Controlling Employee Theft: Cash

It's been said that 25 percent of restaurant employees are honest all the time, 50 percent are honest most of the time and the remaining 25 percent are dishonest to the core and will steal from the house anytime they have the opportunity.

Whether or not these ratios are accurate, common experience tells us that employee theft is a problem for all small businesses, particularly restaurants. In a business with highly desirable products like food and liquor and the most sought-after commodity of all -- cash -- you've got to have controls in place to protect your assets and your business. In this article, we'll discuss cash theft.

Here are a few of the most basic, fundamental controls of cash handling that many restaurants are either unaware of or choose to ignore. Intentional or not, weaknesses in this area are very expensive and have led to the downfall of more than just a few restaurants.

Servers, cashiers and bartenders, anyone who receives cash, should never be able to take a register reading. When an employee can figure out what they "owe the house" it makes it that much easier for them to skim off the excess cash (from unrecorded sales) and walk out with money you made but never knew you had.