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Protect Profits: Reduce Cash Theft

Updated

Protect Profits Initiative: Reduce Opportunities for Cash Theft

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Recipe: 15-20 Minutes Monthly + Essentials or Professional Subscription

Let us walk your through it step by step: Reduce Opportunities for Fraud and Abuse

Log into Avero in another tab, then click the link to launch a step-by-step guide to auditing cash payments for fraud. 

Reducing Cash Theft - Smart Search + Server Payments

Keep your profits from walking out the door by reducing your staff's variance from standard practices, and keep tabs to prevent or stop fraud and abuse.

 

We will focus on:

  • Using Avero's pre-loaded Smart Searches in Check Search to look for potential problems
  • Take these insights to the Server Scorecard to identify the team members who need retraining or counseling

Step One - Smart Searches

See our related guide: Beginner: Reduce Promotion and Void Abuse

Use the Smart Search feature in Check Search to spot suspicious conditions:

  • Promotions Searches:
      • Promotions + Cash Payments: Are these legitimate promotions? Find out at a glance, some scams involve having a comp or promotion applied after a guest has paid in cash, and the server pockets the extra money - which should be your revenue!
      • Promotions + Payment = 0: Checks that were completely comped. How often does your restaurant legitimately offer a Full Comp?
  • Voids Searches:
      • Voids+ Cash Payments: Are these legitimate voids? Find out at a glance - some scams involve having an item voided to reduce the check total after a guest has already paid.
      • Voids + Payment = 0: Checks that were completely voided. Is the team running a "Void tab" where they split off errors to be blindly voided by the manager at the night's end? Spot Check these types of checks for legitimacy
  • All checks with irregular cover counts or average check - the is a pre-filtered list of checks that stand away from your averages so you don't need to run a service report and manually add average check or cover count filters; this one click will do it all. 

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Service Summary & Scorecard to Dive Deeper

Now that you've spot checked for odd behavior, run a Service Summary report for the same time frame as your Smart Check Search and review the Server Scorecard  for any employees whose behavior appeared in your spot check. 

Compare the Cash % of Sales on the Payments tab of the Server Scorecard to the team average. Follow up with servers or bartenders who are noticeably below the team average - why are they seeing less cash than their peers? If there is a legitimate reason, you'll uncover it, and in the process show the team that the behavior doesn't go unnoticed. If you find actionable evidence of malfeasance, you can address it immediately and prevent more revenue from being lost. 

Cash Sales

Let us walk your through it step by step: Create Sales Contest

Log into Avero in another tab, then click the link to launch a step-by-step guide to monitoring service payments. 

If you are on Avero's Professional subscription this is made even easier with Avero's Service Payments Report - Run this report and sort by the Cash % of Sales to see who is noticeably below the team average and take action as needed. 

  • Peer Comparison tracks and compares individuals against the rest of your team. This is also another way to track against the Same Ticket Scam. Sort by Cash % of Sales amount, enabling you to track and compare servers Cash sales to their peers.
  • Example: If the average server or bartender is seeing 20% cash sales over a period of time, and there is an individual with 8%, this should be a red flag and management should begin an investigation and monitor their behavior.

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