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One of the important aspects of using a cash register of course is security. However most people no longer use the features of a cash register designed to help stop theft. One of the oldest methods is the “Z” counter. When you “Z” a cash register out the “Z” report will have a running number printed that will be increased by one each time the register is “Z” out. The reason is that many times a clerk or manager will operate the register for awhile and then “Z” it out, taking all of the money. At the end of the day the real “Z” is taken and of course the register balances just fine and you would never notice. You should always look at the number to make sure there are no gaps in the running counter. If your “Z” reports are not all counted one at a time, someone is taking “Z” in between the last “Z” and the one turned in at the end of the day. I have seen stores taken for excess of 15K in one month because the manager was taking two “Z” a day.

If you think you are immune to this type of theft you are probably wrong. I had another client taken for $100,000.00 over a period of years from a long time trusted employee.

If you have a question regarding this please leave a comment.

TCRG

We always remind people to leave the cash drawer open while you are closed. When a thief breaks into your business and  the cash drawer is closed they assume it is loaded with cash. Of course you had probably removed the cash at the end of the day. So if you don’t have money in the drawer leave it wide open. With the drawer open the thief in most cases leaves it alone rather than breaking open the register or taking it.

TCRG

We get a lot of request to interface cash registers to quick books. Most people decide against this after finding out the cost of the software and set up. A polling package and QB interface option have to be used. Polling software has other options as well, which may make the cost worthwhile, so please don’t think I’m saying polling software is a waste of money just the extra set-up and time involved with the Quick Books Interface.

Having said that though I do think interfacing to Quick Books to Cash Registers is a waste of time. Maybe there are cases were the results are worth the results. However what we see most often is that people have 5 to 20 departments, maybe some tax rates, discounts etc. that they wish to automate the entry of into Quick Books. Here is where the waste of time comes into play. The register must first be polled, then a file is created and exported from the Polling Software, then  imported into Quick Books and confirmed. After doing all of this steps you could have done journal entries and been done with it.

Where is makes sense for the interface is if you plan to keep track of inventory in Quick Books. So if you have 25 or more items to inventory in Quick Books that you must enter the sales from the cash register the interface makes a great amount of sense.

So think hard about the amount of work to do to accomplish the result you want before moving forward with a Quick Books Interface.

TCRG

Software to interface your cash register to a computer is known as Polling Software. The software Polls the register and brings the data back to the PC for reporting. Another useful feature software offers is programming your cash register from the software.

However there are limitations of most Polling Software. The report available are the same as the cash register. Software does not enhance the reports. Most software does not allowing consolidated reporting over a date range. A specific date range, yes but not a range of dates.

The most useful function of Polling Software is maintaining a UPC file of a cash register. For example price changes, names, etc.

Polling Software for what ever reason most often do not have an import feature that would allow importing UPC numbers with titles and price. Some packages can only do this if you send your file to the publisher of the software most often for a fee. I have always found this to be a huge flaw of Polling Software.

Polling can be done via modem, direct connect, and in a few higher ends models by TCP/IP over the internet or LAN. Direct connect or TCP/IP are the best options. Modems seem unreliable with cash registers.

TCRG

IRC stands for Inter-Register Communications. IRC is a feature that allows cash registers of the same make and model to talk to one another. This allows you to program one register and download to the others on the IRC network. Reporting can also be done with IRC. The big advantage of reporting via IRC is that the reports can be consolidated for all of the machines on the IRC Network.

Most middle to high end cash registers now come standard with the IRC feature. IRC does require a cable between each machine on the Network, or depending on the cash register a 10/baseT hub is used between registers.

TCRG

Many of todays cash registers have an option for integrated credit card operations. Having credit card transactions interfaced has numerous advantages. The number one benefit is stopping errors in entering dollar amounts. The cash register will run the credit card for the amount of the sale, which keeps clerks from having to re-enter the amount into a standalone credit card terminal where miss-keyed dollar amount can be costing you thousands of dollars each year. Yes that sounds like too much for simple errors, well how many times has a sale of $29.64 been entered as $9.64 or $2.64? I’ll bet many more times then you know. Audit your transactions from the credit card machine to the credit card payment type tender button on your cash register and you will see what I’m talking about. There are many more reasons for integrating that I could boor you with. Bottem line is the cost has come down to about $799.00 for the terminal, which is a little more then the cost of a standalone terminal but the saving are more then worth the investment.