Cash Management Reconciliation Tips for Your Travel Center

This term cash management sounds simple enough to start, but it can be one of the most challenging and complex tasks in your business. Failure to have proper controls and safeguards in place can result in a disastrous situation that will likely leave you in trouble. However, there are several steps you can take to improve your operation and increase efficiencies. Let’s start by breaking this into several key areas.
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Cash Management Reconciliation Tips for Your Travel Center
 

This term cash management sounds simple enough to start, but it can be one of the most challenging and complex tasks in your business. Failure to have proper controls and safeguards in place can result in a disastrous situation that will likely leave you in trouble. However, there are several steps you can take to improve your operation and increase efficiencies. Let’s start by breaking this into several key areas.

Credit Card Reconciliations
Depending on your operation you could have one, two or more credit card processors. I have seen firsthand where operators have failed to reconcile, and it cost them tens of thousands of dollars. Processing agreements limit the amount of time you can go back should there be any errors.

There are two steps into reconciling your credit cards. First is to reconcile your credit cards sales report from your processor to your point-of-sale sales report.

You must get the report from your processor. This report should be automatically delivered to one person or more depending on your operations. If you have to log in and download this report daily, it is time to talk to your processor.

Special attention should be given to any debits (returns) to this report and have a process in place to verify a return actually occurred. Why would that be of concern? There are several reasons, one of which is theft.

If these reports do not reconcile, it could be due to the fact that your end-of-day closure does not coincide with the processor. This results in carry overs that will show up the next day. If this is your case and your staff finds it difficult to adjust the end-of-day, a possible solution would be to keep a daily/monthly total over/shorts to monitor list. These should balance over time and this report is an excellent performance indicator to monitor.

Another best practice would be to import sales and reports into your accounting system. Manual entry of data is expensive and has the potential for fraud through manipulation of your numbers.

Second, reconcile credit card deposits to your bank statement. There is a lot of detail here so put on your best set of spectacles and take your meds because you may likely need them!

The bottom line is that the difference between gross sales and net deposit is your processing fee.

For example:
Sales: $2,514.00
Fees: $54.05
Net Deposit: $2,459.95
Processing Rate: 2.15%

One should look at these fees daily and monthly. Some processors allocate monthly fees once a month usually the first day or two of the following month, which need to be allocated into your processing percentage.

NATSO has an excellent credit card processing program for operators. If you have an interest, please contact Dan Hudson at Dan.Hudson@firstdata.com for your free analysis. To learn more about how NATSO can assist you please contact me at dquinn@NATSO.com.

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