Today I want to talk about theft at Christmas.

It’s the time of year where you’re really really busy, it’s the time when you’ve got probably your maximum stock in your building. But it’s also a time where you might be using agency staff or you’re bringing a lot of new staff on board who are part-timers, and you have a lot of cash moving around the business. These are all reasons why theft is more likely to be an issue at this time of year. 

So it’s a time where it’s really important that the money is going through the till is actually what is going on with stock you’ve used.

Why?

Because what happens now, as we all know, January/February are lean times in hospitality, so what you take now, what stock you sell now, has to get you through that time until Easter.

If you’re not controlling your stock, if you’ve not got processes in place, then you are going to lose out.

The other thing is insurance.

You’ve probably at some time in the year done your business insurance which would surely include covering your stock on the hand. But have you checked that what you have in in December at your maximum stock holding is actually what you’re insurance can cover?

If not what will happen if the worst happens and you have to make a claim, they will then do it on a pro rata basis. So if you’ve only insured you’re stock at £10,000 but you’ve got £20,000 of stock on hand at the time this incident happens, then your insurance company will probably reduce your payout by 50%. This means you won’t get the £20,000, you’ll probably only get £10,000.

So straight away you’ve possibly got a £10,000 loss.

So it’s really important you know what stock value you’ve got on site. Speak to your insurance company and get that sorted.