Aloha POS possible dishonesty problem 1

[pt121]

We have a small restaurant with a staff that we know and love, but we think we might have an issue. We just ran an audit, and saw that one of our servers has been transferring tables to himself over and over, and then closing the tabs. Is he stealing? How? How do we prove it and stop this from happening again?
Please help us!

 

[zahead31]

You should be able to follow the trail (through the audit report) of what items are being ordered on the original check, what is being transferred and when, and how is the check being closed out. I would look to see if there are any promos, comps, or voids being applied to the checks before they are closed. If the check is being closed to cash under that server's ID, then the server is going to owe that cash on their server checkout regardless of how many times it was transferred. I would ask the server why he needs to trasnfer so much and see if it matches what you see on the audit.

If he is not stealing, there must be some transaction that he does not know how to perfrom, other than transferring to himself. You can train him on a better way to perform that transaction and you should see the transferring stop. The other way would be to require a manager authorization to transfer tables in the POS.

 

[alohaakamai3]

I don't really know of any real reason servers need to be able to transfer tables to themselves. I would disable this function immediately.

Along with the other comments, I would consider making transfers between employees (items or tables) require manager approval, if you think you have a theft problem. I can see the need for this, but the difference between the two is needing a willing partner in crime.

A quick (and sad) story:

We had an Aloha client who allowed servers to transfer tables between themselves. About 5 of them were involved in a little scam, and it went something like this.

Like most restaurants, servers got the beverages (soda, coffee, etc, themselves). A group of people would come in and order 4 sodas along with their food. When it came time to pay, the servers would print the check for guests. If it was cash, the servers would take the money and then split the check, and put only the sodas on the second check. They'd then cash out the bill with the food, and pocket the difference. The 4 remaing sodas stayed open on the second check. The server would then transfer the remaing sodas over to another table, and use those same sodas as drinks on the new table. When self transfer was disable, some of them got together, and would transfer the same beverages back to one another.

Who knows how long this went on, but this was a high volume business, and about 5 employees lost their jobs over it. And some of these servers had been there for years.

I'm all about giving people the benefit of the doubt-come right out and ask this server why he does this so often. Have him show you on the POS. I'm guessing his behavior will tell you most of what you need to know, and if he has no explanation, I think you have your answer.

 

[pt121]

Thank you for your posts. I think you are exactly right about the stealing of things he could make himself. There was excessive transferring, lots of printing of extra check copies, and then closing the empty checks. We caught him concretely another way, but this was most likely a bit of unfortunate theft going on for the past year. He is no longer working for us.

 

[TobeThor]

This illustrates that even thou you have a pc based POS system, you still have to monitor the daily reports. Every
POS system I have used prints a daily detailed section of all the voids & comps that occured that day and who performed them. The technique mentioned above is called the "floating beverage scam". If your POS system didn't alert you to the theft that was going on, then one can safely assume the people who installed and set it up didn't take protecting your assests seriously. Every time we have purchased a POS "or helped others" we interview the people that install it NOT just the salesperson. A good installer knows our industry as well as their product and how to use it to protect your livelyhood.

 

[alohaakamai3]

Glad to hear you got it worked out PT121.

Thor, your post is somewhat contradictory. You say on one hand that a PC-based system doesn't mean you can let your operation run itself, you still have watch over things. I couldn't agree more with this part. In fact, I would even argue that as they become more advanced, people are getting maybe a little too dependent on them.

The contradictory part is where you appear to blame the system because of the actions of a theif. This takes us right back into "watching your business"--most systems have audit trails, it's up to you to periodically keep an eye things to see whats going on.

The other part I'd argue, along the same lines, is that the installer didn't take your protecting his assests seriously. Probably not a fair comment given the limited information we have at this point. For all we know, someone at the restaurant could have made changes to allow this to occur.

Anyway, my point isn't to turn this into a cat fight, but to make a small, but important distinction: POS systems are really about accountantability, not theft prevention. They can make it easier for you to keep a handle on things, and make the circumstances under which theft can occur difficult. But there are--and always will be--a million ways for people to out smart the POS systems.

As the saying goes, "Locks only keep honest people honest".

 

[altagracia]

hi i dont know how to make my kitchen printer work. it used to work correctly for 5 years. i think it might be because erroneusly i change something in the term1 a term2 , com1 etc...
oh and the printer groups how do i know what goes where?

 

[DVRGuy]

alohaakamai3 - You are absolutely correct. POS systems are designed to increase controls through accountablility, operations consistency, and visibility, among other things. Sometimes these goals are contradictory to the goals of loss management. The POS system always needs to balance speed vs. control.

If you want to management losses, get a loss management system. They justify themselves, not only with loss management, but with many other employee-related issues.

 

[pmegan]

It's amazing what servers and bartenders will come up with. I've been working exclusively with the Micros 3700 for 9 years and every time you think you've seen it all you get proven wrong. Some oldies just popped up again in a few of our stores, so you may want to watch out for these too. Neither is really theft, but the first one can get you in trouble during an audit.

1) One cent charge tips. If you're using your POS system for payroll, directly or through an export, they'll figure out that if they declare a 1 cent charge tip on credit card sales with a cash tip they won't have to declare the cash tip at the end of the shift and won't have to pay taxes on the charge tips.

2) Charing to their own credit card. We had a few servers who realized that if they closed cash checks to their own credit cards they could rack up frequent flyer miles and pay the card off with the cash that was supposed to close the checks. Again, not stealing, but we found almost 100k in sales like this across our 14 stores, and the credit card fees really added up.