Cash management is a headache for all retailers. Handling cash is often ineffective; it’s costly, it’s risky, and it’s definitely time consuming. It can result in losses due to administrative error, cash can get misplaced or lost, and you could lose out due to internal theft, counterfeit fraud, or robbery. And you could spend a fortune on the labour associated with counting, sorting, reconciling, balancing, and depositing cash.
Naturally, improving your retail cash management process can do wonders for your store. It can boost employee productivity and morale, it can improve your cash flow, it can significantly reduce your risks and losses, and it can save you tons on labour.
If you’re ready to start improving your retail cash management process, then start with these tips.
1. Analyze Your Process
The first step to improving retail cash management is analyzing your process in order to see your strengths, weaknesses, needs, and challenges. Once you analyze how cash is handled at your store, you’ll start to see patterns that put you at risk, that are costing you money, and that are resulting in larger losses. Calculate your cost of cash to see where you’re spending too much money. Look to your discrepancies to see where your losses are coming from. Once you understand where there’s room for improvement, you can start making the required adjustments that will result in the highest ROI.
2. Implement Policies and Procedures
The more disjointed, lax, and disorganized your cash management, the higher your risks and costs. Implementing cash management policies and procedures is a simple way to improve your process. Ensure that all of your employees, new and old, understand and follow your new policies. Communicate them clearly and document them. Invest in cash handling training if needed. Make sure that there are consequences for those who do not follow your procedures. Simple changes can make a world of difference, such as not allowing your cashiers to share registers, ensuring that all of the day’s profits are reconciled and deposited in a timely manner, and collecting payments before handing out goods, for example. By giving your employees guidelines to follow, you can improve accuracy, efficiency, and productivity.
3. Implement Custody of Cash
Maintaining custody of cash is critical to improving your retail cash management. When you have so many employees handling cash several times a day, in different areas, and in transit, it can be difficult to understand where errors occurred and who was responsible. It also makes it much easier for internal theft to occur.
Any time someone is handling your money, any time it changes hands, and any time it’s in transit or moves places, you should know who was responsible, when it happened, and how much cash was handled. This will significantly increase accountability and reduce your risks.
4. Invest in Cash Management Solutions
Investing in cash management solutions can drastically increase productivity and efficiency, reduce your losses, virtually eliminate employee theft and counterfeit fraud, heighten security, and reduce your labour costs. Using solutions like cash counters and sorters, cheque scanners, smart safes, counterfeit detectors, and currency recyclers can help you streamline your retail cash management process. These devices can do the work that previously had to be done by your employees, they offer guaranteed accuracy, they work at the speed of light, and they’re safe and secure.
5. Seek Advice
When you improve your retail cash management process, your entire business will benefit. But if you don’t know where to start, don’t know what to change, and don’t know which cash management solutions would offer you the highest ROI, then seek advice. Contact a cash management solutions provider. The solutions provider will help you analyze your process and find a customized solution that will work best for your unique needs and challenges.
