Noticing high voids from your cashiers? Did you think of employee theft as the reason??

I can already hear the question.  If I had a cashier stealing wouldn’t I be looking for missing cash and not high voids?  The answer is “not necessarily”.  Internal theft, which is the retail term for employee theft, has a long history of void abuse.  It is important to conduct an employee theft investigation if you start seeing high voids.

Here is how this employee theft scam works.  The customer comes to the register with product.  The cashier rings up the product totaling $46.  The customer, if paying with cash, will likely give the cashier $50.  The cashier has a few options at this point.  Some register programs have the ability to do a “void during”, which is to say they can void the whole transaction during the middle of sale.  If so, the cashier can void the sale at that point.  They will then do a “No Sale” to open the drawer and “finish” the transaction.  The customer sees the drawer open and the cashier give them back their $4 in change so they don’t know anything happened.  They take the merchandise and leave.  Now the drawer has $46 more than what the register thinks it should have since with the void the transaction “never took place”.  As for the internal theft piece, now the cashier can take the money and the drawer will still balance.  If your register system can do a “void after”, which is to say after the transaction has been tendered, then the cashier can do the same thing.  Ring the sale and process the customer and once the customer leaves they can void the sale and take the cash.  Most all companies will have a variation of this type of employee theft at some point.  That is why it is good to keep an eye on voids and complete an employee theft investigation any time you notice a spike in void transactions.

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