Irish Petrol Forecourt Eradicates Cash Handling Costs

In the past, a petrol station was all about fuel. Now, with BP reporting that half of
its customers in the UK and Ireland are stopping for food instead of fuel and the
recent introduction of electric charging stations and lockers for online pickup,
the increasing demand for convenience is changing the sector. As businesses
adapt to these new trends, they must also continue to accommodate new and
existing customers using cash, card, or mobile payments for their purchases.

For the Daybreak petrol station and convenience store in Westmeath, Ireland,
the adaptation has already begun. Because of the increase in customer volumes,
Daybreak was spending too much time topping up cash drawers, completing
cash counts and figuring out discrepancies, so the store owners decided it was
time to look for a cash management solution.

Daybreak’s management turned to their point of sale (POS) provider of 10 years,
Station Master, for help. Station Master, a leading ePOS provider to convenience
stores and petrol forecourts, was in the process of integrating apg® Cash Drawer’s smarttill® Intelligent Cash Drawer into its SmartPOS platform. Once they
heard about the smarttill® technology’s capabilities, the storeowners said they’d
like to deploy it as soon as possible. “We need this,” said Sarah Orme, a company
director and day-to-day store manager.

Daybreak is located just outside rural Delvin in county Westmeath. The store
opened in 2006 and currently employs 13 people. Managing cash had become
a vexing challenge. “It was difficult to pinpoint the exact time that discrepancies
were made,” says Orme. “Often it would be the following day before the problem
could be rectified because staff had gone home. It was time-consuming to try
and find the time the error was made.”

Cash counts at the end of the day were done with a counting machine, which
took up a lot of staff time, she recalls. If a counting error occurred, they would
have to start over again, taking up even more time.

Cash Automation Saves Time

Before the smarttill® Solution installation, Orme says, “It took up to 15 minutes to reconcile the shift and have a float ready for the next shift. Typically, they would have four shifts in a day (two tills each having two shifts). This would have taken an hour in total. In comparison, when using the smarttill® technology, it takes only a minute per shift so a total of four minutes for the day.”

Cashing up at the end of the day also involved counting all coins and cash, but
now thanks to the smarttill® technology, it only takes seconds to total the tills at
the end of the night.

As a result, Daybreak has seen an overall reduction of staff hours and administration dedicated to these tasks while improving customer service in the store.

Meanwhile, Station Master is planning smarttill® Solution deployments for other
clients and is pleased with the apg® partnership. Per Keegan, “The high level
of support we have received since deployment has been impressive and reassuring.” As a result, he says he would not hesitate to recommend the smarttill® Solution and apg® to others.

The smarttill® Solution has been installed in over 20 sites across petrol forecourt
and symbol groups in Ireland for a number of well-known brands. You will see
this technology in more and more petrol stations when you stop for a break or
to fill up on petrol.

A Complete Solution

Having worked with Station Master for 10 years, Daybreak’s management had no doubt the provider would come up with the right solution. “We have full confidence in their advice, installation services and back-up service. Every member of the staff is friendly and knowledgeable, and always prompt to rectify any technical errors that occur,” says Orme.

In business for more than 20 years, Station Master, based in Celbridge near Dublin, serves customers in all of the country’s 32 counties. The company focuses primarily on convenience stores and forecourts and integrated the smarttill® Solution into its POS offering in the autumn of 2017.

“I gave the customer a demonstration of the smarttill® Cash Management Solution, and then explained how it works and how it integrated to the POS and back-office software,” says Station Master Director Patrick Keegan. “The decision to purchase the solution was immediate.”

That’s because Daybreak’s management quickly saw how the smarttill® Technology would address pressing issues such as the store’s vulnerability to internal cash theft, as well as costs associated with managing cash floats and pinpointing incidents of theft and other discrepancies. Per Keegan, “The smarttill® Intelligent Cash Drawer offered the complete solution the customer needed.”

An important feature that the smarttill® technology enabled Station Master to introduce was a prompt at the POS that immediately alerts cashiers to a discrepancy following a cash transaction. “This encourages better cash handling and acts as a potent theft deterrent, with the objective of reducing cash loss at the POS,” continued Keegen.

Since the installation of the smarttill® Intelligent Cash Drawers, Daybreak’s management no longer has to worry about the issues that used to cost time and money. “Discrepancies have been eliminated. We are now confident that customers’ change is correct at all times. Safe drop amounts are automatically counted and correct at all times, and till cash up time takes seconds instead of hours,” says Orme.

Tackling Cash Shrink On the Spot

According to a 2017 survey by the European Central Bank, 58% of retailers stated that employee cash theft is the second highest cause of loss for Irish retailers. This is troubling when you consider that 59% of all POS transactions in the country are made with cash. It’s likely this trend will continue as 61% of Irish survey participants named cash as their preferred form of payment.¹

1. O’Regan, E. (2023, December 7). Cash still most popular form of payment
   for three in five Irish people. The Irish Times. https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2023/12/08/cash-still-most-popular-form-of-payment-for-three-in-five-irish-people/