I’ve noticed over the years many, many cashiers in stores shorting their register rather than giving out a large amount of coins.
For example, a customer buys a candy bar. With sales tax the total is $1.05. Customer hands cashier two dollars but then the cashier hands back one of the dollars. BUT, the cashier rings in that $1.05 had actually been paid.
I’ve noticed this a lot and it’s happened to me a lot. Especially at convenience marts that sell smaller items like soda and chips and such.
I understand not wanting to hand out a large amount of coins several times during the day, and that was the purpose of the “take a penny/leave a penny” dish. But doing it this way several times a day must make the register tally meaningless.
I own a store, albeit we don’t sell small items like candy. But at the end of a cashiers shift there is a log of how much should be in that register. If it’s short by even a small amount we go through and try to find out whats up.
If those convenience stores are doing this to the tune of say a dollar per hour that could end up being thousands of dollars per year. How on Earth do the managers or owners have any accurate records of their sales and income and such?
I don’t see the cashiers keeping any kind of log of how much they shorted the register just to avoid handing out change.
It’s not unusual for privately owned places not to care, it’s often an owner or family member shorting the business.
Corporate businesses tend to be more concerned. In my experience they set a threshold any variance above or below the threshold results in a write up. Two or three strikes and you are fired. If a cashier stays within the threshold it’s barely even investigated unless is a constant thing. If the cashier wants to take advantage of that to be lazy or in some cases help their metrics(cashiers are also measured on speed of transactions), they can do so but they are risking a lot if they misjudge their accuracy. Lowest I’ve heard of was $0.05 at Toys-R-US. Variances of $2-5 a shift are a bit more reasonable and result in less turn over, which is also expensive to the business.
I think you are overestimating how frequently it occurs. I’m sure it doesn’t happen several times an hour, for a variety of reasons. First, it would only happen for certain values - just because the cashier does it for a total of $1.05 doesn’t mean it happens if the total is $1.25 and it certainly won’t happen if the total is $1.95. Second, it wouldn’t happen if the customer didn’t tender $2. If instead, the customer handed the cashier $1.25, the cashier wouldn’t short the register. It’s not all that common for someone to give the cashier $2 for a $1.05 total, unless they have a specific reason for needing coins, such as to feed a parking meter. Most people who carry cash end up with a few coins and would dig out a nickel or a quarter to avoid getting 95 cents in coins.
It generally happens at certain types of stores- it happens at independent convenience stores and 7-11 type franchised stores ( where all the employees may be a part of the family that owns the place) but not at corporate owned stores, like CVS or Target . It may well be that the owner prefers losing a dollar or two a day rather than paying for more change from the bank
It isn’t just the losing of the money I’m questioning, it’s the inaccuracy of the till. Their ledgers have to be a darned mess. For inventory, sales tax collection, and other records and taxes, accuracy matters. Even if the store owner is willing to take a slight hit, the state isn’t. Now the income of the business goes down because sales tax proceeds are being paid with store money, not the actual tax collection. Thus a double hit to the stores income. My accountant and my business partner would shit if I allowed that on a routine basis and my till receipts were basically not a true representation of cash taken in.
And I disagree with you on the frequency. I see it happen all the time. And those tiny nickels and dimes over time will add up.
Many years ago I worked at a home improvement store, where in an 8 hour shift I could sell $8-10K easily. We were allowed a .07c off till when cashing out. Even if we were less than that off, we would have to count the till at least once again. I remember being off a dollar once, ended up being there over an hour (unpaid) recounting until it found.
I also worked at a mini-mart who was pretty casual with the tills, like the OP. The owner was fine with missing a nickel here, a few pennies there. When we cashed out, we’d note how much we were short and he’d toss in the difference, if it was pretty minimal (like under $2). It kept goodwill with the customers, in his mind. And by tossing in the difference, it didn’t mess with his books.
You left out an important detail, where you live. That might have something to do with it. I live in Chicagoland which, I have to believe, is pretty much like every other major urban area in the United States. In my experience, at least, retailers just don’t do that kind of stuff. Some do have a “penny cup” with some pennies in it. If you have a bill for $3.02, you can take two pennies out of the cup so that you don’t get a shitload of change back. Conversely, if something is $3.87, you can drop the three pennies in the cup so that others can access them if need be.
For the most part, the large majority of transactions, even small ones, are via credit. I even have a Dunkin Donuts card and the phone app. I never use money for even a $3.00 purchase. In fact, I charge most everything as do a lot of people.
I haven’t worked a till in a quarter century–but when I did, there was a small (like 2.50) bonus for getting your till within .05 of the expected total by the end of the shift. Being off by a couple of dollars in either direction wasn’t a big deal, as long as foul play wasn’t suspected. Someone (not the cashier) would balance the tills at the end of the shift, and if they were off, record the difference.
