Once a payment is recorded in Lupa, three things keep the practice's books honest: the payment method that was used, the daily cashup that confirms what came in matches what landed in the till, and the financial lock that closes off finalised periods so nothing can be back-dated by accident. Together they're how the practice closes the day, the month, and the year cleanly.
💡 In short: Pick the right payment method when you take money so it lands in the right column on the books. Run a cashup at the end of each day or shift to confirm the practice's records match the till and the card terminals. Set a financial lock to stop anyone editing or back-dating transactions in periods that have already been counted.
Why this matters
⚠️ Reconcile every day, lock every month. Practices that only cash up when something looks wrong almost always find the discrepancy too late to investigate. Practices that lock at month-end almost never have to chase down phantom edits to figures already shared with the accountant. The two go together — the cashup creates the daily snapshot; the lock makes sure nobody can rewrite history afterwards.
Benefit | What it does for the practice |
Payment-by-payment audit | Every payment carries the method it was taken with, so cashups, statements, and reports can break takings down by Cash, Card, Cheque, Bank Transfer, Insurance, and Online without manual tagging |
Daily proof the till is right | The Cashups page lists every completed payment and refund since the last close, lets you record what you actually counted, and saves a permanent report — including any over/short — for the practice manager to review |
Closed periods stay closed | Once a financial lock is set, the system blocks anyone — staff or admins — from creating, editing, or refunding payments in the locked range. Reports stop drifting from the figures already shared |
Multi-site visibility | Each company in a group has its own lock policy, shown side-by-side in the lock timeline. A regional manager can see at a glance which clinics are locked and which still need to close out |
One-click status overrides nothing | Lupa never "silently" allows a backdated transaction. If a date falls inside a locked period, the relevant button stays disabled with a tooltip pointing at the lock — it's always visible, never hidden behind menus |
Payment methods
The Payment method picker appears on every Add Payment, Add Refund, and Cashup screen. Method choice is fixed by Lupa rather than configured per practice — what matters is picking the right one each time so the books reflect reality.
Method | What it represents | When to pick it |
Cash | Physical cash handed over at reception | Notes or coins into the till. Counts towards the cash drawer total in the cashup |
Credit/Debit Card | A manual record of a card payment taken outside Lupa | You used a card terminal that isn't paired with Lupa, or a manual key-in machine. Lupa records it; the bank settles separately |
Lupa Terminal | Card payment driven by a terminal paired with Lupa Pay | Auto-recorded when the customer taps or inserts. Don't pick this manually — it's set by the Terminal tab on Add Payment |
Dojo Terminal | Card payment driven by a paired DOJO terminal | Same as Lupa Terminal — set by Lupa, not chosen manually. Auto-recorded once DOJO confirms the transaction |
Online Payment | Client paid through a Lupa Pay or Stripe link | Set by Lupa when the customer completes an online link. Don't pick manually for offline transactions |
Bank Transfer | Money sent direct to the practice's bank account | Insurance settlement, BACS payment from a corporate client, ad-hoc transfer. Add a note with the reference so it's easy to match against the statement |
Cheque | Physical cheque handed over or posted | Record on the date you receive it (not the date you bank it) so the client's balance updates immediately |
Insurance | Direct settlement from a pet insurance provider | The insurer is paying the practice directly under a direct-claim arrangement, not the client |
Paid for by store | The practice itself is covering the bill | Internal write-down for staff pets, charity cases, or goodwill where the books still need a payment line for completeness |
Other | Anything that doesn't fit the categories above | Use sparingly and always add a note explaining what it represents — Other is hard to reconcile against bank statements |
Client Credit | Existing credit on the client's account being applied | Set by Lupa when you allocate credit to an invoice. Doesn't appear in the manual picker because no money is moving |
📍 The full step-by-step for taking a payment with each method — including pairing a terminal, sending an online link, and allocating to multiple invoices — lives in . This article focuses on what each method means and how it shows up later in cashups and reports.
Cashups
A cashup is a permanent snapshot of every payment and refund the practice took in a defined period — typically a day or a shift. Lupa pulls the figures itself; you confirm what was actually counted in the till, record any discrepancy, and approve the report. Once approved, the cashup is the practice's record of takings for that period.
When to run a cashup
Scenario | What to do |
End of trading day | Run a cashup covering since the last one — typically the previous day's close. This is the standard rhythm for most practices |
Shift handover | Run a cashup at each handover so each member of staff is only accountable for their own till. Pick the handover time as the Cashup ends at date |
Spotted a discrepancy mid-day | Run a partial cashup to that point — record the over/short with a note, approve, and continue. The next cashup picks up from there |
Reopening after a long break | Don't try to cover months in a single cashup. If the practice has been idle (renovation, holiday closure), run an empty cashup to mark the gap, then a fresh one for the reopening day |
Step 1: Open the Cashups page
Navigate to Cashups from the main work app menu. The page opens in two columns:
Left: A list titled Last cashups with every approved cashup, newest first. Each row shows the cashup period, who approved it, and a status badge (clean approval or With issues)
Main panel: Either an open draft cashup ready to be approved, or a historical cashup if you select one from the list
📍 The cashup period always starts where the last one ended — there's no way to leave a gap. If no previous cashup exists, the period starts at midnight today.
