Manually counting cash is one of the best ways to lose money in your retail business.

Cash handling is one of the most problematic and worrisome aspects of retail operations.  There are three areas where cash handling losses occur most often: Ringing up a sale, counting down a cash drawer and taking the deposit to the bank.  If you have been in the retail business for any length of time chances are you have experienced a discrepancy or loss from any one or all three.  While written policies and procedures for handling cash will help minimize losses, their effectiveness is limited to the ability and honesty of the employees charged with counting and depositing the stores income.  Adding intelligent cash handling technology to your process greatly reduces or eliminates mistake and opportunity.

It has been said that a dishonest person will usually act dishonestly, unless it proves too difficult. But an honest person will generally remain honest unless given an opportunity to act dishonestly (without getting caught).  This is called "situational honesty" and is a major problem for retailers.  Three self describing factors can lead an honest person to act dishonestly: Opportunity, Pressure and Rationalization.  While a business owner can do little about an employee's pressure to steal or the employee's own rationalization, he can implement intelligent cash handling technology to reduce or eliminate the opportunity.

Intelligent Cash Handling  - Video

The simplest way to reduce opportunity is install a highly visible video camera for each register in your store.  Employees should be made aware that all cash transactions are monitored and reviewed for security purposes.  This simple technological improvement in cash handling helps to reduce opportunity by reducing the possibility that an employee will rationalize that they can “get away with it.” But video cameras do little to protect you from counting errors or cash handling away from the camera (for example when the deposit is taken to the bank.  To protect yourself better, investing in an intelligent cash counter and or intelligent safes are your best investment.

Intelligent Cash Handling – Automated Cash Counting

Investing in a cash counting system that eliminates manual counting will virtually eliminate counting errors and create a written record of the amount and time the cash was counted.  The CountEasy money counter is automatically programmed for U.S. currency and is capable of accurately counting down a drawer in under a minute.  Coins as well as bills are "loaded" on to the machine and an accurate count is transferred to an electronic display as well as creating a register count receipt.

Integrating a CountEasy system is simple and considering the money saved in employee wages (manually counting can take up to an hour), money saved from reduced loss and counting errors, these systems pay for themselves quickly and haven proven to increase profits (by reducing loss).

Intelligent Cash Handling - Intelligent Cash Safes

Intelligent cash safes lift the responsibility of safe keeping cash from the employees to your financial institution or service provider by accounting for and crediting your account with the daily deposit onsite without the need for a trip to the nightly deposit box.

They work by electronically linking to your bank and crediting your account when the money is deposited into your safe.  A separate company handles the transfer from the safe to the bank eliminating employee access.  Investing in an intelligent safe virtually assures losses from bank deposit theft or mistake is eliminated.

Be smart, Be Proactive.

Instituting safe cash handling procedures coupled with intelligent cash handling technology keeps dishonest people from acting dishonestly and keeps honest people honest by limiting their opportunity to rationalize theft.