Jul
01
2013
July 1st, 2013 by Mike Spence

How do you handle shift changes?

SP-1 supports up to 10 shifts per day per station.  This can be handled by having the employee run the 40 Column Shift Close Report or the Balance Till report.   The employee then counts the money and then hands it all over or stores it in the lock box or safe.    The challenge with this is if you have employee theft issues.  Allowing the employee to count their own till and match it against a report can lead to them ‘adjusting’ the cash they have on hand.

Another way is to do a ‘blind shift’ close.   This can be done by not allowing the employee to run the balance till or 40 column shift close reports.  Then, when the employee finish their shift, they print one ticket with a comment on it.  The comment will read something like “end of shift”.  This receipt goes into the cash bag along with the till count.

At the end of the night or shift, the owner or trusted manager runs the shift close report and enters the ticket number off the receipt in the bag.   SP-1 will automatically show you just the close  out for the tickets during that shift !   While this puts a little more work on the manager or owner, it helps insure that the employees are accountable for their actions.

SP-1 also supports multiple cash drawers per station.  This is another way to insure that you have accountability when changing shifts as well as making a shift change easier to do.

Finally, we support locking lids for your cash drawer as well.

 

Posted in Employees, Reporting Tagged with: ,

May
29
2012
May 29th, 2012 by Mike Spence

Recently I was talking to a client that is opening a new store.  One of their concerns was on how to keep the cash sorted out with their employees.  It is a great question and one that is answered differently for every store.  I’ll try and hit the highlights on methods that SP-1 can use to help you stay on top of it.

First we need to know the different areas where employees handle cash.

Two of them, delivery drivers and servers (think table service) are easily accounted for because you will most likely have them carry a bank.  When using server / drive banking, the cash accountability issue is pretty easy.    These employees will simply cash out and match up against the server or driver close out report.

It gets more difficult when we talk about the counter service aspect of the store.  If you want to help insure accurate tills, follow some of these steps:

  • Assign employees to cash drawers.  This locks down the cash to only the employee assigned.
  • Use Employee Swipe Cards instead of codes and passwords.  It is far more secure.
  • Use Fingerprint ID instead of Employee Swipe Cards.  It is the most secure.
  • Buy an extra insert for the cash drawer (with or without a locking lid).  That way you can quickly handle shift changes with minimum disruption.
  • Buy multiple cash drawers.  Employee one is assigned to drawer one and employee two is assigned to drawer two.  If they are short, you know where to go.
  • Don’t leave the key in the drawer!
  • Integrate your credit cards with the POS – that way you don’t have cash / credit discrepencies.
Questions?  Call us and ask us how to handle all of this in detail!

 

Posted in Reporting Tagged with: ,

May
14
2010
May 14th, 2010 by ssadmin
Cash Drawers, Theft and Employee Accountability
Every day here at SelbySoft, we receive calls asking about shortages in the cash drawer.  While a number of these are simple mistakes by the crew, theft is an issue as well.  If we can make our cash handling employees accountable for the mistakes and shortages, then we are on our way to eliminating them.  
So, the question is how can we help?   It all starts by deciding who has access to cash in drawers and how we can minimize that.  
Let’s start by defining how you probably handle the drawer in your location:
  • Do you allow anyone in the store to handle the cash? 
  • Do you have a dedicated cashier that must ring up every order?
  • Do you have a couple people that you trust? 
All of the above work but only if handled properly.  The basic problem in most stores is that there are just too many hands in the drawer.  Then, when the drawer is short – who do you look at?
Let’s talk about how we can make it better and more secure with SP-1
First, we lock down the cash drawer.  In SP-1 you can assign a cash drawer to an employee.  This helps insure employee accountability because only that employee can access the cash.  
The inconvenience with this is that the cashier may not always be at the front counter when the customer is ready to order.  With SP-1 we can make this an easier situation in two ways:
  • Set your system to allow anyone to start a ticket but only the approved employee code to close out a ticket.  This provides you with the flexibility of having every employee being able to start an order (and then place it on hold) but only having one employee cash that customer out.
  • Use multiple cash drawers.  SP-1 allows up to five cash drawers per station!  With this, you are actually assigning 1-5 employees to their own drawers.  If employee one takes an order, drawer one opens, employee two takes an order and drawer two opens.
With either method, you will be on your way to eliminating the potential for shortages in your drawer and increasing employee accountability.

Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
http://www.selbysoft.com/
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371

Posted in Employees, Hardware, theft Tagged with: , ,