Shrinkage seems to be considered an inevitable part of doing business. Dishonest employees might steal from you if they’re given the opportunity. When you have relatively no security or accountability when it comes to your cash handling, you’re really opening yourself up to the possibility of theft. Moreover, when it happens, you just eat the loss, thinking there’s nothing you can do about it.
However, it doesn’t have to be that way. Instead of allowing money to go missing during the cash handling process, you should invest in a cash management solution. By automating your cash management procedures, you’ll have more control over your business’s money, which means you’ll be about to reduce or eliminate shrinkage. We guarantee that a cash management solution will have a great return on investment. The money you’ll save from being able to effectively control shrinkage will more than make up for the initial payment.
Here’s how a cash management solution can help you curb internal theft at your business.
Hands Off
The less often your employees handle your cash manually, the better. When you use automated cash management solutions, your cash is dispensed, deposited, counted, sorted and ready for pickup all the while limiting the frequency your employees touch cash. With some solutions, you are taking the money out of the employees’ hands—quite literally. They won’t need to handle your cash manually. This gives thieving workers fewer opportunities to steal from your business. Money will be automatically reconciled, balanced, counted, sorted, and reported—so you know that all of your money is where it should be.
Increased Accountability
When you have all your employees manually handling transactions at the front end, depositing currency into your safe, counting end-of-shift cash, or replenishing coins and notes without proper cash management in place, there’s no accountability. If an employee steals from you, you’ll have no idea who to point the finger at because so many people have come in contact with your money during the day. But if you reduce the need for multiple people touching cash by using machines to recycle, count and sort cash, a dishonest employee won’t risk stealing from you because all signs will point to him, as the only person who was in contact with the money on that shift.
Integrated Cash Management System
When your cash management solution is fully incorporated into your POS system at the transaction level, you can control shrinkage effectively. The machine will automatically dispense the correct amount for daily floats, the cashier will log onto the system with a personal identification number for increased accountability, then the cash controller will take care of instantly reconciling money, and validating deposits, which are placed into cassettes that can be removed by management or armoured car services to be brought directly to the bank. With this type of integrated cash management solution, no one ever has to touch your business’s money, which makes fully eliminating shrinkage possible.
Cash Management Should Be Part of Your Strategic Operating Plan
If you own a business that accepts cash payments, you must be managing cash, not just handling it. A cash management solution can allow you to reduce the amount of times your employees have contact with your money and increase accountability. You will not only be able to control shrinkage, but possibly eliminate it.
Installing an integrated cash controller in your store is vital and should be a part of your strategic operating plan. You’ll get a quick return on your initial investment by being able to keep more of your hard-earned money while also reducing the amount of time your cashiers and managers need to be handling cash manually.
