'Twas The Night Before Wednesday

'Twas the night before Wednesday, and all through the stores

Not a register was ringing, no popping of drawers;

The carts were all lined by the door with great care,

In hopes that bargain shoppers soon would be there;

The cameras were pointed; all focused on doors,

While visions of emptiness danced on the floors;

And money all locked in the drop safe with care,

the tills were all balanced for tomorrow’s affair,

When out in the parking lot there arose such a clatter,

The cameras zoom in to see what was the matter.

A line started forming; a mob like a flash,

With unwanted presents and gift receipts stashed.

Those wanting to be first to get money back 

Lined up outside, prepared to attack,

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,

But a known refunder with all of his gear,

He had fake gift receipts and bad ids totaling six,

I knew in a moment, it was something I’d fix.

More rapid than ever, I hit PTZ

And he produced from his bag stolen goods; received free!

"Now, Cameras! Now, Aspect! Now, all our Cashiers!

Now is the time to kick into gear!


To the start of the transaction! Zoom into the man!

Now let’s catch him and his cohorts, and foil their plan!"

End this crime spree by checking data twice,

This is a guy who’s surely not nice

Help other retailers and build up the case,

Prevent other thieves from getting a taste,

Of relaxed refund standards and merchandise stolen.

By employees and thieves, hoping it’s golden.

So I use my reporting, and many cases I find,

Refunds and discounts, cashiers stealing us blind.

Aspect EliteLP helps save the day,

Employees think twice and thieves stay away;

The refund is fake, the SVC later voided,

No success for the refunder.

Perhaps future thefts avoided!

We all celebrate our success with cheer.

                              And are very happy to have Aspect EliteLP here.

I Saw Johnny Stealing Cash and Cards…

While we all love the excitement of giving gifts during the holiday season, there are some employees that feel they will pick out their own gift and take from you.  This present isn’t in the form of a beautifully wrapped gift with a large red bow; instead it is the present that leaves your register or bottom line lighter. There are several ways to use the Aspect EliteLP application to help you identify those employees that might be taking advantage of you. 

Employees may find it easier to ring a fraudulent or heavily discounted purchase on their own rather than trying to recruit a friend to do their dirty work. You can run a basic report that will show you any time the employee ringing the purchase was also the employee making the purchase. Even if they are not fraudulent, these transactions are usually against company policy and should be reviewed to ensure they are valid transactions.

As I mentioned in this blog previously when talking about SVC’s or Gift Cards, it is often easier for employees to steal the cards than actual cash from the register.  We have already discussed employees taking advantage of left behind gift cards in our Walking in a Gift Card Wonderland blog, but employees have figured out even more ways to use SVC’s to their discount abusing advantage.  It is important to run reports that are looking at SVC’s Issued and Redeemed by the Same Person.  This will identify instances where the associate ringing the purchase or return later uses the SVC in an employee purchase.  If you see transaction where this is the case, it will be helpful to review both the issuing and redeeming transactions. Employees may be making fraudulent returns without receipts and then will use the SVC on their purchases later.  Employees also may be using SVC’s that were used in customer transactions but then were left behind.  Looking at Employee Purchases with SVC Redeemed queries and then checking SVC’s in which previous purchases were not employee purchases will help you to locate instances where this may be occurring. You can also find these transactions by looking at Multiple SVC Redemptions Same Account, Date.



By running the Employee Merchandise Credit Transactions Report you can use this report to track employees using merchandise credits on employee discount purchases/refunds, especially if this is against corporate policy. Other problems revealed by this report might be use of the same merchandise credit account number against the same employee number, or merchandise credit refunds not involving employee discounts (employees ringing refunds without returning their discount).

Employee Purchase with Repetitive Amounts is a great report to keep an eye on.  Use this report to investigate associates with frequent employee transactions rung for the same amounts. The report lists associates who have rung multiple employee purchases (or refunds) for the same amount. The report shows the associate, the amount of the repetitive transaction, and the count. Keep in mind that this report is by the associate who rang the sale, not the purchaser. You can track the purchasing employee with any of the Top Employee Purchases report. The Employee may be purchasing a hot item for friend or reselling on eBay or Craig’s List for a profit.

