Cash over and short difinition including break down of areas in the definition. Analyzing the definition of key term often provides more insight about concepts. Cash over and short can be defined as: Income statement account used to record cash overages and cash shortages arising from errors in cash receipts or payments. Cash over short is an account that will track the over or short payments which means that cash over or short can have either a debit or credit balance, meaning the that the cash over or short account could be increasing or decreasing net income. An example of using the cash over or short account would be if a business tracking revenue and cash receipts by a cash register report and comparing this cash register report to the cash counted in the cash drawer. The difference between the cash that is on the report and the physical count of the cash would be recorded to the cash over or short account.