Though many business owners believe that cash is the least costly payment method to accept in store, it’s actually quite expensive. The costs are just more hidden and less easily noticed. They don’t show themselves in the form of monthly fees on invoices. Not only that, but it’s risky too. Every year, retailers lose considerable sums of money to losses, cash handling errors, and wasted time.
Though you certainly can’t simply stop accepting cash in order to reduce your costs and risks, there are solutions on the market to help you reduce cash shrinkage and overhead costs in order to improve your bottom line.
Specifically, cash management technology can offer an immediate return on investment to improve cash handling by reducing handling costs, increasing efficiency, accuracy and speed, and enhancing security.
Let’s delve deeper into these benefits of cash management solutions.
Reduce Handling Costs
The biggest expense associated with handling cash is labour. Retailers typically spend 15 hours or more a day on cash handling activities, and these hours can result in tens of thousands of dollars per year. Your managers have to divvy up floats. Your cashiers have to count these floats at the beginning and end of each shift. Your cashiers then need to processes transactions. Cash needs to be transported when tills are low or overflowing and for deposits. Profits need to be counted up, sorted, and reported at the end of the day for consolidation. Audits need to be performed. The list of cash handling activities that go on at your business, both in the front and end, goes on and on.
Cash management technology can help reduce the costs associated with these activities. For example, with a currency recycler, you can eliminate the trips to the vault for more cash as the money coming in is recycled to go back out during transactions. The recycler also counts, sorts, and consolidates floats and end-of-day cash automatically, so there’s no need for your workers to waste time doing so manually. Currency counters and sorters can also handle some of the tedious and time-consuming cash handling work so your employees don’t have to.
Reducing your labour costs with cash management technology can have a significant impact on your bottom line.
Increase Efficiency, Speed, and Accuracy
Manual cash handling activities are prone to human error. When your employees handle cash, they can get distracted, make errors, and miscount. Human error is inevitable. And this could lead to losses. In addition, when your cash management processes are poor, you will have higher operational costs due to inefficiency and wasted time.
When you automate your processes, however, everything changes. Cash recyclers, counters, and sorters can do the work at lightning speed—faster than even your top-performing employees. They’re also 99.9% accurate, so you won’t have to worry about wasting money on human error associated with handling cash. When you increase the efficiency, speed, and accuracy of your cash handling activities, you’ll reduce your costs.
Enhance Cash Management Security
Handling cash is risky business. It makes you vulnerable to becoming a victim of many criminal activities. Your employees could take advantage of opportunities to steal from you while at the register or in your cash room.
Security risks can result in major losses for your business. But cash management technology can keep your cash more secure. Cash recyclers act as vaults. Cash counters and sorters keep your employees’ hands off your cash. Counterfeit detectors alert you to any suspicious bills so you can refuse fake cash before it becomes your problem. These machines can protect your money from the risks of handling cash.
