May 19th, 2011 by ssadmin
Theft is an ugly subject but it’s one that we all have to address. If you are in the food and beverage industry, then you know some people steal.
Let’s tackle five ways to help reduce (or at least find out about) theft. Be warned – some of these require SP-1!
1) Cameras – Common sense here, theft usually occurs when no one is watching. A good camera system can help reduce the opportunity to steal. They can also have the positive impact of providing much needed security for your staff and even your customers. If you want to take it to the next step, look into integrating into SP-1 so the transaction detail shows up on the camera system.
2) Require a receipt – Put it on a sign in front of the register or SP-1 that states you should be offered a receipt from the employee on every purchase. This works as a safeguard to ensure the transactions (especially cash) are being entered into the register / SP-1.
3) Pole display or Order Confirmation – This is the next level after requiring a receipt. A traditional pole display will show your customer a description of the product with the price. A more attractive way is to use an Order Confirmation monitor. Theft is reduced through the fact that the customer expects to see their total on the screen. That helps eliminate orders being pocketed. Another bonus with the SP-1 Order Confirmation monitor is that up-selling is accomplished easily and you can promote product or events.
4) Require a make or barista ticket – This is a great method for restaurants or anyone with a kitchen. Require a printed kitchen ticket for every item made. This helps eliminate employees handing out product without ringing it in. If the kitchen does not have the slip, they don’t make it. SP-1 will handle the printing to make your staff more efficient as well as cut theft.
5) Load the drawer – Here is a very low tech way to see check honesty. Throw an extra $20 bill in the drawer at the beginning of a shift. If the employee reports that they are $20 over at the end of the shift, then chances are you have some level of trust. If the employee comes out even on the drawer count, then they took the $20.
6) Multiple cash drawers – For those of you with multiple fingers in the drawer the toughest issue is what to do if the drawer is short. Who do you blame? If you have SP-1, use multiple cash drawers. SP-1 allows you to setup up to five cash drawers per station. This allows you to assign a specific employee to each drawer and still have cash accountability.
7) Fingerprint ID – Don’t forget about time theft! Some statistics show that up to 25% of all employee theft is time and wage theft! A fingerprint id eliminates the ability to clock a friend in.
8) Get rid of the punch card – Paper punches are an open invitation to theft of product. Employees will double punch for friends on a regular basis. Move to an electronic gift & loyalty and get far more value as well as a more secure system. Ours is free so chances are you will cut some costs there as well.
9) MobileDash / Audit Tracking – One of the features that we offer through our SP-1 POS is the ability to have a full audit trail on what happened. If an employee reduces a ticket after the fact (assuming they have security to do so), the audit tracking is updated and, if you are using MobileDash, an alert to your smart phone showing that the ticket was reduced. This is a fantastic way to stay on top of employees that are voiding items or tickets.
There you have it, a couple ways to help get a handle on what may be going on in your location. If you have any other ideas, be sure to comment and let us know!
Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371
Posted in POS Features, theft Tagged with: stealing, Theft
October 14th, 2010 by ssadmin
Employee Security
It’s true, the days of one and two letter employee passwords are gone. Chances are you might be one of the people that created an employee code and then used 123 as your password.
In order to better safeguard our customers and to insure our customers are in compliance with PCI and PA-DSS regulations for credit card systems, we have moved to providing secure employee password systems in the SP-1 POS system.
In versions 7.60 and above, you are required to have passwords that meet industry standards for security.
Employee Password Specifications:
- Must be 7 characters or more.
- Must contain a combination of numbers and letters
- Must expire every 90 days.
- Will not allow for the same password to be used within last 4 times.
- SHA-512 Cryptographic Hash system for password security. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA_hash_functions
- Employee lock outs after multiple failed attempts
In addition to this, all the employees access is being tracked and logged as well!
The great news with all of this is to insure that your system is as secure as possible! For those of you that are dreading typing long complex passwords. . . Implement the Card Swipe or Fingerprint ID – With those items you don’t have to type the password every time!
Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371
Posted in Employees, theft, Uncategorized Tagged with: employee, security, Theft
May 14th, 2010 by ssadmin
Cash Drawers, Theft and Employee Accountability
Every day here at SelbySoft, we receive calls asking about shortages in the cash drawer. While a number of these are simple mistakes by the crew, theft is an issue as well. If we can make our cash handling employees accountable for the mistakes and shortages, then we are on our way to eliminating them.
So, the question is how can we help? It all starts by deciding who has access to cash in drawers and how we can minimize that.
Let’s start by defining how you probably handle the drawer in your location:
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Do you allow anyone in the store to handle the cash?
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Do you have a dedicated cashier that must ring up every order?
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Do you have a couple people that you trust?
All of the above work but only if handled properly. The basic problem in most stores is that there are just too many hands in the drawer. Then, when the drawer is short – who do you look at?
Let’s talk about how we can make it better and more secure with SP-1
First, we lock down the cash drawer. In SP-1 you can assign a cash drawer to an employee. This helps insure employee accountability because only that employee can access the cash.
The inconvenience with this is that the cashier may not always be at the front counter when the customer is ready to order. With SP-1 we can make this an easier situation in two ways:
- Use multiple cash drawers. SP-1 allows up to five cash drawers per station! With this, you are actually assigning 1-5 employees to their own drawers. If employee one takes an order, drawer one opens, employee two takes an order and drawer two opens.
With either method, you will be on your way to eliminating the potential for shortages in your drawer and increasing employee accountability.
Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
http://www.selbysoft.com/
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371
Posted in Employees, Hardware, theft Tagged with: cash drawer, employee, Theft
October 5th, 2009 by ssadmin
Theft – It’s a fact that it happens in your store. It happens in everyones store. Over the years I have seen a ton of methods that employees and managers will use to steal / give away product.
Recently in Washington State a fine dining restaurant found out that an employee was using a managers code to void cash transactions. This employee wound up stealing over $30,000 over three years through this method. Think about that – $30k. Now, even if it is only $1k that is still unacceptable!
So, this brings us to the question of audit tracking. Are you using your balance till, employee summary, business summay and audit reports? If not, you should be. These are the best ways to see the ‘red flags’ that we all know about and to catch what is happening.
Remember that we show re-opened tickets on the Balance Till – this shows which tickets have been re-opened and which code was used. A good start as to what is going on.
Employee Summary – Run this periodically over a timeframe. This will show voids by employee. If one employee has a larger percent of voids as opposed to another then there is something going on. Either that person needs re-training or they are doing something funny.
Business summary – each and every day, look at the total number of voids and edited voids. This will show you a total dollar amount that you will be responsible for.
Audit reports – This is the absolute best report to run. Remember that this report is not stored inside SP-1 so it is not accessible to the normal employee. This will show you every ticket that has been changed or voided along with who did it, when it was done etc.
Please take a look at these on a regular basis! This does not have to be a ‘negative’ topic – it’s just about protecting yourself!
Don’t hesitate to contact me or our support guys for more information!
Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371
Posted in Employees, Reporting, theft, Uncategorized Tagged with: employee, Pricing, reporting, Theft, tracking
9) MobileDash / Audit Tracking – One of the features that we offer through our SP-1 POS is the ability to have a full audit trail on what happened. If an employee reduces a ticket after the fact (assuming they have security to do so), the audit tracking is updated and, if you are using MobileDash, an alert to your smart phone showing that the ticket was reduced. This is a fantastic way to stay on top of employees that are voiding items or tickets. 