Step 2: Set the period and review the summary
The Cashup ends at date defaults to the current time. You can pull it back if you're closing for an earlier point — for example, you're cashing up at 6pm but want the period to end at 5:30pm. Lupa rejects future dates with the message "It is not possible to future date the end of the cashup period". The Payment summary table groups every completed payment and refund in the period by method:
Column | What it shows |
Method | The payment method (Cash, Credit/Debit Card, Online, etc.). Methods with no activity in the period still appear so you can record an explicit zero |
Paid | Sum of completed payments taken using this method in the period |
Refunded | Sum of refunds processed against this method in the period (subtracted from Paid in the next column) |
Total | Net takings — Paid minus Refunded. This is what Lupa expects to see for this method |
Available | Editable. What you actually counted — the till for Cash, the terminal settlement for Card, the bank for Bank Transfer. Leave at zero if nothing was counted |
Difference | Available minus Total. Red if there's a discrepancy. Zero is the goal |
Below the summary, the Payments table lists every individual payment and refund in the period with its appointment, client, employee, date, amount, method, and status. This is the audit trail the cashup will preserve.
Step 3: Approve the cashup
Click Approve cashup to open the confirmation dialog. The button label changes based on what the summary shows:
Approve cashup — every Difference is zero. The cashup will be saved as Correct
Approve with issues — at least one method has a non-zero Difference. The cashup will be saved as With issues, and the discrepancies are recorded line-by-line on the report Use Approval notes to explain anything unusual — for example, "Card terminal £2.50 over — investigating with DOJO support", or "Client paid £20 cash but receipt was for £18 by mistake, will refund tomorrow". The notes are saved on the cashup permanently and visible on the historical detail page. Click the action button to commit the cashup. Lupa shows a Report created toast, the cashup appears at the top of the Last cashups list, and the main panel rolls forward to the next period (starting from the cashup you just approved).
⚠️ An approved cashup is the practice's record for that period. It can be edited or undone (with the right permission) but the change is logged to the audit trail. Never approve a cashup with a discrepancy you haven't actually investigated — "will check tomorrow" with no notes is the kind of entry that's impossible to reconstruct three months later.
Step 4: Review past cashups
Click any cashup in the Last cashups list to open it. The detail view has three sections:
Approval information — status, period, total amount, who approved it, when, and the approval notes
Payment summary — the method-by-method breakdown, including the Available you recorded and any Difference
Payments — the full list of payments and refunds covered by this cashup From this page you can:
Click Generate PDF to export a printable report (useful for the accountant or end-of-month folder)
Click the pencil icon to update notes, the Available numbers, or the discrepancy explanations — only available with the Cashup (Full) permission
Click the undo icon to delete the most recent cashup if it was created in error. Lupa asks you to confirm with the message "By undoing this cashup it won't appear anymore in the list. All the payments will be available in the the draft editor. Do you want to continue?" — click Undo cashup to proceed. The period reopens, all payments return to the draft editor, and Lupa shows a Report undone confirmation. Only the most recent cashup can be undone, and only with the Cashup (Full) permission
🔒 Cashup permissions are split. Cashup lets a staff member view and approve cashups but not edit historical ones. Cashup (Full) is needed to update notes/figures on a past cashup, or to undo the most recent one. Most practices give Cashup to reception/floor staff and Cashup (Full) to the practice manager only.
Financial locking
A financial lock closes off transactions on or before a given date so they can't be edited, refunded, or reversed without first lifting the lock. It's the safety rail for end-of-month, end-of-quarter, and end-of-year — the moment after which figures shared with the accountant have to stay still. The lock setting lives on the Admin → Financial page, under the Financial Settings tab. There are three modes, shown as tabs:
Mode | What it does |
Disabled | No lock. Any date can be edited freely. The default for new companies and the right choice while you're still bedding in the day-to-day cashup habit |
Lock by date | Pick a specific date. Every transaction on or before that date is locked. Use this for a one-off close — for example, locking up to 31 March after the quarterly accounts are signed off. Move the date forward later when the next period closes |
Month End | Locks each month automatically at the end of the month, plus an optional grace period in days. Use this once the practice is comfortable with daily cashups — you set it once and forget about it. Set Days After Month End to 3, for example, and January's transactions are locked from end-of-day on 3 February |
Step 1: Open Financial Lock settings
Go to Admin → Financial and stay on the Financial Settings tab. The Financial Lock card shows the current company at the top, with a timeline below for any sub-companies in the group (head office sees its full timeline; a single clinic sees only its own).
