As much as we hate to admit it, employee theft can be a major problem for foodservice establishments of all types. And while some incidents of theft are easily brought to light, others are less obvious. Fortunately, your POS system can help you to see where employee theft is really occurring and may even give you a clue about who’s committing it. Your POS reveals employee theft by pointing out:
Troubling inconsistencies. Reviewing reports generated by – and records kept in – your POS can reveal all sorts of inconsistencies that may signal a pattern of or single incidents of employee theft. For example, you can take a look at your POS data and records for a given period and note that the amount of cash that was supposed to be in a particular cash drawer at the end of the day did not jibe with the total that was really there. Cash variances are often a sign of employee theft.
Similarly, you can look at your inventory control system and see that while you had 12 bottles of a certain wine on hand at the start of a day and only two patrons purchased one, there were only nine bottles in the storage area at the end of the evening. Again, employee theft could be the reason—and the discrepancy, like the one pertaining to the cash drawer, is a red flag and an indicator that further investigation is warranted.
Finding inconsistencies that point to employee theft is also possible when security cameras and DVRs integrate with your POS system. In such a scenario, servers’ moves are recorded as they deliver or ring up customers’ orders, with the printed specifics of each order superimposed onto the recording. Discrepancies that could mean employee theft is a reality in your establishment can be easily found by viewing the combined captured images and text.
High instances of “no sales,” refunds, and voids. Scrutinizing records of POS transactions helps you to easily pinpoint instances in which a cashier rang up a transaction in which no sale was made, a transaction was voided, or a refund was given. This is a sign that employee theft—in the form of stealing cash or the giving of free or discounted food and beverages to family and friends—may be occurring.
A peek at your labor management system—which should integrate with the POS—will enable you to establish a correlation between a particular employee or employees and high instances of “no sales,” refunds, and voids—thus identifying the potential culprit. Look at a number of different factors. For instance, do the average sales rung up by a particular cashier fall below the average sales of other cashiers during the same meal periods and the same days? Is there a higher amount of discounts given during the times a certain cashier is working?
Spikes in liquor and ingredient expenses. Reviewing liquor and ingredient purchasing data accessible via the inventory control module in your POS system permits you to quickly discern what items you’re suddenly spending more money on—which may mean that employee theft of these items is occurring. Similarly, by going over server activity and log-in reports in that same module, you can identify which employees are over-pouring or serving drinks at no charge.
Employee theft can take a serious bite out of your bottom line. Leveraging your POS system to minimize the size of that bite is one of the best steps you can take to avoid serious financial loss.
