There are two types of balancing you perform in the SMS point of sale system.
Balancing is done in a transaction format. Everything you do in balancing is a transaction. The transactions move money around. Drawer balancing moves money from drawers into the safe, or from the safe to the drawers. Safe balancing moves money from the safe to the bank, or from the bank to the safe. You can do drawer balancing and not do safe balancing if you wish.
There are two types of transactions that occur when doing drawer balancing.
A pickup is when you take money from a drawer and move it to the safe. Pickups are typically performed at the end of a shift but can also be done at any time during the day. If a cashier has too much money in the drawer, you can perform a pickup and take $1,000 out of the drawer for example. Then later when you're counting the drawer down at the end of the night, the system will already know not to expect that $1,000 you picked up earlier.
A loan is when you take money from the safe and put it in a drawer. Loans are typically done at the beginning of a shift. You would loan a drawer it's starting balance of $200. At the end of the night when you pick up the drawer it would then be expecting to see the extra $200 you gave it at the start of the day. This step is largely optional however. If you start every drawer off at $200 and you don't feel like doing the loans, simply take $200 out of the drawer at the end of the night and count the rest. Loans are useful if you need to give change to a drawer. Let's say you want to give someone a roll of quarters because the drawer is low, you can perform a loan to the drawer of $10. If you like to just swap out a $10 bill with the roll of quarters, this would be a wash and a loan wouldn't be needed.
A deposit is when you take money from the safe and put it in the bank. At the very end of the day, after you've picked up all the money out of the drawers, this money will be sitting in the safe. You can then take this amount and create your bank deposit with it.
A receive is when you take money from the bank and put it in the safe. If your safe gets low on change for example, and you order a bunch of rolls of coins from the bank, you would put this money into the safe with a receive.
Declares are the last step of balancing, and are only needed when you have a short or over. If you have counted down a drawer and the drawer is $0.04 short you would then perform a declare, and declare that the drawer is actually $0.00. Doing this takes the money left in the drawer and records it as a Short / Over amount. Declares are done on drawers and the safe.