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Reducing retail costs: Slashing bank and CIT fees

Constantly dealing with unnecessary costs and fees can bring business growth to a halt. Many of these charges are up front and easily addressable. There are other not-so-evident costs, though, that can weigh down an accounting ledger more than you would think. And these often take the form of bank fees, CIT fees and money-movement charges.

Bank fees due to deposit errors

One costly side of cash intake is the fee that banks charge for every miscounted deposit sent through the cash-in-transit (CIT) system. Just a few dollars, or even a few cents off, and you’re saddled with a bank penalty ( (or in banking terms: a “deposit correction fee”) running from $5 to $20 per occurrence.

Most businesses only become aware of these events in the end-of-month statements which add up the deposit fees into one large charge that wasn’t budgeted for.

Compounding that, you must now devote valuable time and labour to reconcile the differences, determine the origin, and add additional procedural steps to stop repeat episodes.

Deposit correction fees can certainly weigh down profit margins if left unchecked. But there may be even more fees just around the corner. And these could come from the very service you entrust with moving your cash safely: the CIT company.

CIT-generated charges & fees

There is no doubt that cash in transit companies offer a vital service to retailers and restaurants, and therefore have a standard charge for their scheduled services. Vary from that schedule for any reason, however, and additional fees begin to mount:

  • Missed pick-ups: Did your CIT fail to pick up the deposit because your store didn’t have it ready on time? That’s likely a fee. And suppose your CIT has an operational issue and misses or even cancels a pickup? Hopefully, there’s not a charge for that one, but you’ll want to check just in case.
  • Unscheduled or emergency pick-ups or drop-offs: Because of the flow of cash coming in and out, off-schedule and additional CIT deliveries/collections can be the biggest contributor to additional fees.
  • A now obsolete pick-up schedule: Perhaps your CIT comes by too often – picking up smaller and smaller amounts of cash, if any at all. Each pick-up still carries a cost to you, even the ones that aren’t particularly worthy.

Optimising your cash management

The clearest solution to reducing and even eliminating bank deposit correction fees and additional CIT-based charges is to enhance your cash management procedures. Solutions that allow you real-time visibility of your cash across stores can improve your ability to forecast upcoming periods of cash intake and withdrawal more accurately.

Eliminating the deposit correction fee

Costly errors in cash counting, either due to time or personnel constraints, are best remedied by intelligent cash counters like the Tellermate Touch where bills, coins, bags, straps, and even rolls of cash can be counted accurately and quickly. With an accurate count on the deposit slip, the correction fee is now eliminated. Plus, many hours of investigative manpower to rectify old errors are no longer needed.

Avoiding the additional CIT charges

Keeping your CIT cash pickup and drop-off schedules well-timed and optimised requires both a good estimation of upcoming in-store consumer activity and a real-time view of the cash on hand at all the stores in your network.

The forecasting part is, by nature, a bit tricky. You have seasonal spurts and lulls as well as certain days of the week (and even certain hours of the day) where business has historically been brisk – all of which must be considered. Balancing the change needed on hand while depositing the excess cash intake is obviously a schedule that only you can make.

Tellermate Touch + LiveSafe gives you access to all your cash count data through TouchViewer, so you can use your own trends to make decisions. Given that many retailers are combating a coin shortage, you can now quickly count your coins, view the number of coins counted in each drawer at closeout and recirculate them internally.

Scheduling around your needs

With effective cash management technologies, you can now make well informed decisions around anticipated change levels at critical times. This will keep your CIT pickup schedule at peak efficiency.

Having a network of point-of-sale safes like LiveSafe allows you to see the exact amount of large bills that are secured in your stores, further helping you to optimise pickups.

In this solution, the Tellermate Touch cash counter is used as the interface for your network of LiveSafes which enables you to count cash drawers and LiveSafe contents seamlessly and efficiently, all while maximising security throughout your business. This means that less time is spent counting cash, and less people handle the cash, keeping your stores efficient and clean.

Improved cash handling can reduce bank fees and excess CIT charges

Kicking unnecessary fees and charges to the curb can yield big savings to any company’s bottom line. And there are several types of cash management technologies that will gain you the insight to do just that. Download our Cash Management Jungle E-book to discover which cash management technology might be the best fit for your business.

The Cash Management Jungle – Ebook

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