Loss Prevention FAQ
What does the score next to the employee’s name mean?
Each employee will be assigned a score of 0-100 with higher scores indicating a higher likelihood of loss based on specific calculations per case type. Scores can sometimes be inflated when an employee has only a few checks during a period.
Should I only investigate High Priority cases?
We recommend investigating all cases, using the priority level to indicate which cases to investigate first. We have found theft across all priority levels but do our best to indicate the most likely cases as a high priority.
When do ‘Real-Time’ email alerts get sent?
We send real-time alerts each morning as we load data for the prior day. These alerts look for checks that match the pattern of an existing open case.
Why do my managers keep appearing in alerts (especially the void and promo alert)?
All employees handling checks will be monitored in Loss Prevention. Before the exclusions are made there may be cases where managers are flagged in the Void and Promo watch as the managers are responsible for approving all promotions and voids. We advise, at least initially, not to exclude your managers and monitor all cases coming through to get familiar and have a global view. Also, drive the importance of accurate employee class assignments to each of the staff members to ensure clean and accurate data.
What if an employee continues to come up in the POS Authorization watch type?
Double-check all of the user's settings in the POS and confirm that they do not have authorizing abilities and that limitations have been correctly set. If that is not your standard operating procedure you may want to implement a new structure to allow only managers to handle Promos and Voids.
What if there are only a small amount of checks for a case?
If a server only works a small number of shifts or only sees a small number of checks any type of suspicious activity on even just a few checks will be a significant percentage of their total. We encourage you to keep the case open to allow it to grow with new checks before marking it as resolved.
Why do I constantly get one type of alert for all of my employees?
If you have a significant amount of a single case coming through and you determine no fraud is being committed it could be a potential learning opportunity. Your staff could be improperly ringing in items or using the POS outside of the operating procedures for the restaurant. If this is the case you need to either set or adjust your protocols to make sure staff are using the POS correctly.
Are Tip Inflation and Void & Promo watch types the same?
Not quite - Void & Promotion tracks void and promos applied to cash checks and Tip Inflation tracks void and promotions applied to card-payment checks. The intention of the Void & Promotion is to identify when servers and bartenders are using voids and promotions to reduce check value and pocket the extra cash. The intention of the Tip Inflation watch type is to identify when staff members are adding additional tips unbeknownst to the customer.
No Loss Prevention cases were generated - is Loss Prevention not working or is there nothing to investigate?
There may be times when Loss Prevention does not generate cases. First, you should check and see if you have any Watch Scores for your employees. If you have Watch Scores but no cases, then the system is working but it was not triggered to generate cases for investigation.
Loss Prevention works by comparing individual employee behavior to their team or peer set. If there is no deviation from average performance or the peer set is too small, cases will not be generated.
Configuration that can prevent Loss Prevention cases:
- Having all employees in different job classes may reduce peer set to 1 or 2 and prevent a comparison from generating cases.
- If Cash Sales are below 2% of total revenue, the low cash volume may prevent cases.
- If you are using a POS system that does not provide transfer information, such as Micros Oracle Simphony Hosted or Toast POS, this will not generate any transfer-related cases.
If you have recently changed POS Systems, there will be a period of downtime while Avero gathers the new data to rebuild a comparison set. Loss Prevention requires a full 60-day cycle of data, and it may take several months to build a robust enough data set to resume case generation.
Is there a way to remove the alert for a surcharge?
Sometimes a business receives an alert for gratuity added, even to checks where no gratuity is added, because a surcharge appears as a gratuity. You can exclude specific employees and promos/voids but not specific gratuities, but can suppress certain watch types. Read more about this here: Loss Prevention Settings Guide