Of course, people make mistakes. However, cash handling mistakes can leave your business in a precarious situation. With handling cash comes a lot of responsibility that your business and staff should be prepared to handle. From counting money to adopting technology, there are a lot of solutions to everyday cash handling mistakes that your business can adopt!
Get on the road to fewer mistakes. Read on to see seven cash handling mistakes that are affecting your business:
1. Sharing Registers
While sharing registers can seem like a time saving solution, it actually poses more threats than benefits. When cashiers swap tills, it eliminates any sense of accountability over the transactions that take place. If the till doesn’t balance at the end of the shift, it’s hard to say who is responsible. By having password protected tills and one person responsible, it reduces the risk of internal theft and decreases the likelihood of error.
2. Manually Checking for Counterfeits
With today’s technology, detecting counterfeits is both difficult and time consuming. Expecting employees to do so manually is stressful and inaccurate. Counterfeit detection technology should be introduced at each till to ease to burden of counterfeit detection and eliminate the risk of accepting false bills.
3. Failing to Adopt Technology
Failing to adopt technology is one of the most commonly seen cash handling mistakes. Investing in cash management solutions can help your business streamline the process of cash handling, take stress of employees, and improve your bottom line.
Technology such as smart safes, cash recyclers, and bank note sorters can all greatly improve the everyday functions of your business. Consider reaching out to a cash management solution provider to see the benefits you’re missing.
4. Holding Too Much Cash
Best practice for most retailers is having $200 available in each till. Any more than that puts your business and cashiers at risk of theft and confusion. The less amount of money in each till the better, as more cash leaves more room for error. Investing in a smart safe allows for increased security, as shift managers can help monitor and store any overages in cash.
5. Counting by Hand
Counting cash by hand is one of the biggest cash handling mistakes your business can make. Not only is this practice time consuming, but it also provides more room for error and inaccuracies. Introducing cash counting technology allows your staff to confidently balance tills and process transactions. It also greatly reduces the amount of time and manual labour that’s spent processing cash, which improves customer service and your bottom line.
6. No Managers on Duty
Introducing shift managers is one of the easiest ways to ensure cash handling mistakes aren’t made. These individuals are responsible for overseeing all processes that involve cash: from balancing tills to making deposits, these employees are your eyes are ears for all things money. If you find yourself making the investment into cash management solutions, shift managers are also vital in helping your employees learn the new technology and use it appropriately.
7. Loose Accountability
As mentioned before with swapping tills, having employees held accountable for their cash handling is extremely important. Not only does this reduce the risk of internal theft, it can also highlight which aspects of the cash handling process are weaker and in need of attention. If tills are constantly coming up short, perhaps it’s time to retrain how to balance tills. If employees are accepting counterfeit bills, it’s clear that it’s time to consider counterfeit detection technology. Regardless, it’s hard to know where the weak spots are when employees aren’t held accountable for cash handling mistakes.