Every deposit must point back to a closed and documented sales period. It is that link, not the slip, which justifies the origin of the funds.
- The owner’s contribution: If you put personal money into the company account, it is not revenue: it is recorded separately, failing which you inflate your turnover artificially and the tax that follows it.
- Stamp duty: The advertised free deposit refers to the bank’s commission. Any applicable stamp duty remains payable and appears separately.
Take care not to confuse two distinct rules: the cash payment ceilings in the General Tax Code govern the settlements you receive or make, not the act of depositing your own takings. Depositing 80,000 dirhams of accumulated takings is perfectly regular; taking 80,000 dirhams in cash from a single customer is not.
Never pay in before closing the till
A deposit made before any counting makes the till discrepancy impossible to detect: you will never know whether the difference came from a change error, a theft, or an unrecorded sale. Closing the till must come before the deposit, never the other way round.
4. The entry, and what BelloPOS actually tracks
In accounting terms a deposit is not income: it is a simple movement between two treasury accounts, the till credited and the bank debited. The income was recorded at the moment of the sale, not at the moment of the deposit. Recording the deposit as revenue would count the same turnover twice.
BelloPOS records sales and their payment methods, which gives you the cash amount expected for the period. What it does not do is see your bank account: the software does not know a deposit has happened. Reconciling the till’s cash total, the slip and the statement stays a manual step, but it becomes quick once all three figures exist.
Mistakes to avoid
- Depositing “whatever is there” without counting — The slip amount then becomes the only truth available, and any earlier discrepancy disappears for good.
- Counting the deposit as revenue — The sale was already recorded. A deposit is a transfer between till and bank, otherwise turnover is doubled.
- Mixing personal funds with takings — Both come in through the same counter but share neither nature nor tax treatment. Separate them at the moment of deposit.
- Relying on today’s deposit to cover today’s cheque — The J+1 value date means the funds are not yet counted. Pay in the day before.
Frequently asked questions
Is depositing cash charged for?
The commission is generally nil for a deposit into your own account, cash deposits being among the free services. Any applicable stamp duty nonetheless remains payable.
Can I deposit any amount in cash?
Yes, depositing your own takings is not capped. What is capped is a cash settlement received from a single customer or paid to a single supplier.
How long should deposit slips be kept?
As long as your other accounting records. The slip is the supporting document for the transfer entry, exactly as an invoice is for a purchase.
Can somebody else make the deposit for me?
Yes, paying into an account does not require being its holder. All the more reason to compare the returned slip with the amount noted on departure, every time.
What to take away
Close the till, note the amount, deposit, then compare the slip with what you noted. Remember the J+1 value date when you are paying in to cover a due payment, and never record a deposit as revenue: the sale was already booked.
Sources
The figures and rules quoted above come from these pages, read on the date given in the article.
- Bank Al-Maghrib, banking supervision and customer protection, read 8 September 2026
- Al Barid Bank, 2026 tariff schedule, read 8 September 2026
- Ministry of Economy and Finance, General Code of Accounting Standardisation, read 1 September 2026
The expected cash total, without recounting from memory
BelloPOS records every sale with its payment method and gives you the period’s cash figure to set against your deposit slip.
Read next
Other practical guides on the same subject: