Secure Your Cash Deposits
Would you leave piles of uncounted currency lying on a dining room table and allow strangers to roam through your house? Of course not. Then why allow essentially the same thing to happen at your business?
Not all companies properly safeguard their cash receipts. At the very least, lax security means more time and expense to reconcile accounts. At worst, lack of control leads to theft and fraud.
It takes time and effort to ensure you have proper cash-processing procedures and that employees are following them. But it saves money and makes reconciling accounts easier and more accurate in the long run.
There are several steps that businesses can take to improve the security of coin and currency:
Practice dual control. Have at least two people sort and count money prior to deposit. Dual control improves accuracy and ensures that one unsupervised person does not have access to cash.
Utilize a “clean room.” Use a separate room away from other business operations to count and prepare cash deposits. Having a designated, secure area for counting cash is particularly important if your business can’t cost-justify security cameras.
Institute an employee dress code. Regulate what employees who handle cash can wear in the counting room. For example, issue smocks with three-quarter length sleeves, prohibit purses, and ban pants with cuffs and untucked shirttails. A dress code eliminates places to hide bundles of cash.
Limit access. Only allow people responsible for counting cash receipts into the counting room. A locked door with a window allows cash receipts to be delivered to counters without allowing others into the room.
Reconcile by register. Reconcile each cash register at the end of every shift. Place all the money from a register in a sealed envelope and mark it with the clerk’s name and register total. An accurate accounting by register can help you determine who is responsible for any shortfall at the end of the day. Never place all of the cash from each register in a single bag.
Bundle money. Sort cash into like denominations, band them together and mark the bundle’s total.
Use tamper-evident bags. Place sorted currency and coins in a tamper-evident bag, which reveals theft better than a locked canvas bag.
Evaluate whether to use an armored truck or make vault deposits. Is it worth the expense of an armored truck? Is it too risky to send an employee with cash to a bank branch? Can you spare a manager to deliver the cash deposit? Still not sure if your cash deposit process provides adequate security? Contact the Cole Taylor Cash Management team at (312) 442-5070 for information on how we can assist you in managing cash deposits.
It takes time and effort to ensure you have proper cash-processing procedures and that employees are following them.
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www.coletaylor.com
