I hate hearing about avoidable employee theft in a newsagency. While not all employee theft is avoidable, plenty is. This typically happens in a newsagency where record keeping is not as good as it could be, where all cash brought into the business is not completely balanced against goods sold.
Every cent of revenue in a newsagency ought to be recorded in the newsagency software at the time of the sale and this ought to be balanced back through the P&L to cost of goods, back to supplier invoices or records.
Take lotteries, all instant tickets and online sales ought to be reconciled to lottery sales in the software. The revenue ought to match. If it does;t you have a problem.
Ir is not acceptable to say it is too hard to balance. It is easy to balance when you have people who are committed to serving the business and those who own it.
Too often, business owners who find it too hard to balance later discover theft for which they only have themselves to blame.