No Sale!

The Strange Case of the No Sale Transaction

NO SALE.

Simple words found on a POS tape, loaded with meaning.

But what meaning, exactly?

Well, we know the drawer has been opened, not necessarily a bad thing if it means a clerk made change for a customer or a scrupulous employee counted a drawer in mid-shift to make sure his or her cash was accurately accounted for.

But NO SALE often means something more sinister, especially if it happens again and again.

Did the NO SALE transaction mean cash moved in and out of the POS for unauthorized purchases? Or that a clerk pushed the button to mask unauthorized discounts from his or her buddies? Or that something not belonging in the drawer moved in and out of it? Or that a portal from another dimension is opening to allow hungry creatures from beyond space and time into your C-store?

Okay. That last one is a bit far-fetched, but we can all agree that a pattern of NO SALE transactions more likely than not indicates something sketchy.

So how do you get to the bottom of this mystery?

The first step is identifying that a pattern even exists. Sounds elementary, my dear Watson, but many operators don’t have the time, the tools, or the presence of mind to do so, a problem when your goal is to track the movement of every penny in the store.

The good news is you don’t need to hire a detective. The best C-store back office systems work with modern point-of-sale systems from such suppliers as Gilbarco Veeder-Root, VeriFone, and Radiant Systems to identify and document the occurrence of every no sale transaction (as well as voids and discounts). This is vital information that can help you put a stop to any insidious behavior threatening your bottom line. These C-store solutions will even send you an alert when you close the shift to let you know when the acceptable threshold of NO SALE transactions has been exceeded.

When it comes to identifying fraudulent activity at the point-of-sale, Sherlock Holmes, Sam Spade, and Nancy Drew have nothing on a good C-store back office system. Except maybe in the case of that inter-dimensional portal problem. In that case, you just might want to call the Men in Black.