One of the challenges business owners and management staff face everyday is the time consuming process of counting and balancing cash received during the business day. Traditionally, cash is counted at the end of the shift or at the end of the day or sometimes both. This is when you are tired, want to go home and are often in a rush to leave. This is when mistakes can occur.
Counting mistakes can be costly, making an inaccurate deposit to the bank can also add additional labour costs when trying to reconcile the bank account at the end of the month. To make matters worse some banks charge a fee for out of balance deposits.
Although there are many pain points in cash management, the main ones revolve around counting, recounting, balancing cash receipts to cash accepted at the point of sale (POS) reconciliation of bank deposits, securing all cash receipts until banked, and having sufficient security and controls to guard against internal theft and robbery.
Current process
Often times, senior staff are assigned cash counting duties as they are among the most experienced individuals in the business. However, this not only incurs excessive labor costs but also takes managers and supervisors away from their primary duties in growing the business. This means less time is spent creating the perfect guest experience, employee coaching, mentoring and training, scheduling staff, monitoring food costs, paper costs and waste, and the list goes on. Managers and supervisors time is valuable and should not be wasted counting and processing cash in the back office.
Theft and Shortages
Internal theft and cash shortages are a reality in many businesses. Cash shortages and variances need to be monitored closely on a daily basis to limit losses and more importantly to send a clear message to all staff that cash controls are working effectively. If these controls are not implemented and monitored daily, excessive amounts of time and money can be spent trying to reconcile unbalanced deposits, or even worse trying to find missing bank deposits. Reducing cash exposure at the point of sale (POS) typically involves having a manager or supervisor remove cash to a back office safe this task often has to be performed during a busy breakfast or lunch rush so is not performed as often as it should be increasing exposure to risk of loss from robbery
Lack of Reporting and Reconciliation Tools
The classic pen and paper method of reporting has been replaced in some businesses by the “spreadsheet method” of recording and tracking. While spreadsheets provide greater accuracy performing the math, they do not provide the integrated management and reporting tools most often required to track data and report information to management.
What Businesses can do to reduce pain points associated with cash management
Automated Equipment
Eliminating the time-consuming process of manually counting (and recounting) cash by hand is often the first step in trying to reduce these pain points. Currency and coin counting technology has come a long way in the past number of years, however automating the counting process alone may not be the best solution to address all of the issues. Cash still has to be managed from the point of sale to the back office and from the back office to the bank.
Back office Smart Safe Solutions
Smart safes come in many shapes and sizes, offer some level of automation and security, and can help to reduce cash management pain points. However, smart safes can also introduce some other challenges to the business that should be addressed. For instance, if the cash received at the point of sale (POS) is not validated and authenticated, exposure to acceptance of counterfeit cash is still a reality. Managers are still required to perform cash skims at the point of sale (POS) which involves taking the cash to the back office to feed into the smart safe, or cashiers have to leave the point of sale (POS) to perform this task. If the smart safe does not address the issue of balancing cash deposited to the businesses point of sale (POS) system additional work may be required to perform cash balancing and reconciliation tasks.
WebSafe Cash Management and Control Solutions
Designed to validate, authenticate and count cash from the point of sale (POS) to the bank. WebSafe cash management solutions are scalable for any size business and will provide labour saving, security enhancements and detailed cloud based management reporting. No more time wasted checking for counterfeit bills at the point of sale (POS), no more time wasted doing cash skims during the busy periods, no more time wasted counting cash at the end of the shift and the end of the day.
For fast, accurate and cost effective solutions, call Gemsys.
Get a FREE cash assessment today and let's discuss how we can help improve your cash management process.