While accepting and managing cash transactions may be a big part of your day-to-day operations, you might not think too much about cash management as a whole. You accept the cash, count it, sort it, provide change, and eventually deposit it.
What you might not realize is that cash management requires a careful process, so it’s a great idea to take some time to really think about your cash handling procedures. Determine what works and what doesn’t. Otherwise, you could be opening your convenience store to higher risks, human error, and poor efficiency. The more mistakes you make with cash management, the more it may hurt your profitability.
Here are some common mistakes you may not realize you’ve been making in your convenience store.
1. You Don’t Provide Cash Handling Training
Cash handling might seem like an intuitive process, one that doesn’t require planning, training, or procedures. However, cash handling training for your cashiers will go a long way to serving as a foundation for increased accuracy and efficiency. It will help ensure all employees handle cash in the same proper manner, which will reduce discrepancies and make the whole process faster and easier for everyone involved.
Make a checklist of the entire cash handling process, from cash acceptance from the customer to the bank deposit and every step in between, and make sure all employees follow it diligently.
2. You Allow Too Much Cash on Hand
Convenience stores are already at a heightened risk of robbery and theft. Allowing your cash drawers to overflow with money will only put you at a higher risk. We recommend having a policy in place where you make a cash drop any time your cash drawers have more than a certain amount of money in it.
It’s important to realize that some suspicious characters may pose as customers to better understand your cash handling policies and procedures, so frequent cash drops will help reduce your risk of being an easy target.
3. Employees Count Cash Everywhere and Anywhere
Another way you might be opening your convenience store up to risk is to allow employees to count cash at the register. While this may be convenient for the employee, it once again will make you an easy target. Ideally, cash should only be counted, sorted, and reconciled in the security of the back room, not in front of customers at the register. Employees should always be aware of their surroundings.
4. Not Being Cautious When Making Deposits
The bank deposit will leave managers vulnerable. Caution should be taken any time cash is being handled and transported. It’s a good idea to only handle deposits in low-traffic times and to vary those times throughout the day to prevent patterns. Managers should always let employees know when they are making a deposit, and everyone should be trained to be discreet and alert when these deposits occur.
5. Manually Handling Cash
Convenience stores tend to sell lower priced items, which means they tend to see more cash transactions than many other retailers. For this reason, cash handling may take up a lot of your employees’ and managers’ time. When you’re dealing with high-volume transactions, automation is key to saving time and reducing labor costs.
Cash counters and sorters speed up the process of counting and sorting banknotes and coins with higher accuracy, while currency recyclers and smart safes that are integrated with cash management software will also automatically verify banknotes, reconcile transactions, and provide detailed data and reporting that will help you make more informed decisions.
When your employees and managers spend less time handling cash, you will reduce your labor costs or ensure more gets done during their shifts. Automation also reduces human error, improves accountability, and increases efficiency. The less time and money you spend on cash management, the more you will boost your profit margin.
