Theft is a problem in retail. Too often, it is not discovered until after the event, primarily because of a lack of belief that theft is a problem, particularly theft by employees.
One of the best ways to detect employee theft is to look at your business transactional data. Good POS software not only tracks what is sold, it also tracks what is deleted from sales and entire sales that are cancelled, and it keeps this data in a hidden file, not accessible in the usual reporting way of the software.
In my experience, one out of ten times I have received this secret data for a retailer using my POS software I have found evidence of questionable behaviour. Laying this evidence out with video footage, ideally, and employee rosters, a person of interest emerges, or more depending on the video evidence with a money (in the pocket) shot.
I am not going to share here the incriminating keystrokes but I will say they have been court-tested in cases while providing expert witness for the prosecution.
My advice to newsagents and any retailer is to use the theft detection and mitigation tools in your POS software. learn about them. Use them. But don’t tell others what you are doing.
Some retailers think the best approach to reduce the theft opportunity is to lock everything down, making it very hard for people to steal. The thing is, people who want / need to steal will find a way and the harder you make it for them m in a retail setting the harder it will be for you to detect it.
I am not saying tempt them. rather, don’t lock your POS software down, give people reasonable access, and watch what they do – follow the advice of your POS software company on using the data their software collects for you to see if theft could be a problem min your shop.
Cases of employee theft in a newsagency in which I have been involved have ranged in theft cost from $5,000 to $245,000. In every single instance, using the secret tools I have mentioned here could have detected the theft sooner and reduced the financial an emotional impact on the business and others.
If you have read this far, thank you and well done. Most will not, because theft is not an interesting topic – until they are personally impacted.