Ideas for detecting theft using the SuperSalon iOffice

We intend to continually add to this document, both from our experiences and from customer feedback. We have more to add, but we thought we would post what we do have, and will try to add more every week.

Employee theft can kill a business, and unfortunately is sometimes perpetrated by your most trusted staff. Sometimes it starts innocently. We have had customer's with staff who borrowed $20 from the till for gas with the intent of paying it back. When a few days went by and they realize that no one noticed it, they never paid it back and they started "borrowing" money more often. The temptation is sometimes high, especially when people have financial problems.

The best thing you can do is catch it early. Left un-checked people can become more confident, and steal more and more. Some share their secret and you can end up with several staff stealing. The longer you wait, the more financial damage can happen, the more potential people can be involved, and the more pain you might feel.

Working with thousands of salons over the years, we have seen everything from time clock theft, theft of services, trade-down theft and simple theft of cash.

Please submit your ideas to feedback@rogerspos.com

One of the most obvious theft opportunities is a stylist performing a service and not putting customer into the system.. A variation on this is stylists that pocket the money if a sale is cash without entering it into the system, but entering them in the system at check-out time if the customer pays by credit card... If payment is card or check, it goes in the system, if it is cash, it goes into pocket for a nice big tip. We look for this in several places:

REPORTS ⇒ AUDIT ⇒ Exceptions

This report shows by stylist the number of cuts that took less than 5 or more than 30 minutes. These exceptions often indicate trade-down theft.

The "less than 5 minutes" transactions indicate someone is waiting until the service is finished to enter it. This behavior supports the "option play." If customer pays with cash they will not put the transaction in the system. If the customer pays with a card they enter the transaction. All tickets should be made at customer check-in so you have an audit trail, know wait times, service times, etc.

REPORTS ⇒ AUDIT ⇒ Service Gap Analysis

Select the date range & stylist and this report will display each ticket with start and stop times.... ANY time the stylist is clocked-in, doesn't have someone in service AND there are customers waiting to be serviced, this will be displayed as Lost Time in Red. Generally a lot of Lost Time, or specifically lost time over 15 to 30 minutes means the stylist could be doing services for friends or cash customers without putting them into the POS system, OR is doing something else while customers are waiting... This can highlight other behaviors such as smoking breaks, lunch, leaving the salon... all while on the clock.

REPORTS ⇒ SALES ⇒ Daily Detail Report

Check all boxes.... you may have to change the date to get this to display the info you want.... It should show a week's data with each stylist showing... What you're looking for is the far right column...What % of their tickets were paid by Credit Card. If the salon averages 50% by credit card and the stylist is 95% credit card, you might want to know why, as this can be an indicator.

REPORTS ⇒ SALES ⇒ Daily Detail Report

Stylist who have a much higher percent of credit card transactions then other staff may be pocketing cash transaction and leaving them out of the system. This report lists all stylists and the percent of their transactions using credit card. If some skew high, it might be interesting to know why.

SALES TAB ⇒ SEARCH SALES

Stylists or receptionists have sometimes voided tickets, and then pulled out a corresponding amount of cash out of the till. SuperSalon DOES NOT delete voided tickets. These are highlighted in search sales.

In a variation, staff will redo a ticket with lower cost items, and pull cash out of the till that equals the reduction. SuperSalon always saves a copy of the original transaction, and groups it next to the new one. The original is shown as voided. It is quite easy to see transactions where the new one has removed items and replaced with lower cost items.

REPORTS ⇒ Receptionist (not completed)

Receptionist have opportunities to steal also. More coming here...

MORE TO COME!... and don't forget to provide feedback to feedback@rogerspos.com

The next most frequent abuse comes from performing a higher priced service and ringing up a lower priced one. This is typically done on the check-out screen. For salons that select services when the customer checks in, or salons that use the self check-in, a thief will sometimes remove the higher-priced item at check-out and replace it with a lower priced item. Fortunately this can be identifies many ways.

SMS Customer Receipt

We now offer an SMS messaging system. One of the features allows you to send your customers an SMS minutes after they leave. IN addition to a "Thank you" message, it includes a receipt for services. If stylists know that customers will get this, it reduces likelihood that they will enter a lower priced service.

REPORTS ⇒ AUDIT ⇒ Guest Summary Reports

This in an excellent report for finding trade-down theft. It shows every ticket for the day. For each ticket it shows the following occurrences. Each is coded with a letter:

• P Any items that were selected at check-in.
• D Any items that were selected at check-in, but removed at check-out.
• A Any items that added at check-out.

It all shows the service duration. It becomes very clear when there is a pattern of expensive items being removed at checkout, with lower priced items being added.

