Despite the increasing prominence of electronic and plastic money, cash continues to be the most commonly used mode of payment in retail stores. Unfortunately, retailers incur losses as a result of internal, external theft and errors at the till point and cashing up. Retailers face the challenge of reducing loss without hampering in-store operation or any major capital expenditure. An effective way to reduce the loss incurred by retail stores is installing cash counting safes. This blog post discusses four retail business overheads that can be minimized through cash counting safes.
1- Cash Room Costs
Retail stores demarcate dedicated rooms as cash storehouses, deploying additional staff to count, manage, process and safeguard the money. Cash storage continues to be a challenge for retail stores due to the requirement of in-house spaces to keep the cash that can be otherwise used as a warehouse for the retail inventory. Cash counting safes eliminate the local storage constraints of a retail business by collecting, storing, and securing the cash simultaneously.
1- Cash Room Costs
Retail stores demarcate dedicated rooms as cash storehouses, deploying additional staff to count, manage, process and safeguard the money. Cash storage continues to be a challenge for retail stores due to the requirement of in-house spaces to keep the cash that can be otherwise used as a warehouse for the retail inventory. Cash counting safes eliminate the local storage constraints of a retail business by collecting, storing, and securing the cash simultaneously.
2- Transfer Deposits
Armored vehicles charge a hefty amount of money from retail businesses to transport and deposit the cash safely into the banks. Store managers need to transfer cash into the banks at regular intervals and, as a result, need to incur high residual costs due to frequent cash movements from the store to the banks. Smart safes enable businesses to transfer cash in large batches, thereby reducing the number of pick-ups required every week and lowering the transportation costs.
3- Reduced Cash Visibility
Deciphering individual shift collections on the till is a tedious task. Retail managers can’t afford to the activities of each agent deployed at the till during different shifts. The cash visibility reduces and poses a threat of internal theft and cash shrinkage due to lack of accountability. Cash counting safes deploy token based authorization methods to track individual agent activity on the cash counters. Retail managers can track every cash transaction from a centralized location enforcing accountability, preventing bill manipulations and avoiding discrepancies in the sales and the cash collection.
4- Reduced Efficiency
The time taken by a manager to manage cash on a daily basis takes a significant amount of time. The manager needs to check out the till to a cashier, conduct till sweeps, count the cash in the till and balance the cash against a POS sales report at the end of the shift. Depending on the size of the store the manager may need to spend up to 2-3 hours to handle these tasks and has an impact on their efficiency. Smart safes save the managers from these time-consuming tasks and improves their efficiency.
Conclusion
Cash counting safes eliminate the need for manual currency counting, allowing the business to align the employees to more productive tasks. Smart safes not only count the banknotes but are capable of arranging the money in denominations or batches along with detecting counterfeit currency. A retail business can expect to get better ROI within a few months of investing in the cash counting safe.