Which cash automation solution fits your store, staff and space?

As we begin to reopen and embrace the new normal, retailers face multiple challenges, some new and some old. Retailers often look towards automation of processes to help offset staffing shortages and variable wage growth, but struggle to achieve the ROI threshold and offset the high cost of total ownership of large-scale recycler solutions.

Retailers often ask themselves, “How much should we invest in cash automation? With costs associated with cash rising and cash usage remaining stagnant when is the true hard-cost ROI achieved?”

Shrink vs. investing in cash technology

In an article published by Carnation it was discovered nearly 75% of all employees have stolen cash from the cash register. To put these statistics into usable numbers, per reinvestment.com a typical grocery store has 10 lanes and $2M in annual gross revenue. A study from the National Retail Foundation in 2019 revealed that retailers expect a shrink of 1.38% per annum and anticipate half of the shrink is relevant to employee theft. In this scenario, retailers expect that of the $27,600 in shrink, $13,800 is a direct result of employee theft.

While security camera systems help address external shoplifting threats, shrinkage from the cash till is a continuous threat for retailers. There is a great deal of time spent with employees off the floor reconciling tills and researching overages and shortages. Internal issues are also hard to address as retailers seek to understand if issues are nefarious in nature or if the employee made an honest mistake. Retailers also determine what the acceptable loss is prior to investigation to ensure the expenditure of the time is worthy of the investment.

Which solution is right for you?

When it comes to recycling cardboard boxes, it’s right for nearly everyone. But recycling cash through a large,  back-office machine? It’s not so black and white. There’s no doubting the value, but it may not be a practical investment for a small store or one that sees fluctuations in cash use.  Cash recyclers are a great way to automate back-office processes. Recyclers increase accountability and visibility, yet many retailers are hesitant to invest. The hesitation is not due to the lack of value or process improvement, but because the hard-cost multi-year ROI is difficult to achieve.  Many of those deploying recycling technology have opted to deploy cash-only solutions to better the ROI, but leave themselves open to manual coin audits or a complete disregard in coin all together. This opens the door for till theft.

Another way to automate cash management

Through unique processes and solutions, Tellermate addresses the needs of all departments through low-cost, high yield solutions. Tellermate solutions are customized specific to the operational need yet boast the lowest cost of total ownership and initial investment.

The Tellermate Touch cash counter is the only cash counter on the market with its own cloud-based application, Tellermate Touch Viewer. It allows remote and on-site user access to the full count data from your PC, tablet or mobile device. It’s an enterprise-wide solution to improve transparency of cash counts and an audit trail.

Combining the Touch with LiveSafe, the next generation of smart safes, provides a cash automation solution at the point-of-sale. The compact size of the safe means that it can easily be placed below or beside the cash drawer and integrated into existing furniture. Data about the contents of LiveSafe can be accessed through our Touch cash counters. This enables you to navigate seamlessly between drawer and safe counts while increasing efficiency. The solution these two pieces provide uses the same allocation of personnel as a recycler and saves nearly the same amount of time, but at a fraction of the cost and space.

Never count your cash again

A more all-inclusive option for cash automation is LiveDrawer. We build Tellermate’s count-by-weight technology into the drawer itself, giving you full visibility of exactly how much cash is in the drawer at any one time. With its ability to highlight discrepancies between the drawer and the POS, LiveDrawer virtually eliminates loss and gives you a full audit trail of your cash. The counting technology eliminates the need for cash counting at the checkout and at cashing-up time, improving efficiency and reducing the stress on cashiers.

LiveDrawer easily fits into most existing cash wraps with minimal modifications. In the ten-lane grocery store scenario above, it achieves an ROI in a matter of months. LiveDrawer is proactive in that it provides unique enhancements and capabilities for all individuals and departments.

• Customer – Have you ever been given the wrong change, waited in line for store management to bring more change, or had to correct your change returned?  LiveDrawer ensures this won’t happen.
• Cashiers –  LiveDrawer protects cashiers in the event of a discrepancy where they are not at fault. It also gives them peace of mind knowing they have a full audit trail of their actions. The things a cashier does in LiveDrawer every day will impact cash management throughout the enterprise and connect your team at the point of sale to high-level corporate goals.
• Operations – LiveDrawer helps retailers focus on their core business operations by automating all front-end cash processes and enhancing existing and future cash automation deployments. It also gives real-time balancing information, text and/or email alerts, at-risk condition monitoring including but not limited to: thresholds for having too little change available for customers, too much of one or multiple denominations in the cash drawer, or alerts for cashiers if the incorrect change is given.
• Over time, the operations team will also find they can gain needed intelligence to know what areas can be improved at the point of sale, allowing for specific coaching to assist with store team development.
• Loss Prevention – LiveDrawer prevents employee theft from the point of sale and alerts appropriate loss prevention professionals to risk trends through SMS text and/or email. The time-stamped audit trail also deters staff dishonesty. If you have stores in high-risk areas, you can reduce your risk by implementing site specific thresholds into LiveDrawer manager to ensure less money is exposed.
• CFO & Treasury – Your corporate finance team will be able to view cash as it comes and goes on a store level. LiveDrawer provides real-time cash and coin forecasting data to ensure each location always has the right mix of cash and coin. This helps you optimize coin ordering and cash collection. The data from LiveDrawer Manager will help you predict cash volumes over time and make decisions around cash exposure and denominational thresholds.
• IT Systems –  LiveDrawer and LiveDrawer Manager enables the creation of an accurate data foundation that benefits all departments within your organization. Streamline information exchange between systems to lessen the burden on IT, treasury, and operational staff. LiveDrawer has a simple integration process to existing POS systems and smart safes.
• CEO – When you have solid people, products and technology in place, your CEO can do his or her job with the upmost confidence. The visibility and real-time data from each store gives the CEO more information to make decisions that impact the business.