As in all retail stores whether it is a hardware store or grocery store, where dealing are in cash, always be on hand to keep tabs of sales. Most small retail stores don’t have sophisticated computerised systems to keep a daily update of sales and the movement of goods. Most have just one cash register and maybe a computer to do keep tab of their accounts. So if you place someone who is not trustworthy behind that cash register, you are going to loose money. It can be small amounts daily, but come end of the year when you do a stock take, you will realise that the amount of goods sold won’t tally with the amount of money received. So the best thing is to man the cash counter by yourself or at least by a trusted employee, with you keeping an eye.
Ways that money could be siphoned
One very common way is to forgo punching in the exact number of items being sold into the cash register. Most customers never insist on the sales receipts. They just pay and for what they bought and leave. So what a crooked cashier will do is punch in 5 items instead of six, but in reality collect the full amount from the customer. The proceeds from the sixth item goes into their pockets.
Another popular way is through change of money. When a customer pays with a big bill for items and the cashier need to give him the change, they pull out an extra bill from the cash register. It might not be much, but if he or she does that 3 times a day, you will be loosing. This can happen even under the watchful eyes of their employer.
The most common method is theft, especially if you are dealing with consumables. I have seen employees hiding tins of milk powder in the garbage bin, in pretext of clearing the store. They normally have accomplice to pick up the items once the coast is clear.
Ways to overcome
Unfortunately there are no solid ways to overcome this problem. The only way is to be there every minute. Some more established stores practise the bar coding system where every item is bar coded and every sales is recorded immediately into their computers. At the end of the day, goods sold and the money received are all displayed clearly on their monitor screens. Of course there are bound to be some human errors when the cashier makes a mistake in counting the money when the break up bigger bills into smaller change. Most bigger retail stores gives a levy to the cashiers. If the difference in takings is too far away from that levy, their pay gets deducted to cover the losses.
Stolen items is much more difficult to control. So far I have not come across a full proof way to stop employees from stealing from their bosses. The reason most bosses keeps a close eye against these small thefts, is they don’t actually have a choice. As long as they don’t overdo it, the bosses will treat the bottle of missing ketchup as a daily gift to that employee, but rest assured, he will be the first to go when something happens or when a new guy comes in.
That being said, most of these problems could be minimised if you as the boss keeps a keen eye on your business. Never trust someone 100% when it comes to money. People are easily tempted with the color. Much more so when they have the power to handle it everyday.