As a business, accepting and handling cash is virtually unavoidable. Your customers demand a wide variety of payment options, and cash is still the leading method of payment today. In order to please your customers, you must allow them to pay with physical bills and coins.
Unfortunately, though, this comes with many hassles and headaches. Handling cash is a labour-intensive process. The average retailer must commit approximately 15 hours per day on cash management, while national retailers must spend twice as much time on counting, sorting, reconciling, and balancing cash from the front end to the back. Cash is handled by multiple people, multiple times a day during regular daily activities. Cashiers must process transactions, managers must make vault and bank drops, and cash room employees must reconcile the day’s profits and the cashiers’ floats.
All of this time translates into excessive labour costs. And on top of this, you can lose out on more money due to counterfeit fraud, internal theft, administrative errors, and even robbery. Retail cash management is time consuming and costly. But it doesn’t have to be.
When you automate your retail cash management and invest in the proper cash management solutions, you’ll save time and money, and in turn, you’ll enhance your profitability.
Savings on Labour
The biggest part of the ROI you’ll realize by automating retail cash management is through a reduction in labour. When cash management solutions, like cash counters and sorters, currency recyclers, and smart safes automatically handle the cash management activities that previously had to be done by hand, you’ll be able to dramatically cut your labour costs. The machines can count, sort, balance, and reconcile cash. They can accept and dispense floats. They can generate reports, and more.
When you automate retail cash management, you’ll be able to have fewer cashiers on shift, have fewer managers on the floor, and redeploy cash room attendants to more critical roles.
Reduced Administrative Errors
No matter how skilled or experienced your employees are at handling cash, it’s inevitable that they’re going to make errors when doing so manually. They might give back customers too much change. They might transpose numbers while reporting profits. They might miscount your cash.
Human error doesn’t have to be an inevitability in cash handling. When you automate your retail cash management, you can enjoy 99.9% accuracy and say goodbye to administrative errors that cost you money.
Eliminate Counterfeit
Counterfeiters are becoming more sophisticated, and now, thanks to digital printing technology, just about anyone with a printer can make counterfeit bills. You have to be more vigilant than ever before. Your employees might not be able to distinguish between authentic and fake bills by sight and touch alone. Using cash management solutions equipped with counterfeit detection technology can ensure that you don’t lose out due to fake bills.
Reduce Internal Theft
Employee theft is rampant in the retail sector. In fact, it surpasses shoplifting as the number one cause of shrink. The more you lose to internal theft, the less profitable you become. Giving your employees access to your cash, without accountability or tracking, can make it too easy and too tempting for them to steal. Cash management solutions can provide a hands-off approach to cash handling and increase accountability to reduce your losses due to internal theft.
Reduce the Risk of Robbery
Of course, robbery is not only dangerous but it can also wreak havoc with your profits. When your cash management procedures are lax or nonexistent and your cash isn’t ultra-secure in your store and during transit, your risk of robbery increases.
Automating your retail cash management can increase your security and keep your cash safe to prevent robberies.