Career Profile: Cashiers

Salary and Outlook

According to the US Department of Labor, there are 3,371,600 people employed as cashiers in the United States. The median annual salary is $27,260. Entry level employees earn approximately $18,580 per year and senior employees earn approximately $35,230 per year.

Estimates do not include other potential benefits such as health insurance, overtime, or retirement benefits that may be offered by employers.

Job Duties

• Sort, count, and wrap currency and coins.
• Weigh items sold by weight to determine prices.
• Issue trading stamps, and redeem food stamps and coupons.
• Pay company bills by cash, vouchers, or checks.
• Receive payment by cash, check, credit cards, vouchers, or automatic debits.
• Answer customers' questions, and provide information on procedures or policies.
• Help customers find the location of products.
• Issue receipts, refunds, credits, or change due to customers.
• Greet customers entering establishments.
• Supervise others and provide on-the-job training.
• Assist customers by providing information and resolving their complaints.
• Maintain clean and orderly checkout areas, and complete other general cleaning duties, such as mopping floors and emptying trash cans.
• Establish or identify prices of goods, services, or admission, and tabulate bills, using calculators, cash registers, or optical price scanners.
• Answer incoming phone calls.
• Bag, box, wrap, or gift-wrap merchandise, and prepare packages for shipment.
• Post charges against guests' or patients' accounts.
• Request information or assistance, using paging systems.
• Process merchandise returns and exchanges.
• Offer customers carry-out service at the completion of transactions.
• Count money in cash drawers at the beginning of shifts to ensure that amounts are correct and that there is adequate change.
• Calculate total payments received during a time period, and reconcile this with total sales.
• Keep periodic balance sheets of amounts and numbers of transactions.
• Compute and record totals of transactions.
• Monitor checkout stations to ensure they have adequate cash available and are staffed appropriately.
• Cash checks for customers.
• Sell tickets and other items to customers.
• Compile and maintain non-monetary reports and records.
• Assist with duties in other areas of the store, such as monitoring fitting rooms or bagging and carrying out customers' items.
• Stock shelves, sort and reshelve returned items, and mark prices on items and shelves.

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