What steps are you taking today to ensure lean, profitable operations in the restaurant? Managing the flow of cash through the restaurant is a critical piece of your security plan.
Fingerprint Sensors
If you’re not using fingerprint sensors for employee login, it may be time to reconsider. Biometric ID has come a long way. Today’s sensors are fast and reliable, taking the guesswork out of the equation. In addition to the added security in employee time clock tracking, fingerprint security adds a new level of control over cash handling, providing an audit trail so you can see who did what at every step of every transaction.
Counting Safeguards
Pre-empt any funny business behind the scenes in your pizzeria. Consider these tips to control the flow of cash:
- For consistency, set a default opening amount for banks in the point of sale
- Use a quantity counting method to record the number of bills and coins rather than the totaling dollar amounts, for a more accurate cash count
- Allow bank recounts in the POS, and have them double checked by a second person
- Set the POS to require blind counts to deter staff from pocketing overages
Cash Limits
Since we know workplace theft is common, plan proactively to reduce the risk. Limit the amount of cash on hand using these strategies:
- Set cash limits in the point of sale, and require a cash drop
- Assign one employee responsibility for the contents of a cash drawer
- Restrict access to comps, voids and discounts, which have the potential to be converted to cash, and pocketed by a dishonest employee
Audit with Slips and Reports
Checks and balances can give you peace of mind. Detect irregularities with regular audits:
- Set account signature slips to print on receipt printers whenever money is removed from or added to a cash drawer, employee bank or safe.
- Review your cash management reports, following up on any short or over counts, suspicious voids, discounts, coupons added to closed tickets, and payouts.
Cameras
Do you use security cameras in the restaurant? Consider an integrated camera solution to deter theft and identify offenders. An integrated camera solution has access to transaction and user data as well as time clock and bank activity. Used together with your notable activity and systems events report, these let you track a suspicious transaction back to the specific video coverage in seconds to identify problems and document the event.
Controls like these make it difficult for staff to cheat the system. In fact, one chain executive told us that once they’d implemented these cash controls in their restaurants, all the tricks employees used to play with the POS system just stopped.
Looking for better control over cash, costs, and overall restaurant results?