🔒 Update Financial Lock permission required. Without it the Admin → Financial page is read-only — you can see what's locked but the Edit pencil and the form controls are hidden. Ask whoever administers roles at the practice to grant the Update Financial Lock permission via Roles and permissions.
Click the pencil icon next to the current company's status to open the editor.
Step 2: Choose a lock mode and set the date or grace period
Lock by date opens a date picker labelled Lock Transactions On Or Before with the helper "Transactions on or before this date will be locked". Pick a date in the past — typically the last day of the month or quarter you've finished accounting for.
⚠️ Setting the date to today or later locks the present. If the picked date is today's date or in the future, Lupa shows a warning: "Setting the lock date to today or a future date will block all payment, refund, deposit, and write-off operations for the current day and earlier." That's useful if the practice has decided to freeze takings (rare), but accidental future dates are a common cause of "why can't I take this payment?" support tickets.
Month End opens a number field labelled Days After Month End with the helper "E.g., if you set this to 3, transactions in January will be locked from EOD February 3rd". Set 0 for an immediate lock at midnight on the 1st of the next month, or a small number (3–5) to give the practice manager a few days to finalise the prior month before the lock kicks in.
Click Save Changes to apply. Lupa shows a Financial lock settings updated toast and the new policy takes effect immediately.
Step 3: Understand what the lock blocks
Once a lock is active, every operation that would create, edit, or reverse a transaction in the locked range is refused. The behaviour is consistent across the app:
Action attempted | What happens |
Take a new payment dated inside the locked period | Date field rejects the date with a tooltip pointing at the lock |
Refund a payment that was originally taken in the locked period | Add Refund is disabled with the tooltip "This action is blocked by a financial lock. Contact your administrator to adjust the lock settings." |
Issue a credit note or write-off against a locked invoice | Same disabled state and tooltip. The credit note/write-off can't be backdated into the locked range either |
Edit a line item on an invoice in the locked range (even in Draft) | Edits refused with the financial-lock message. Reopening a Completed invoice in a locked range is also blocked |
Run a cashup whose period overlaps the lock | The cashup end date has to be after the lock — Lupa won't let you reopen a closed period to re-cashup it |
📍 Invoices in a locked range still show the locked tooltip "This invoice is under a financial lock and cannot be edited" on hover — staff who don't know the lock is set get an immediate explanation, not a silent disabled button.
Multi-company groups
For practices that operate multiple clinics under a single company hierarchy, Admin → Financial shows each company's lock as a row in a vertical timeline. Only the lock for the company you're currently signed in to is editable — you can see the others' status (Disabled / locked-on-or-before-date / locked-at-month-end) but not change them from a sibling clinic. A practice manager covering several sites can switch between companies in the top-right account menu and edit each one's lock from there.
How the three fit together
This trio is one workflow, not three separate features:
Each payment carries a method — set when the payment is created, used everywhere afterwards
Cashup approves the day's payments by method — confirms the till and the terminals match Lupa's record. The discrepancies it captures are the audit trail for any over/short
Financial lock closes the period — once the practice manager is satisfied with the day, week, or month of cashups, the lock seals those transactions so the figures can be shared with confidence A practice that does all three has reports that don't drift, statements that match, and an accountant who never has to ask "why are these numbers different from last month?" A practice that does only one or two will eventually have to.
