It is that time of the year when mailboxes are becoming more and more filled with coupons and discounts telling us that we are valued and are “friends” of a particular store. I admit, it feels good to think that a store has noticed the large amount of money that I have spent during the past year and that they would like to reward me with a very special shopping event. However, that feeling soon goes away when I walk into that store only to see piles of the “Friends and Family” coupons sitting on a table and the associates mentioning that everyone gets X% off their entire purchase. While this might seem like a great deal and wonderful way to get customers into the store, this may actually be hurting your bottom line in a few different ways.
When sales like this occur, this is a good time to look at discounts and see if multiple discounts are being given on the same transaction. Discount stacking can lead to losses for you and big deals for dishonest employees and customers. Running queries on discounts can help indentify associates with discounts above the store/company average. You will want to keep your threshold high so that you do you become overloaded with small dollar/count transactions.
Change Up: Price changes are another area to look at for possibly fraud. If you capture reason codes for price overrides, look for possible training issues or even issues with quality control if too many damage discounts are being given out. Running the Associate Ranking and looking at price overrides as a % of sales will identify the associates with the highest percentage of price overrides and allow you to look into the individual price overrides that were given.
To the Extreme: The increased popularity of couponing both online and with shows like TLC’s Extreme Couponing, have led to another area of potential fraud and abuse. According to Stores.org, coupon fraud costs retailers $500 million per year. Many times training employees on company policies regarding stacking coupons and price matching, can help your bottom line. Teach employees to ask if they are unsure whether or not the coupon is for the item purchased and to make sure to look at expiration dates and limitations. You may also want to identify employees with higher than average redemption of coupons.
Loyal Followers: If your store captures loyalty card information, it is also important to look at refunds in regards to loyalty purchases. You will want to look to make sure that purchases used to gain the loyalty rewards are not being returned after the reward is received. Employee use of loyalty cards should also be monitored to make sure that they are not scanning their own cards when a customer does not present their card. In some instances a dishonest cashier may be accumulating reward points fraudulently and redeeming the rewards for purchases. You will want to monitor any loyalty cards associated with an employee number.
In the next entry we will be looking at employee purchases and will discuss the use of coupons and promotions by employees as well.
So while I will still feel special finding my “friends and family” coupons in my mailbox, the rest of my satisfaction can lie in the fact that I am getting a discount that is not fraudulent and only required me to dive into my mailbox rather than a dumpster looking for a good deal.
Just another Aspect of my day,
Shannon
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