Another useful report to run is Top Employee Purchases.  Sort this report by Discount Amount to see those employees which stand out above the norm.  Also, it may be helpful to identify employees that have not ever used their employee discount.  The holiday season is the perfect opportunity to take advantage of this employee benefit and employees that are not making any purchases may be taking advantage of you in some other dishonest way. It is also something to watch when you see employees with low employee purchases but witness them wearing or using a lot of new company product.  These employees may be taking this merchandise if it does not seem to match up with the employee purchases you can track in Aspect.

Employees may also try to take advantage of store promotions and additional savings.  It is important to make sure that you are watching for stacked discounts in employee transactions.  These could be training issues if employees are unaware of store policies regarding employee discounts but many times these are ways they are trying to take advantage of what they perceive as loopholes.  This is also important when discussing the purchase of SVC cards.  You will want to ensure that employees know the policies regarding the use of their employee discounts to purchase and/or redeem SVC’s because this is the busiest time of the year for these transactions.

Walking in a Gift Card Wonderland

As many of us know, we no longer have to dread figuring exactly the right gift or just what size Aunt Mabel may be wearing.  We have the very popular option of getting that special someone a gift card.  Giving someone a gift card is a bit more personalized than just handing over that crisp $50 bill.  However, to some employees the theft of gift cards can seem to be much easier than dipping their hand in the register to take some of your hard earned cash and a just another way to try to take advantage of the system.

When analyzing your SVC data you may want to look at a few of our favorite reports from the SVC Incident Category:

ü   Merchandise Credit Issued and Redeemed Summary

ü  Multiple SVC Same Transaction

ü  SVC Issued and Redeemed by Same Person

ü   SVC Issued and Redeemed Same Day

The “SVC Issued and Redeemed on the Same Day” report is excellent for highlighting several high risk situations.  For example, we all know that the average shopper will not purchase a SVC card and then turn around and use it the same day.  If you see this happening it could be a situation where the associate selling the gift card keeps the live one and gives the customer a blank.  The “good” card is then used for another sale and the associate keeps the cash.  Also look for situations where the card is purchased on a regular sale and redeemed as an Employee Sale.  This is a great indicator of employee discount fraud. Finally, watch for SVCs that are issued in a regular refund and redeemed on an Employee Sale – especially if the same person uses it.  While it would seem somewhat surprising that an employee would need to get their discount on an item purchased with a stolen gift card, as we all know, dishonest employees are greedy.  Using the “SVC Issued and Redeemed By the Same Person” report will identify situations where the selling associate is the same as the person who redeems the card on an Employee Sale.  There are few situations where this is a legitimate transaction, so hits on this report are a great indicator of theft.



Before I had a 7 yr old daughter that enjoyed taking my old gift cards to use in the many “stores” she creates for us to play with each night, I would often be asked “There is nothing remaining on this card, would you like me to throw it away for you?”  My thought would be, why would I want that card back and have to wonder each time I found it on the bottom of my purse “is there anything on this card?”  However, dishonest employees are hoping for this. The associate will keep SVCs with small balances, telling the customer that they have been used up.  These cards accumulate and then are used on their own transactions later (remember the greedy factor??).  Look at the “Multiple SVC in Same Transaction” report with a sub report for Employee Purchases.  When you see a lot of small value cards being used, there may be a problem!  

The trend of getting a little something special for yourself with the purchase of gift cards has also been on the rise.  However, like most promotions in the retail world, this may be giving your employees a way to reward them self.  Watch for these cards showing up on employee purchases or for an associate who is either issuing or redeeming a card on every transaction.  It could be an integrity issue or a training issue – it is probably something that should be checked out.

External theft and gift card fraud is also a huge area of vulnerability.  Review the “SVC Issued by Tender” report and really focus on large gift card sales that were purchased with a check or a fraudulent credit card.  Many of these fraudsters are putting these cards out to auction so by checking the validity of the purchasing account, you can decommission cards that were purchased with bad credit cards or checks.  Aspect retailers have reported six figure savings by using this process!  Another external fraud issue is the cloning of cards in the stores.  Be sure that stores know to contact Loss Prevention if there is a sudden disappearance of blank gift cards in the store.  That way you can be alert to possible upcoming fraudulent activity.