Case Study - A Dublin Supermarket

John* is the owner of a large supermarket in West Dublin. He had ongoing concerns around cash handling accuracy, accountability and security as well as an urgent need to improve efficiencies within his store.

The Problem

John was using a combination of manual cash handling solutions which consisted of drop boxes, a till system that prompted multiple cash drops each day and an air tube system.

“In reality multiple cash drops each day aren’t always feasible when the store is busy. It becomes a choice between allowing queues to build up and compromising security by allowing till values to increase. We have had several armed raids and needed to minimise the amount of cash that could be accessed.”

What We Knew

The stores existing solutions relied on a considerable level of human intervention which worked in theory but not in practice. Staff would forget to manually sign off tills or include their initials on counts. A lack of traceability with the air tube system meant that consistency and accuracy issues could not be properly addressed and the cash handling training needs of the staff could not be properly identified.

John told us that the main areas that he needed to address were;

• Accuracy & Accountability: Focusing on reducing till balance discrepancies and counting errors and providing a higher level of traceability
• Efficiency: Frequency of cash drops, reduction in time spent handling cash & reduction in delays at the till.
• Security: Keeping till totals as low as possible, reducing shrinkage, reducing public visibility of internal processes.

 The Solution

John found the CounterCache Intelligent online and contacted Money Point to ask if we could supply the units. He told us that he preferred to work with Irish suppliers whenever possible.

With Money Point this meant he could take advantage of the comprehensive and reliable aftercare, support and service packages we offer.

The CCi offers a multitude of benefits to John’s business:

Operator Accountability:

Each operator uses their own fob to activate the unit and each of their deposits are automatically logged until they remove their fob.

Reporting:

The accompanying windows based software provides John with comprehensive excel reports by date, pouch and operator.

Efficiency:

The CCi dramatically reduces the number of times each batch of cash has to be counted as well as time spent balancing tills. Overall cash handling is considerably reduced and shrinkage and counting errors are easy to trace.

Security:

The unit is fixed securely to a shelf or counter with brackets and lockable sliders. Notes are fed directly into a tamper evident pouch which cannot be removed from the unit until sealed. The notes are also counterfeit checked by the unit. John was also able to opt for large volume pouches which means that multiple cash drops per day during opening hours are now a thing of the past and there is no longer any public visibility of their cash handling procedures.

Tangible Savings:

John will see a return on his investment in less than 2 years. To date, he has been able to save 12 hours in his cash office each week, moving from a six full days day to three full and two half days each week.

“The CCi has proved to be a very solid and trouble free solution. It’s extremely robust, reliable and fast and it hasn’t slowed down the check-out process in any way. If anything it has actually speeded it up! Having a fob assigned to each cashier and being able to see the cash position live from the back office is a big bonus.”

Cash handling procedures are more streamlined right across the business and John says they now have some of the most efficient cash office processes he has come across in any retail environment that he has worked in!

*Names have been changed to preserve customer confidentiality.