Why Cashier Overages are Worse than Shortages

By: Tina Praino

When a cashier’s drawer comes up short the automatic reaction is to determine what happened and why. When a cashier has frequent shortages he/she is either not paying close enough attention, not skilled at cash handling or stealing from the store. Retail owners and operators react to those shortages appropriately and either the cashier gets further training or is let go.

Overages and even drawers, however, sometimes get passed over as unimportant. Please do not make that error in judgment. Overages are more concerning than shortages for the following reasons:

• You may have cheated a customer

When an overage occurs you must be very diligent in determining where why, and how. Many times the overage happened because a customer was either over charged or was not given their proper change back. Both of those occurrences are bad for business. Your customers must be able to trust your store and be comfortable that you are honest and accurate in your money handling.

• In order for an overage to occur the cashier needs to collect more monies from your customers than the POS requires.
• More than likely the cashier made an error in giving back change and didn’t give the customer enough money back, resulting in the overage.
• Another option is the cashier made an error when entering the tendered amount for a credit card transaction, which will also result in charging the customer more than was required.

• You may have a dishonest cashier

Another possibility when you are seeing regular overages for a particular cashier is theft. This could also be the case if a group of cashiers start having overages as they may be working together.

• Dishonest cashiers will find ways to steal from your cash drawer. They will under ring transactions and keep track of how much they under rung throughout the day. For example, a dishonest cashier will know how much certain items are and will choose not to scan those items during transactions, yet charge the customer the full amount. They will track how much “overage” is in the drawer and then take that money out either throughout the day when no one is looking or during the drawer countdown process.
• Dishonest cashiers will also void transactions and fake returns which will also result in overages in the drawer.
• You can deter this behavior by using the LP controls on your Point of Sale system and by doing random cash drawer audits throughout the day.

• NOTE: Cashiers Who Balance to the Penny Every Day Should Raise a Red Flag
  

Wow, that cashier is really something else. He/she balances to the penny every day! That’s pretty great, right? No, probably not. Human beings are not perfect. A cashier who balances to the penny every single day without fail should raise a red flag. There are only a few ways to make that happen, and none of them are good for business.

• Slush Fund
  
  • Sometimes cashiers will think that they must balance to the penny or else they will be scrutinized. In an effort to do so, they create a slush fund. They take any overages and put them into a pot to use for shortages in the future. This is a bad practice as you are shorting your customers and not identifying why with every overage. Also, a slush fund is monies that are not properly being recorded and could be monies that eventually get stolen. A Loss Prevention best practice is to not allow slush funds, ever.
    
• Theft
  
  • A cashier that balances to the penny every day could also be stealing from the cash drawer. He/she could be doing various things to increase the drawer such as under ring, void transactions, or enact fraudulent returns. He/she will then balance the drawer and take out the overage to the penny, leaving the drawer even.
    

This is a small list of considerations if you manage a group of cashiers. I am available to assist with creating a solid Loss Prevention Strategy for your store if you need it! As always, I am here to help! Happy Selling!