Joel, a small business owner, senses that the cash amounts in the cash register might be consistently lower than the book records. He last counted cash three weeks ago and found the register to be about $20 short. He can't remember exactly what the cash register counts in the past revealed, but he feels that the last few counts have revealed short cash. Today, it seems like there is lower cash than the records again.

Joel has four employees and three of them work the cash register at random. There is a barcode scanning system which updates the inventory. Since the job is quite straight-forward and most new hires already have experience with it already, Joel only has to spend an hour or two training the cashiers then they can generally proceed unsupervised from that point on.

If Joel counts the cash and discovers a shortage, what should he do? Include journal entry details (assume a date of March 20th) and other helpful measures. Explain why your recommendations are the right ones.