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Theft of money The financial impact of this type of activity can be ex-
Hopefully, none of your employees will have the desire tremely damaging, for example: Let's say you have a cashier who is
to steal products from you, but some will be tempted by cash. skimming off $20 a day by not ringing things up, and then pocket-
Everyone could use an extra $20 a day. Employees who steal ing the money. Not only did you loose the stolen $20, but the $7 of
money from you will definitely hurt your bottom line, and must ingredients that were used to produce the ordered products; ($20
be eliminated. x 35% ingredient cost = $7.00). So in reality, you lost $27, and it
will take an additional $41.54 in sales, to recover this loss; ($41.54
The first way to reduce cash theft is to have a cash han- x 65% gross profit = $27). $27 a day lost to theft, X 21 days worked
dling policy in place that will discourage theft. If multiple employ- by the employee = $567 lost cash & product per month; $872 extra
ees are using the cash register, and no one person is responsible, sales required to offset this loss. (Annual loss, $6,804; $10,468 in
then I can almost guarantee that your cash drawer will keep com- additional income required to offset loss.) You must stop theft of
ing up short; on a regular basis. The fact that no one person can money!
be held responsible for the shortages, will make grabbing a bill or
two easy and appealing. If you observe that the cash register's display has been
blocked from the customer's view, or there are an excessive
Implement a policy that one, and only one person is number of no sale indications on your cash register's detail tape,
responsible for the cash register for the entire shift. They should or notice that your cashier is not shutting the drawer between
count the drawer at the beginning of their shift to verify that they transactions, beware! While this may not be indisputable proof
are starting with the designated change bank. Then, they should that your cashier is stealing from you, it should certainly heighten
be the only person to ring up sales and make change. Finally, your vigilance to find out if something is going on.
at the end of their shift, they should set aside the amount they
started with in the change drawer, and total all the remaining If you have a manager running your operation for you,
cash, checks, and charges, and balance against what was rung up this can really create an opportunity for cash theft. Just about
on their shift. If they started with the right amount of money in anyone who has ever run a foodservice operation (self included),
the cash drawer, rang everything up, took all the money, counted probably felt that they were over worked and under paid. Some
back all the change, and they end up short... who's fault is it? It can are tempted to grant themselves an unapproved raise. Your man-
only be theirs. By implementing this simple policy, I once took an ger has the control key to the cash register, which means they have
operation that was coming up $100 a day ($3,000 a month) cash the ability to back off items that were sold. You would be wise to
short, and reduced it to $3 a day, in just 30 days! (That's over a check your cash register detail tapes on a regular basis. If you see
$2,900 bottom line improvement.) multiple items backed off in groups, or more worrisome yet, all
backed off at the very end of the shift, beware!
The other common method that a cashier might use to
steal money from you is by using a method called, building a bank. A good way to keep this from happening is to establish a
This is the process of not ringing up items on the cash register, policy that no over rings are to be backed off of sales on the cash
while still taking money from the customers, and then pocketing register with the control key. Instead, when the cashier makes an
that money. Typically, they will obscure the view of the cash reg- over ring, they should take the receipt, write over ring on it, sign
ister display on the customer's side with something like a flower, it, and put it in the cash drawer. At the end of the shift, the total
retail merchandise, or by turning the display so that it cannot be of all over rings should be manually backed off of the sales total
easily seen. Then, they will pretend to ring up an item, but will indicated on the cash register report.
hit the no sale key instead, popping the drawer open so they can
take the cash and make change, but in reality, they haven't rung up Next issue of Management will go in-depth on how to
anything. The other thing they might do when it is busy is to just lower costs and increase income with action plan that will help
not shut the drawer between transactions. They simply convey your business, please stay tune!
verbally the cost of items ordered by customers and take the cash.