There are some provinces in Canada where the employer is not allowed to deduct till shortages from the employee (Similarly, are not allowed to charge an employee money for a uniform). All you can do is decide whether to get rid of an employee based on chronic (serious) shortages. The little I’ve heard of cash management, shortages of less than $20 in several thousand (in small cash transactions) in a rushed environment are generally part of doing business. (Plus Canada today does not use the penny, so 2 cents rounds down, 3 or 4 cents rounds up to a nickel. Nobody’s going to be spot on.)
Also note that some banks (all banks?) have a charge for handling coin in deposits… (Even if rolled, I think) plus a charge for providing rolls of coin. There’s a reason why credit/debit is usually preferred by merchants even with the banks’ excessive service charges.
I recall reading that when on of the local Toronto department stores first started doing business, a decent amount of their profits was from insisting on exact amounts. If a sale was $2.05 small mom-and-pop stores in the late 1800’s would say “let’s make it two dollars even”. Timothy insisted on $2.05 and that added up. Of course nowadays with transactions well above $20 that difference would be a far smaller proportion of total sales.
Store cashier here. Many people will say “keep the pennies” from their change, so I keep a mental amount and if it’s three cents and an order comes to $1.06, I’ll accept a dollar. My store allows the cashier a 1% margin of error either way (over or under), and any overage is put in the safe, where it can be used to cover an underage.
But you’re assuming that all store owners are as interested in accuracy as you are- and they simply aren’t. I know a few stores that don’t even have cash registers (they add up your purchases on an adding machine) and even more where not every sale is run through the cash register for various reasons that run from a customer throwing exact change on the counter for a single item all the way to stores where I have been told “cash no tax”. Not to mention the people who don’t bother taking their change if it’s less than a quarter , or the fact that the accountant doesn’t care if a business owner throws a few dollars into the till each week to make it balance out.
And you seeing it frequently doesn’t in itself mean it happens several times an hour - but even if it happens 5 times an hour for a 12 hour day, that’s still only $3.
It’s trivial to do an adjusting entry at the end of the day and square up the books. If the register says there should be $327.58 in the till and there is only $327.43, you record in your books the full $327.58 in sales and a separate entry for “Cash Short” equal to $0.15. This is cheaper than paying people to recount the drawers a dozen times to find the fifteen cents.
Since cash short is an expense, it helps to reduce income taxes. The seller is responsible for the sales tax on the whole amount, so he is out maybe an extra 1.5 cents in sales tax too. Big whoop.
When I was a cashier, well over 90% of the time I’d be spot on to the penny. Being off by a dollar was incredibly rare. I remember one day when I was off by a lot (perhaps $20) but I don’t remember if I figured out the problem with a recount or if I was truly short.
I was a terrible cashier but I did this a lot, some days I would make notes of how much the register was shorted, other days I would just try to keep track in my head. When I counted out I’d just square up from my own pocket, it was worth the dollar or whatever not to have to deal with the BS. When my manager finally figured out why my register was always spot on, I got pulled off the register for good. Oh well.
If I owned a store I would be more worried about employees ringing up a no sale and just pocketing the entire amount. A business owner just doesn’t have time to be worried about a couple of cents here and there.
Wouldn’t they figure that out at the end of the night when they count out the drawer? At least that’s how we always did it. At the end of the night, when I was closing out the till, I’d total up the cash register, and then count the money in the till (and add it to the money that’s been deposited into the safe throughout the day.) So we’d end up with two numbers. And almost never those two numbers did match. Generally, we tried to keep them within a buck or so. But we’d always know how much money we had and how much we were supposed to have. (ETA: And I assume they keep track of this in some cash over/short line in their accounting ledger.)
I could see owners of the convenience stores not caring about collecting the exact amount of the ticketed price and having a built in buffer on the prices to offset it.
If they are satisfied making a 20% margin on what they sell they’ll price everything at a 22% markup to cover it.
It’s not going to “mess up” any tax records since they’ll still be paying taxes on the exact price they rang it up for + sales tax. The records are correct. It may hurt them since they are paying taxes on money they didn’t collect but if they built in that extra margin buffer they may not care.
Same with inventory control. There’s nothing to mess up. Customer took 2 bags of chips, the register deducted 2 bags of chips, 2 bags of chips down from inventory.
And for the most part it’s not happening often at the large corporate places like speedway or Kwik Trip.
But one place I see it a lot is at an independently owned 24 hour convenience mart near the freeway entrance. And they are easily bumping back to the tune of $1 an hour, every hour. I’ve been in there a zillion times over the years at all times of day and night. They do decent business.
And they are easily bumping back to the tune of $1 an hour, every hour, or every day. That’s over 8 grand a year, minimum, that the register said it had that it didn’t. Register tallies do get recorded and are part of ones documentation during tax time.
My only theory is that this place has cooked books anyway. But I see it happen at many other places as well.
