65% of SMEs have to write off revenue at least once a week
65% of SME financial decision makers have to write off revenue when cashing up at least once a week, with 14% admitting to doing so every day, new research for Payment Sense reveals.
On average, when writing off revenue while cashing up, this amounts to £3,951 a survey of 1,001 SME decision makers shows.
The main causes of having to write off revenue according to the research are inaccurate transaction keying (38%), customer theft or fraudulent activity (28%), stock damage (32%) and staff theft or other fraudulent behaviour (25%).
In retail, staff theft or other fraudulent behaviour is the biggest cause (34%) followed by inaccurate transaction keying (31%).
It’s not just money they are losing out on, but time as well. In fact the average time spent cashing up every day by SMEs is 22 minutes. However 46% spend longer than this every day!
46% of those in companies with more than 100 employees spend over 30 minutes a day cashing up, compared to only 17% who work in a company with up to 10 employees.
This time could be reduced by using electronic systems. Currently almost three quarters (73%) of SME financial decision makers surveyed use an electronic point of sale (EPoS). The research found that 69% of those in the hospitality industry currently use an EPoS, compared with 93% of those in the retail industry, with only 1% never using an Epos.
81% of SME financial decision makers think that integrated payments could help increase their business efficiency & revenue.
When asked how much they know about integrated card payment technology, 49% knew ‘a small amount’ 30% knew ‘a moderate amount’ and 13% say they are ‘very familiar’, although 8% didn’t know what it was.
Many are putting off updating their system due to installation time. 23% of respondents would expect a system which consolidates all the payment related aspects of a merchant’s business to take one day to set up and 32% would expect it to take two days.
However, the cost of set up was the biggest concern for those thinking about deploying an integrated card system (37%) with over a quarter (27%) said the quality of customer service was their biggest concern. Only 6% said they would have no concerns.
The cost of set-up was the biggest concern (46%) for SMEs with a turnover of less than £100k or £100k – £249k. Whereas, security e.g. data loss is the biggest concern (39%) for those with a turnover of £6m – £10m.
37% are planning on going completely cashless as a business, with a further 19% saying they already are cashless and almost a quarter (22%) would consider it but have no plans to at the moment. By sector, 27% in hospitality, 33% in retail, 55% in construction, 23% in automotive and 41% in healthcare are planning to go cashless.
Micro businesses with up to 10 employees are most likely to say they would not go cashless because it wouldn’t work for their business (31%), compared to 23% with 11-50 employees and 9% with over 50.
The main reasons given for going cashless were; it would deliver faster payments (38%), it would save time on cashing up (34%), it would improve customer experience (28%), cut queuing time (26%) and an increase in customer loyalty (24%).
When asked why they wouldn’t go cashless, 58% said their customers prefer to pay in cash, with 44% saying they would have to turn away custom. 10% of those asked thought it would be a hassle to organise.
