By leveraging the variance controls and reporting often built into the latest hospitality POS systems, many potential gaps can be plugged. While it’s impossible to completely protect your restaurant, bar or pub from theft, there are a number of precautions you can take to reduce the chances of it happening.
Most places prefer to use technology and procedural controls as a tool to discourage crime. False transactions or collusion between staff and customers are often at the top of the list of preventative measures. Misuse of rebates, staff discounts, and issues with supplied goods come a close second. When staff are aware that each stock item is accounted for, shrinkage can be drastically reduced. If everyone knows that the company has its finger on the pulse, the losses may be negligible.
A wide range of POS features can help revolutionize control:
Unique POS logins
POS wristbands embedded with a unique employee ID can automate such restrictions and help keep the entire location fully accountable. Managers can know who is selling what, where, and for how much. To prevent items from being passed on to friends at a lower price, only certain trusted staff are authorized to discount. To reduce ‘no sale’ fraud, access to the register is limited to only those with security privileges. Time and attendance modules record these unique logins, ensuring each person is actually at work when they say they are. The back office POS software allows editing, checking and reporting on all inputs and outputs and working times.
Variance Report
POS’s powerful reports let you quickly and easily get started to see the big picture. Compare the best days with the worst days and see where the differences originate. By detecting trends, it makes it easy to identify anomalies in daily figures and trends. The minimum and maximum thresholds can give variations automatically. Search capabilities allow operators to detect voids, refunds, and other detailed transactions based on time of day, staff member, or other criteria.
The cost of refunds and price changes
Audit logs mark price changes, who made the change, and how often. Also, looking at the average number of refunds and justification can also be helpful in keeping track of lost money.
taking actions seriously
If all purchase orders are processed end-to-end through the POS system, it’s easy to see if a supplier’s discount has been reduced. Matching deliveries to orders and matching supply prices to quoted prices helps reduce inconsistencies and shrinkage.
PDTs with preloaded barcodes can manage stock withdrawals quickly and accurately. Once linked to the POS, the scanned inventories can be compared to those listed in the POS software. Once a product is sold through the POS, inventory is depleted to give beginning and ending figures. The reports show what is between these figures and if there is some kind of theft problem.
CCTV linked to POS
Linking CCTV to the POS system can help detect theft as it occurs. Direct images of customers and staff look the same whether the people are fraudulent or honest. Once the images are married to the POS transactions, this combination of data provides irrefutable evidence when variances exist. Using powerful search features for voids, no-sale transactions, etc., live or past images can be viewed to track incidents. All monitoring can be carried out remotely, eliminating the need for covert operations.
Liquor control linked to POS
Wired beverage management systems linked to POS can similarly track every ounce of liquor poured. Once a drink is served, the cash register recognizes that it has been served and managers can see what has been served but not sold. Wireless flow meters, ETNs and pourers can be connected to bulk beers and spirits. Every time someone pours a drink, it records how much has been poured vs. actual sales. POS reports can drill down to see the actual time the variance occurred.
Hospitality operators face enormous challenges in obtaining the necessary margins to ensure profitability. By using the large number of reports that normally come standard with POS, the task of spotting potential variances and gaps becomes easier. By further linking with innovative technologies such as CCTV or Liquor Control, these systems can often pay for themselves quickly in terms of loss reduction.
Philippa Smyth, Marketing Director, Vectron Systems