If you take a close look at your cash handling process, you might realize that there is some room for improvement in terms of productivity and efficiency. If you calculate your true cost of cash, you might realize that you’re spending too much on this process. And if you’re being honest with yourself, you might decide that your cash management isn’t as secure as it could be.
Efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and security are all important factors in your cash handling process. Without them you’ll drive up your overhead costs and increase your risks—which isn’t good for business. Consider using these brilliant improvement measures.
1. Analyze Your Process
Acknowledging that you could improve your cash management process is the first step. The second step is analyzing your current practices to understand your needs, pain points, and weaknesses. Most organizations do not fully understand their costs of cash or the risks that they face on a daily basis. To determine the best solutions for your organization, you need to dig deeper. Consider how and where your money is stored, how it’s counted and sorted, how it’s moved, and who is handling the tasks. Where is there room for improvement?
2. Start Documenting and Communicating Proper Procedures
Sometimes improving your cash handling process can be as simple as having documented and communicated cash handling procedures. Guidelines matter. They can guide your staff members to use best practices and appropriate cash handling processes in order to improve efficiency, accuracy, and security.
When employees know what’s expected and have a clear understanding of how to complete cash-related activities, your organization benefits. With proper cash management training and documentation, you can help employees effectively manage and balance your safe, distribute and count floats, check for counterfeit, open, skim, and close registers, process all types of customer transactions, and spot discrepancies for improved processes.
3. Maintain Custody of Cash for Accountability
To reduce your risk of losses and internal theft, maintaining custody of cash is critical. It can help you to isolate the exact time of transactions if discrepancies or losses occur to narrow in on the employees responsible. It can also increase accountability, which can make employees hesitant to steal. Any time your cash is in transit, changes hands, or moves places, it should be noted. Have shift managers balance and sign for your safe’s contents. Staff members should take custody of funds at the start of their shifts. All cash movements should be signed for.
4. Invest in Cash Management Automation
Manual cash handling increases your risks and costs considerably. It leads to higher losses and increased labour costs. It reduces efficiency and productivity. That’s why you need cash management automation. By investing in cash management solutions, such as cash counters and sorters, currency recyclers, and counterfeit detectors, you can improve your cash handling process exponentially. Your process will be smarter, faster, and more streamlined, which will deliver an ROI over the long term.
5. Seek Advice
There’s no shame in admitting that you don’t know what’s truly going on with your cash management process. If you can’t accurately calculate your cost of cash or determine your process’s strengths, weaknesses, risks, and opportunities, consider seeking advice from a cash management solutions provider. Your business is unique and the ways in which you can improve your cash management will be unique, too. There are no one-size-fits-all approaches.
A cash management solutions provider can help you analyze your cash handling process and implement a tailored solution that will effectively meet your unique needs to increase security, accuracy, efficiency, and productivity in order to reduce costs and improve your bottom line.
