POS Solution with SMARTtill Technology Speeds up Service + Cash Counts at Antwerp Bakery

Wanting to speed up queues and eliminate cash losses, Nora Dekeirsmaeker, owner of Bakkerij Nora in Antwerp, Belgium, asked her POS integrator, Hasselt-based QNH, for a better checkout solution. The integrator recommended a complete POS system with its OmniQstore POS software and the SMARTtill Intelligent Cash Drawer from APG. When she heard what SMARTtill Solution^® could do, Dekeirsmaeker reacted by saying, “Impossible.” But that changed when she saw the solution in action.

Speeding Up Cash Counts In business for 27 years, Bakkerij Nora is an Antwerp institution. Everyday customers pop in to buy the sandwiches, bread and pastries that made the bakery popular. Typical for this environment, cash represents 50 percent of the bakery’s transactions. While most transactions are for relatively small amounts of money, the bakery handles a lot of cash.
Handling cash, as any retailer knows, is time consuming, and Bakkerij Nora was no different. “We were counting cash by hand once a day, at the end of the day when we closed the store,” says Dekeirsmaeker. “We compared the figures with the data in sales reports and if they didn’t match, sometimes we had to count the cash again.”

When the till didn’t add up, there was no way to determine the source of the error or who was responsible because multiple cashiers use the same POS stations. The store had two cash drawers, each taking an average of 30 minutes to count and reconcile the float.

Once installed, the SMARTtill Solution^® delivered immediate results, making the whole operation more efficient and addressing cash discrepancies. Additional benefits included a reduction in the time required to count and balance the till at the end of day. This labour savings were reapplied to the front end and helped improve customer service.