Convenience store (c-store) owners and managers know it’s crucial to understand the data and metrics that drive a successful business. While it may be simple enough to find the value of ‘total profits’ and ‘cost of employment,’ it’s difficult to calculate the anomalies that are decreasing your profits. It can be time-consuming and exhausting to sift through point-of-sale (POS) data from multiple locations to understand the driving force behind inventory and financial loss. Maximizing your c-store’s exception reports is key to mitigating loss.
What are C-Store Exception Reports?
In a c-store, exception reports are data-driven reports that highlight outliers, deviations, or anomalies from a set of established rules, standards, or expectations. The purpose of exception reports is to bring attention to any unusual transactions that may require further review, investigation, or action.
For example, an exception report might be used to identify:
- Transactions exceeding a certain dollar amount
- Transactions that occur outside of normal business hours
- Transactions that don’t match the typical pattern of activity
Establish a daily routine to review these exception reports and gain visibility into potential losses:
- End of day transactions
- Voids and returns
- Discount/gift card redemption
- Reward program transactions
- Sales by item for inventory management
Envysion, a loss prevention software, is already integrated with several POS systems, such as Toast, VeriFone, and Gilbarco, allowing us to seamlessly marry your POS software with your video cameras to generate these comprehensive exception reports.
How to Maximize Exception Reports
Exception reporting and video security systems work together to provide an easier way to manage your c-store’s transactions. By integrating your POS system with a video security system, you can seamlessly combine transaction data with video footage, allowing you to simultaneously view the receipt and video in a side-by-side display. The integration of your video cameras, POS data, and reporting software results in a powerful solution that provides verifiable outcomes and customizable metrics, including video and audio recordings. This integration simplifies the process of monitoring and analyzing your c-store’s activity, making your life easier.
Exception Reports Can Decrease Internal Theft and Loss
Exception-based reporting uncovers the missing piece of the financial puzzle: where exactly is your profit going? Reporting tools can provide c-store owners and managers with video footage that links to every POS transaction. These reports offer clear insights and identify any inconsistencies that may require further investigation. Exception-based reporting provides the means to access transaction data in your c-store and focuses on specific trends that could be happening. Reporting tools are configurable, allowing you to generate reports for your entire business, individual locations, or specific employees.
Losses in c-stores stem from various sources, making strategic tools that automatically audit each transaction with inventory and cost to reveal potential loss crucial. As an owner or manager, your bottom line is simple: you want to know where your money is going. Use reports to gain insights into daily transactions, voids, returns, discount or gift card redemptions, reward programs, and even sales by specific inventory items.
Loss Summaries with Standardized Reports
While several POS systems come equipped with their own set of reporting templates, Envysion also provides a suite of standardized reports. With standardized reports, you can review your basic profit and loss summaries, discount redemptions, voids, refunds, reward program reports, and all transactions from any specific day across your c-store enterprise. The results are viewable on a user-friendly and easy-to-read dashboard that you can access on your desktop or mobile device. Stay informed and receive notifications of incidents via daily or weekly report emails delivered straight to your inbox.
As an illustration, a c-store general manager notices lower-than-usual sales in fountain sodas. The general manager creates a void and refund report. Within seconds, the manager views transaction receipts, along with the corresponding video footage side-by-side. The general manager discovers that cashiers were giving away multiple fountain drinks during the weeknights by voiding the drink before the customer paid by filtering these transactions by the approving manager. He determines that one specific manager was approving the voids. The general manager seamlessly shares the findings with the human resources department for further investigation.
Track Specific Loss with Customizable Reports
Dive deeper into specific reporting to explore all the available metrics for tracking elusive outliers with customizable reports. These reports are a powerful tool for c-store owners or managers to identify and analyze specific loss drivers, even when managing multiple locations.
With customizable reports, you can:
- Drill down on specific theft incidents
- See what items were given away for free or over a certain value
- Investigate by location, employee, and approving manager per transaction
- View video and receipt data alongside transactions
- Save and label reports for easy access
- Receive daily or weekly alerts via email
- Create unlimited reports and share them with other leaders in the organization
For instance, a c-store has a promotion where any purchase over $10 receives a free fountain drink. With customizable reports, the manager creates a report to show all of the transactions where a free fountain drink is given to a customer. By applying this filter, the manager can spot any anomalies, such as an employee giving away a complimentary fountain drink without a customer spending $10 and vice versa. With POS transaction data and video footage paired in the report, the manager easily monitors employee compliance with the promotion requirements. With customizable reports, gain valuable insights into frequent types of loss occurring at your store and unique types that you may not have been aware of.
Conclusion
“One client reports an average of less than 1% monthly loss utilizing Envysion’s Managed Video Solution when assigning regional managers and store managers with permissions to access the platform. They have implemented a 30-minute daily check of reports to ensure nothing out of the ordinary occurred the day before. Our experienced audit team can also review your footage and grade locations using metrics of your choosing.” (NACS)
As a convenience store owner or manager, understanding the data and metrics that drive the success of your business is essential. As loss in c-stores can happen in numerous ways, a tool to monitor and track every transaction is vital in uncovering these instances. Make your job easier by using a reporting system that’s powered by your c-store’s data and security cameras.
With Envysion’s reporting tools, view instances of loss and difficult-to-track outliers that are hurting your c-store. With a user-friendly dashboard, viewing POS transaction data alongside video footage is more efficient when uncovering loss instances. This software can help you identify trends and patterns that would have otherwise gone unnoticed, allowing you to make informed decisions to increase your c-store’s profitability.
Uncover the hidden outliers that are negatively impacting your bottom line. Get in touch with us today.