The QDS Blog

How Scales Dramatically Improve Till Operations In Quick Serve Restaurants

Written by Sean Farrell | Sep 17, 2015 11:30:00 AM

 

The technology has been around for years, but if you aren’t aware of the solution that is the currency and coin scale, your life may have just changed for the better.  Here is short video to show you what we are talking about:   

 

Depending on the number of tills or registers your store operates, the task of counting down those tills and setting them up to start the next shift can be a serious time drain on your store manager’s time. Most owners and managers know that the store runs way better when the manager is out on the front line helping with customers than being in the back office counting cash.  While VISA and Mastercard would love you to believe that cash is going away, our clients don’t seem to be seeing that trend. There is more cash in circulation than ever, a number that tops 6 billion dollars daily in use. So the challenge still exists, how do I make sure my registers are accurate and effective without wasting hours counting and verifying cash and coin? The answer: a scale.

 

 

The typical till takes between 10-15 minutes to count down by hand even with an experienced counter being uninterrupted. How often is a manager not interrupted while trying to count down a till?  Practically never. Ask them. Seriously. Interruptions typically lead to mistakes or recounts that waste even more of their valuable time. If you take someone with 6 tills at shift change, that make take over an HOUR to handle the shift closeout. If your process also includes the cashier counting it first, you may double the amount of time wasted counting the till down.

 

Enter the scale. A relatively low-cost item, designed to count an entire drawer down in under a minute. Yes loose coin, rolled coin and loose cash. Trying to skim a drawer to set it up for the next shift, yes it can do that too. A customer tells a cashier he gave them a $20 not a $10 and they got the wrong change?  Now you can spot count that drawer down in less than a minute, up front in the line and verify or discredit the story almost immediately.

 

The average return on investment for a scale is less than 90 days to pay for itself in time savings. What do you think the soft cost benefit is to having your managers out in the store running the business instead of counting drawers for 2 or even 3 hours per day? Immense impact.

 

If you have a fast food, quick serve, or any other environment that operates multiple tills, this may be the tool you are looking for to streamline cash handling operations, reducing mistakes and improving store efficiency.