The Two Transactions At Once Trick

This is the easiest way to steal a cash sale at the register while making it look like the sale is entered. It is an oldie, but a goody.

The bartender serves an $8.00 drink and takes cash from guest A, but before they enter the transaction, they serve another similar drink for $8.00 and take cash from guest B. Now, armed with both payments, the bartender approaches the register and enters the first sale so that the $8.00 amount is visible on the display. They then place both sales payments ($16.00) into the register drawer and take out change, which they return to each guest. A single receipt may print but they will leave that in the printer and return the receipt only if someone asks for it.

To anyone watching, the bartender charged $8.00 for the drink and that amount is visible on the screen, so everything looks on the up and up. But in truth, the bartender collected $16.00 in sales but entered only half of that. The extra $8.00 is still in the drawer as an overage that they will have to go back and get out of the drawer so it later balances.

Nowadays bartenders track this amount with texts placed on cell phones that they are (unfortunately) allowed to have behind the bar. Bad policy #1.

There are many ways to "balance" the drawer and take out the extra stolen cash. One is by allowing the bartender to cash out the tips into the cash drawer (bad policy #2). An even worse policy is to allow bartenders to use the cash drawer as the tip jar (and I see this in a lot of places and scratch my head why it is allowed).

Next up we will look at how failing to charge a guest the proper sales tax on a drink is a likely indicator the sale was stolen by the bartender or by the management themselves.