Stopping fiddles

The licensed trade as for years been seen as a soft touch for those wishing to fiddle their employers and in this very "liquid industry" the temptation is always going to be there for a hard up member of staff to relieve their employer of a bit of stock or money.  Studies will and have shown over the years that often the biggest offenders are those employees in middle management.

This page is dedicated to helping landlord and bar managers spot and stop fiddles.
 
One of the biggest causes of  till dipping is over floating, the practice of putting plenty of notes into the till at the start of the day / shift in order to help the staff cope with a rush of large notes being tendered.  This practice is very common and the bar manager who is in main up for an easy life and therefore eradicating the chance of  being bothered by staff needing £5 and £10 notes is seen as good management.

The clever  till dipper will always take the money when the bar is quiet or they think they are not in sight of anyone (who might tell on them, others may be in on it) and the clever really ones know that it is at the start of the their shift  is the best time to remove the cash they need.  The management team can be very busy during that part of the day - ordering, seeing in deliveries, making up the banking the list goes on.  The only trouble for the till dipper is that until the lunch rush or early evening rush there may not be many customers and thus not enough cash in the till until it is too late and the bar is full.

They all dream of and wish for a lazy manager who over floats their tills, the cash is there for the taking and no one is around to see them take it - heaven.  They then have the rest of their shift to under ring to make up the shortfall.  They also love rounded prices say £2.50 a pint 4 to a tenner 8 to a twenty easy to remember and achieve.

Now that's the clever till dipper, there is of course the daft one who has the need and the will to take from your till - they just don't have the  brains to do it correctly.  A good till dipper will always achieve a balanced till at the end of the day and those that take in advance have the best chance of succeeding.  The brainless till dipper is the one who performs all their under ringing before they lift the cash, they run the risk of never getting an opportunity to remove the cash and that's why many in the hospitality trade worry when the till comes in over or up, this often reveals the extent of the problem.

The clever till dipper will only ever leave a till short at worst and then not by much the brainless one who has missed their chance to take their proceeds will leave all the money in the till thus telling a switched on bar manager the amount of money they are being fiddle out off. 

Counting is the key for both types of till dipper and apart from nice easy to add up prices they will need a method by which they can remember how much they have under rung the till.  One of the favorite ways is to put wrong coins in the tills sections say 5ps in with 10ps or 1ps in with the pounds each one representing a value to the dipper. Say one misplaced coin for every £5 of under ringing.  Another method is bottle tops- using one top catcher as a counting station and just dropping in one bottle top from another catcher to again represent some value.

Though till dippers are steeling your money they are actually robbing you of stock and this is a big problem, lets say you operate a G.P.% of 70% on draft that means (ignoring VAT) that for every £1 your till tipper help their selves to you only loose 30p worth of stock.  The chances are then that a small stock deficit is often ignored or other reasons are put forward to explain the shrinkage.

If your stock is out by £100 at cost value within a month then the chances are you have really lost £333.33 in takings or £83.33 plus the VAT a week this would thus imply that a small stock deficit could signal a till dipper in operation.  A large stock deficit would indicate that a member or members of staff are giving away your product but not for cash reward.  Take the member of staff who has their partner visit with for the whole of most of their shifts, vast majority might be honest but then there could always be one that operates a one for you and none for the boss policy.

They may also be joined by friends and family and they could be on the BT version (BT=Bar Tender) giving away drinks left write and center with no real record or care of how much they are giving away, what the eye doesn't see the mind don't worry about.  They wont have cash in their pockets at the end of the shift so they really couldn't careless how much they give away.

Pub managers and more often than not the landlord or landlady really do encourage this practice often without realising it.  By never paying for their drinks or by staying up stairs for most of the night certainly never keeping a record of their own consumption.  They will also tend to drink (as most drinkers do) the same product week in week out - best news ever for staff.  The staff will clock this and will soon be joining them on their favored tipple safe in the knowledge that come stock take the management will always try to cover up a deficit on their favored tipple.