EPoS systems can vastly improve any businesses security and give the business owner complete peace of mind. Almost all business owners do not want to think that anyone, staff or customers, would be a risk to their business. The fact is the threat is real and it affects almost every single business in the UK.
THEFT
The mere presence of an EPoS system is enough to deter 99% of theft as employees quite rightly realise that it is almost impossible to manipulate without leaving a trail.
Growing from a one man band to hiring extra employees and therefore having this extra responsibility can be a daunting move in itself without the added concern of theft within the workplace. What if you need to take a holiday? Or you want to open a second branch?
Before the introduction of technological advancements such as CCTV and EPoS, it was very easy for certain individuals to get away with ‘fiddling’ the end of day figures or ‘dipping their fingers into the till’ as it were.
Indeed many small to medium businesses are still run using old fashioned cash registers and are pretty much dead in the water when it comes to detecting employee theft. Even on some basic EPoS systems there are still ways to beat the system.
The most common method is to void the sale off the till after collecting the customer’s money and by the time the customer’s back is turned, the money is in the pocket of the employee and the sale wiped from existence.
The other infamous method of stealing from the till is the use of the ‘no sale’ button to open the cash drawer and then there is no way of the employer knowing who did that and when they did it until the end of the day when they find that they are down money.
However, all is not lost. Most reasonably priced EPoS systems online provide two fundamental counter-measures to these despicable acts.
First, good EPoS software will actually have secured logins for employees, either via swipe card or user code and pass code. This will make sure a log of who logged in and when is cemented into the system’s database records. To add to this, most EPoS software will allow you to set various access rights for different employee levels, for example the managing director would obviously have more privileges than a temporary Saturday worker. Once we have these measures in place, we need to be able to track who is voiding items off the till, when they are doing it and also why they are doing it.
Good EPoS software will not only record all voids carried out by an employee but also request a reason as to why they did the void. This information will be detailed in a report so as to give the employer a finite way of uncovering inconsistencies.
Regarding the second type of theft, this is even easier to uncover since most good EPoS software will have a report showing cash drawer transactions, which collates employee logon name and time they logged in to why they opened the cash drawer and how many times they did it. Inconsistencies are therefore easier to address at the end of the day or the week.
When you perform an end of day, if the till is out you can look through irregular activity and easily spot the mistakes.
STOCK CONTROL
How many cans of beans are in your stock room? Or how many pints are left in the barrel?
Most business owners are not aware and, more often than not, send a member of staff to check for them. Also would you be aware if an item went missing from the sales floor?
A robust stock control system built into almost every EPoS system can keep track of every item and exactly where it is. This means you can easily run queries and see exactly how much you should have.
Also the EPoS system can document stock irregularities so you can easily spot which items are most at risk and boost the security of that item.
CCTV
All EPoS systems have the ability to integrate CCTV camera systems into the software. This means that when you are checking the video, the EPoS system will place the transaction overlay over the screen.
This is great as if your tills are not correct at the end of trade then you can have a look through the CCTV and see exactly where the errors took place.
Also if additional items or different items were put through as another product on a sale, it is very easy to spot.