Safeway, Wakefern Employ Till Reconciliation System

NEW YORK — Safeway, Pleasanton, Calif., has improved the speed and accuracy of its till reconciliation process across its roughly 1,700 stores  via the installation of technology, said Steve Rempel, the retailer’s group vice president of application development.

“Retailers spend a fair amount of hours counting down tills,” said Rempel at the National Retail Federation’s Annual Conference here. “We try to make that process as efficient as we can.

To that end, Safeway is using the VeriBalance till reconciliation system, from Balance Innovations, Lenexa, Kan., in all of its stores. The system helps the retailer to “process checks faster and get cash to the bank as fast as we can.”  

It also makes Safeway stores “99% more accurate” in counting cash, he added. “There’s a level of accuracy so that we don’t go back and forth with the banks on deposit errors.” Safeway only needed to train cash-office employees on the system, not cashiers.

Natan Tabak, senior vice president, Wakefern Food, Keasbey, N.J., who spoke at the same NRF session, said the cooperative wholesaler’s ShopRite stores use VeriBalance to successfully manage cash and checks. He pointed out that video monitoring systems, such as Datalogic’s Lanehawk system, can also prevent shrink at checkout lanes. “In supermarkets, one of the biggest opportunities is to reduce shrink at the front end,” he said.

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