The Costcutter Supermarkets Group is helping its retailers save time and money by introducing the next generation in cash management technology, the SMARTtill™Intelligent Cash Drawer.
The cash challenge
Despite the popularity of debit and credit cards in the UK, cash is still widely used for transactions. Some reports even claim that Brits prefer notes and coins to cards for purchases below £17 and will actually abandon physical stores if they can’t withdraw money and shop at the same time. Regardless of the payment type, there is a heavy cost burden from banking charges, CIT costs, manual cash counting processes and high shrinkage levels, just to mention a few.
These problems prompt merchants to look at innovative, costreducing solutions.
During the span of a cash transaction, cashiers can miscount the cash, give customers the wrong change, or give in to the temptation of pocketing money. This means businesses need effective, affordable cash management solutions (like the SMARTtill™ Cash Management Solution from APG/Cash Bases) that automate cash handling, improve security and free up staff to focus on customer-facing activities.
New technology
Using the latest weighing technology, the SMARTtill™ Intellligent Cash Drawer counts all notes and coins automatically and can alert store managers/supervisors of any discrepancy immediately after the incident has occurred allowing the discrepancy to be resolved on the spot. All cash handling activities are date and time stamped including the identity of the responsible cashier. Providing full accountability for every cash transaction, sale, lift or top up. The SMARTtill™ Technology enables retailers to use the data available to identify where their losses are coming from and to understand who is ultimately responsible. This helps retailers implement measures to tackle the problem and make significant savings when it comes to cash loss.
Daily cashing up becomes a thing of the past as the tills automatically reconcile every cash transaction and provide full reports for retailers on vital figures including rolling float values, change needed, top-up values, pick-up values and sales values. This ultimately frees up staff time from laborious daily cash handling procedures allowing shops to focus on other activities providing better customer service.
Costcutter delivers operational efficiency
SMARTtill™ Solution, the first intelligent cash drawer on the market, is currently being trialled within a number of Costcutter Supermarkets Group stores and the technology will soon be available to the Group’s 2,600 stores across the UK. Dave Morris, Director of IT, Costcutter Supermarkets Group, said: “Retailers are looking for straight forward technologies that can be implemented quickly and easily whilst bringing real benefits to them and their store. We demonstrated the SMARTtill™ Cash Management Solution at our conference last year and there was a real appetite for it from our retailers. The intelligent cash drawers give retailers another way to create efficiencies within their stores and the results from the trials have been very positive.”
Andy Pengelly, owner of the Costcutter store in Porthleven, commented: “We’ve just completed an initial trial of the SMARTtill™ Solution, and are really impressed. Not only has it saved time but it gives me an audit trail of cash handling activities in-store, which is invaluable for day to day store management.”
Stephen Bergeron, VP of Global Marketing at Cash Bases/APG, comments: “We are seeing businesses achieve a reduction in cash loss of up to 90% and a labour savings of some 30 minutes daily for every point of sale. It is through these operational improvements that businesses are attaining an ROI of 11-14 months utilising the SMARTtill™ Solution.”
Bergeron also added: “The operational improvements being realized by Costcutter are being realized in other retail verticals regardless of the store format. The SMARTtill™ Solution is not only pioneering it is proving to be a universal solution generating interest amongst leading retailers in the UK, Europe and the United States.”
Cash Bases (merged with APG Cash Drawer in September 2015) is a leading manufacturer of high quality cash drawer and cash management solutions.
Tel: 01273 616300
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