SALES TAB ⇒ SEARCH SALES ⇒Trade Down Theft Audits

In the Trade-down Theft Audit box put $20 in the Sales Amount Less Than field, and 60 minutes in the Service Time Greater Than field and a date range of a couple of weeks. This will display each ticket that took more than 60 minutes but was charged less than $20. Investigate each ticket... look for patterns. In this manner we have found stylists doing full color services and charging for haircuts, and pocketing a very large "tip."

You can try any numbers you want. You might try entering $8 and 20 minutes. Using these numbers we have found stylists doing haircuts, and charging fro Bang Trims, and pocketing a large "tip."

SALES TAB ⇒ SEARCH SALES ⇒Trade Down Theft Audits

The second part of this is Amount Tendered is Greater... Put $25 in the box along with a two week date range.... you'll see some customers that paid with a $100 bill. Even so, the change would never be over $100.

Here is the good part: With other payment methods such as credit cards a problem is immediately evident. For instance an $85 credit card for a $15 haircut yielding a big difference between amount tendered and amount due... generating excessive change, in this case $60 dollars. This could be a trade down theft or it could be the staff acting as an ATM. We often find stylists have done an expensive service, bit entered a lower priced service and kept the change giving themselves a very generous "tip."

Example: A quick check (for an affordable salon) is to enter $11.00 for the amount, as tips over $10 would be more rare, and select credit cards for the payment type. We know that the vast majority of the time, any amount on a credit card over the amount owed is intended as a tip. As the tip gets higher relative to the service amount, the more interesting the transaction. When you find transactions like this, look at the service time and compare it to the service completed... If the service time is much higher than it should be, the transaction gets more interesting.

REPORTS ⇒ AUDIT ⇒ Exceptions

This report shows by stylist the number of cuts that took less than 5 or more than 30 minutes. These exceptions often indicate trade-down theft.

The "less than 5 minutes" transactions indicate someone is waiting until the service is finished to enter it. This behavior supports the "option play." If customer pays with cash they will not put the transaction in the system. If the customer pays with a card they enter the transaction. All tickets should be made at customer check-in so you have an audit trail, know wait times, service times, etc.

The "greater than 30 minute" haircuts can indicate that although the transaction was run through the system, they really performed a longer (more expensive) service than a haircut, but entered a haircut.

SALES TAB ⇒ SEARCH SALES

This are a variety of quick sanity checks that can be done from here. Simple examples include:

• In the Service Sold selection box, choose a low priced service such as bang trim. Run the report. Some stylists may have excessive low priced services. DO this by employee to see if anyone has dramatically more.
• In the Ticket Status search for voids. Run some of these by employee.
• In the Discounts Used search, enter a discount and search by employee. Look for excessive use.

MORE TO COME!... and don't forget to provide feedback to feedback@rogerspos.com

REPORTS ⇒ PAYROLL ⇒ Time Card

Look at suspected stylist's time card...(click on date) it will show the clock in / out time as well as the HELPER time... the HELPER will show the time the stylist took their first customer (start time for the day) to service, and the time the stylist finished this customer (completion time for the day). Sometimes we see start times after actual clock-in, or end times long before actual clock out. Example: We had a salon employee whose end time was 3:00, but was clocking out at 7:00. When confronted she admitted she was leaving for the day at three, then stopping by to "help close-out" and punching out then. This made her an extra 4 hours of pay per day.

Managers can sometimes edit their own time cards to expand their hours.

MORE TO COME!... and don't forget to provide feedback to feedback@rogerspos.com

Closeout problems:

Comparing closing till count to opening till count:

MORE TO COME!... and don't forget to provide feedback to feedback@rogerspos.com

When there is a theft problem it will show in performance of cash management problems. If these problems correlate to the schedule of one or more staff, this can help you identfy the problem. This correlation can exist with any staff member from a stylist to a receptionist.

Working alone: Sometimes one staff member is stealing. Correlating performance or cash problems to days where this specific employee works is important.

Den of thieves: Sometimes several close employees will work together to steal. Correlating performance or cash problems to days where specific employee groups work is a bit more difficult.

MORE TO COME!... and don't forget to provide feedback to feedback@rogerspos.com

These include general reductions in sales at one location, or on a certain day, to changes in service mix sold.

Cheating payroll commission systems is another potential theft potential. One way is to drive up productivity by clocking in as non production instead of production so they register more sales per hour. This is easily controlled with settings that disallow services to be taken unless employee is clocked-in to a production position.

MORE TO COME!... and don't forget to provide feedback to feedback@rogerspos.com

MORE TO COME!... and don't forget to provide feedback to feedback@rogerspos.com

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