Alex McGill

director of marketing

Venners stocktakers

You should forbid your staff from having money on them whilst they are behind your bar, but you will need a secure place where they can leave their wallets/purses. Obviously, if you then discover that the suspect has money on him then it must have come from your till; you will however need to examine his contract with you to ensure that you have the power to search him.

You also need to carry out regular till checks while staff are working. Have a spare drawer with a float and carry out cash checks at irregular intervals. Make sure there is always a till roll inserted and look through this daily to see if there is any unusual activity.

Avoid having prices rounded up to £2.00 or £2.50. Instead make your prices £1.99 or £2.49. This forces a transaction at the till as people will wait for a penny change and it stops the barman just pocketing the money.

Another thing you could do is to ask a friend, preferably another licensee who is unknown to the suspect, to sit and drink at the bar while this person is working alone. Hopefully, they can spot what he is doing. Remember, he may not be taking money out of the till, but not charging friends for drinks, so if your till is a price look-up (PLU) till then you should be able to carry out line checks.

Make sure the skip is empty before trading starts and carry out spot checks. If you find 10 empty Budweiser bottles in the skip and only six rung through then you can ask why? You will need to set your till to get the correct report.

Lastly regular stocktaking will help you identify problems and a good stocktaker will be able to offer you solutions.