Tips for clean financial closing
✅ What practices that run Lupa well do every day:
Cash up daily, even on slow days. A cashup with three transactions takes 30 seconds. Two weeks of accumulated transactions is a long evening of investigation
Always fill in Approval notes when the Difference isn't zero. Future-you will never remember what "£3.27 over" was — but "£3.27 over: client paid in full but I keyed £36.73 instead of £40" is enough to find the root cause next month
Use Month End, not Lock by date, once you trust the daily rhythm. The fixed-date lock requires someone to remember to update it. Month End is fire-and-forget
Set Days After Month End to 3, not 0. Zero is unforgiving — if a payment is missed on the last day of the month, you'll need an admin to lift the lock to fix it. Three days gives the practice manager time to spot and correct anomalies before the lock comes down
Pick the right method, even for unusual transactions. "Other" is a tempting catch-all but kills the value of a method-by-method cashup. If something genuinely doesn't fit, use Other and add a note explaining what it is
Generate the cashup PDF at month-end. A signed PDF in the month-end folder beats "it's in Lupa somewhere" if the practice is ever audited
Troubleshooting
Problem | What to do |
The Cashups menu item isn't visible at all | Your role doesn't have the Cashup permission. Ask a practice manager to grant it via Roles and permissions |
The cashup shows No payments available for today | No completed payments or refunds have been taken since the last cashup. If the practice has been trading, check that invoices were actually moved to Completed and payments were created — drafts and estimates aren't included |
The cashup ends at field rejects the date you typed | The chosen end-time is in the future, or it's before the start of the period (which is fixed by the previous cashup). Pick a time between the two |
Update cashup is greyed out on a past cashup | Editing past cashups requires the Cashup (Full) permission. Ask a practice manager to either make the change or grant the permission |
The Financial Lock card shows everything but the Edit pencil isn't there | You don't have Update Financial Lock permission, or you're on the read-only Settings view. Open Admin → Financial instead — only roles with the permission can change the lock |
An action is disabled with the tooltip about a financial lock, but the date isn't obvious | Open Admin → Financial to see exactly which date or month-end policy is locking the transaction. The tooltip names the constraint; the settings page tells you who set it and when |
I set Lock by date for the wrong day and now nothing can be edited | Go back to Admin → Financial and either roll the date back or switch the lock to Disabled while you correct the records — then re-apply the lock. Do this with the practice manager so the change is intentional |
A cashup was approved with a discrepancy by mistake and I can't undo it | Only the most recent cashup can be undone (with Cashup (Full) permission) — click the undo icon, confirm the pop-up, and Lupa returns all payments to the draft editor. If a more recent cashup has already been approved on top, you can't undo back through it — edit the affected cashup's notes and discrepancies to record the correct figures instead. The audit trail is the source of truth |
The Difference column shows red on a method nobody used today | Someone has counted a non-zero Available for that method. Set Available back to zero and the Difference clears |
Frequently asked questions
Can I add or remove payment methods from the list?
Can I add or remove payment methods from the list?
No. The list of payment methods is fixed by Lupa so cashups, reports, and integrations stay consistent across every practice. If you don't use a particular method (for example, no cheques), simply don't pick it — it won't appear in your cashup discrepancies for that period because no payments will have been taken with it.
Does taking a card payment with a paired terminal count as Card or Lupa Terminal in the cashup?
Does taking a card payment with a paired terminal count as Card or Lupa Terminal in the cashup?
Card payments taken on a paired DOJO or Lupa Pay terminal show under their specific method (Dojo Terminal or Lupa Terminal) so the cashup matches the device's settlement report directly. Credit/Debit Card is reserved for manual records of card payments taken on a non-integrated terminal — they're listed separately on purpose so the cashup can still distinguish them.
What's the difference between approving a cashup with no discrepancy versus with issues?
What's the difference between approving a cashup with no discrepancy versus with issues?
Both produce a permanent cashup report. The difference is the status badge and the audit trail — With issues records the per-method discrepancy (over or short) plus your notes, so the practice manager and accountant can see at a glance which periods need investigation. Approving with issues isn't a problem; failing to record the discrepancy correctly is.
Can I undo a cashup if I notice a mistake later?
Can I undo a cashup if I notice a mistake later?
Only the most recent cashup can be undone, and it requires the Cashup (Full) permission. Click the undo icon on the cashup detail page and confirm the pop-up — Lupa will return all payments to the draft editor and show a Report undone confirmation. If you've since approved more cashups on top, you can't undo back through them — instead, edit the relevant cashup's notes and discrepancy figures to record the correction. The original audit trail stays intact, with the change history on top.
Can the financial lock be different for different stores in the same group?
Can the financial lock be different for different stores in the same group?
Each company in the group has its own lock policy. If the group is one company spanning multiple stores, the lock applies to every store. If each store is its own company, each can set its own lock. The Admin → Financial page shows the timeline so you can see which companies are locked and how.
How do I temporarily lift the lock to fix a mistake in a closed period?
How do I temporarily lift the lock to fix a mistake in a closed period?
A practice manager with the Update Financial Lock permission can change the lock mode or date — for example, switch to Disabled for a few minutes, make the correction, then re-apply the lock. There's no "unlock just this transaction" option by design — opening the period unlocks every transaction in it, so the change is deliberate and visible.
Will the Month End lock catch up retroactively if I enable it part-way through the year?
Will the Month End lock catch up retroactively if I enable it part-way through the year?
Yes. Month End locks every month that's already ended (plus the configured grace days). If you enable it on 5 May with Days After Month End = 3, every month up to and including March is locked immediately, and April locks on 4 May. May won't lock until 4 June.
Does the financial lock prevent me from generating reports for a locked period?
Does the financial lock prevent me from generating reports for a locked period?
No — reports always work, no matter the lock state. The lock only blocks editing transactions in a closed period. You can run any report — daily takings, debtor list, VAT summary — for a locked period at any time.