This article is brought to you by Cash Depot.
Shrinkage is on the rise—retailers are reporting inventory shrinkage of 2%, up from 1.4% in 2021 and 1.6% in 2022.
“Shrinkage is often used interchangeably with ‘theft’. However, more than one-third of shrinkage is attributable to human error and administrative or operational mistakes,” said Sean Burke, CEO of Cash Depot.
In addition to human error, shrinkage can also occur from internal theft. According to the National Retail Federation, the average loss to internal theft per investigated incident is $2,180.
One of the ways c-stores can reduce cash shrinkage, said Burke, is by using cash recycling to limit the possibility of internal human error and theft. “Smart safes are good for holding deposits but don’t offer solutions for counting out start-of-shift register funds, breaking large bills, or accurately supplying smaller bills as change throughout the day. Cash recyclers do all of this while keeping a record of each transaction.”
Retailers would also be wise to avoid single-note acceptance safes, according to Burke. “Single-note acceptors are less expensive, but they take extra time to feed or dispense bills,” he said. “Many retailers we’ve spoken with find store managers end up manually counting the cash to ‘speed up the process’ and then designate time to put the money into the machine.”
This hand-counting makes it easy for cash to go missing or be counted incorrectly. Bulk note collectors, on the other hand, can save time, “which will encourage the employees to use the system properly,” he added.
Burke said Cash Depot’s BANK IN A BOX cash recycling system can accept bulk notes and report transactions in real time to help c-stores reduce shrinkage. “It’s a cash recycling safe that can store, sort, verify and manage multiple denominations. And when it comes to speed, there are few machines faster. The BANK IN A BOX can count and record up to 300 notes in 30 seconds or less. Then the real-time, mobile-friendly reporting portal tracks transactions by location and employee for further accuracy.”
The system gives each employee a unique login, so retailers can segment responsibilities and designate user roles for specific tasks. “You can grant distinct cash access permissions to different job roles, track employee activities in real-time through the web portal, delete old users and create new ones as staffing changes,” said Burke. “This way, you know who has access to what and when they have access to it. And, you know which employees are depositing or pulling cash, when, and how much.”
This level of cash management, tracking and security is essential to addressing and reducing cash loss at the store level.
Dive into more content about cash management sponsored by Cash Depot. Read about cash management and recycling, the hidden costs of cash management, and how to save on cash management, provisional credit, interest and fees.