Employee theft of refunds. Sound familiar?

For those of you who don’t know, I have a little secret to tell.  {Whispering} “Shhhh … EMPLOYEE’S STEAL!!!”  Ok, so I admit that may be a little dramatic, but I hope the point is made.  I hear many employers say they don’t have employee theft and that is just not the case.  Year after year and study after study shows that employee theft, also known as internal theft, is linked to nearly half of all retail losses.  There are many different ways that internal theft can occur, but I want to focus this article on refund theft and how to conduct an employee theft investigation on refunds.

The first step to conducting an employee theft investigation of refunds is to actually look at your refunds.  Hopefully, you have POS software that will pull refund reports.  If not, you can do things the old fashion way and scroll through your journal tape and find all of your refunds from the previous day.  This must be a daily activity.  Next, you will want to look for refunds of the same item.  Often internal theft of refunds occurs by the cashier returning an item legitimately for a customer and then when no one is around they do another “refund” and keep the cash or gift card for themselves.

Another good idea is to look at numbers and dollar amounts of refunds and look at the employees as a whole for that day.  If 3 employees did refunds you would expect their numbers to be similar.  Look for the associate who is well above the pack in either number or dollar amount of refunds.  Why the difference?  Pull video and look at a few transactions to verify that a customer is present and product is present.

Employee theft investigations are essential in protecting your profits and your business.  Unfortunately, employee theft is a real thing so it is worth the time to “dig in” and see what is going on.

For more information on employee theft investigation, employee theft or internal theft contact us or call 1.770.426.0547 – Atlanta Georgia