When business owners think of efficiency, they often point to automation. Retailers may consider self-checkouts and other machines designed to reduce the need for cashiers or wait staff. In a market where minimum wages are rising and it’s difficult to find great employees, automation is a boon.
Business owners may think less about cash automation at the retail level, but many great solutions can streamline cash management at this level. Here are five reasons to consider it.
Perhaps the best reason to adopt cash automation at the retail level is because it can lighten the load on your employees’ shoulders. The right devices make quick work of counting and sorting cash, as well as reconciling the books.
Your cash attendants and managers can quickly and easily prepare deposits and floats. Your cashiers on the floor may benefit from some cash automation solutions as well, if they reduce the time it takes your cashiers to tally up their tills or provide the change they need to top their tills up easily.
When your employees are moving through their cash management tasks with speed and ease, you might be able to reduce the hours you allot to them. As a result, you may be able to reduce the number of personnel for any given shift.
Take your cashiers, for instance. If they need to spend time tallying up their tills at the end of a shift, you might need to schedule overlapping shifts. That means your cashiers may be coming in 15 to 30 minutes before you need them on the floor to prepare their tills, or so they can relieve another cashier who needs to total up the till.
Cash automation means your team can finish tallying tills and preparing floats faster. Those 15- to 30-minute shift overlaps will become a thing of the past, saving you money.
The same is true in the cash office, where you may have found you had to schedule two or more people to ensure everything on the to-do list was getting done.
With your employees’ time freed from cash management tasks, they can actually think about tackling the other tasks. They can finish up their cash management duties faster, and move on to other tasks.
For your cashiers, that might mean they’ll be able to face shelves, tidy up, or even just spend more time delivering great customer service.
Cash managers and other back office staff may be able to spend more time on the floor, helping your staff resolve issues or enforcing policies and procedures.
Cash automation’s advantages include the ability to reduce costs.
Since your team spends less time on each cash management task, the labour costs associated with managing cash fall. You may also be able to reduce labour costs in other parts of business as well, as your team no longer requires as much time to finish all their work.
Cash automation can lower costs in other ways too. For example, with better automation, you could lower your store float or reduce the number of deposits you make. You may save on CIT fees that way.
With cash automation, you can relieve the pressure on your employees to get so much done. You can also reduce errors in cash counting and improve security.
Perhaps the biggest advantage, though, is how cash automation helps your team deliver better customer service. When you automate cash management at the retail level, you’ll be investing in your customers’ satisfaction.