How to prevent price fraud: markup control and restrictions on seller rights

The Torgsoft software offers a wide range of tools to minimize the risks of staff fraud and protect the owner’s profit. 

1. Price control and minimum markup

One of the main risks is selling goods at an understated price (for example, to the seller’s acquaintances) or accidentally selling below cost. Torgsoft allows you to automate control over this:

• Minimum sale price control. In the user settings (Settings — Users), there is a field called «Minimum sale price control». It allows you to choose how the software behaves if the sale price (due to discounts, promotions, or manual changes) becomes lower than the cost price:

• «Ask about selling below cost price». The software will display a warning and allow the seller to decide whether to proceed with the sale or not. Important: This setting may affect the speed of the software when adding an item to the sale, because the system recalculates the cost price "on the fly."

• «Sell at cost price + min. product markup». The software will automatically raise the price to the cost price plus the specified percentage.

• «Selling below cost price is allowed». No restrictions apply (not recommended for regular sellers).

• Minimum product markup. You can set a global minimum markup percentage (Settings — Parameters — Product), below which the system will not allow the price to fall during automatic control.

2. Prohibition of negative stock sales (product shortage)

Selling goods that are not actually in stock in the software (negative stock sale) creates confusion in inventory records and may conceal theft or stock mismatches.

• Settings. In the accounting parameters, you can choose what action to take when a product is out of stock: «Allow negative stock sale», «Warn», or «Prohibit negative stock sale».

• Flexibility. This setting can be applied globally, separately for each accounting center, or even for each product type.

3. Access rights restrictions (Roles)

The most effective way to combat fraud is proper role configuration (for example, a «Seller» role with limited rights).

• Prohibition of price changes. You can prohibit the seller from changing the sale price during the sale. This removes the possibility of arbitrary price reduction.

• Prohibition of viewing purchase prices. The seller does not need to know the cost price of the goods or the markup. You can disable the setting «Allowed to view purchase prices».

• Prohibition of deleting goods from the sale. If this parameter is enabled, the seller will not be able to delete an already scanned item from the receipt without administrator confirmation. This prevents the scheme in which an item is scanned (the customer sees the amount), the money is taken, then the item is deleted from the receipt, and the money is pocketed.

• Hiding summary data. You can prohibit viewing the total amount of revenue in the cash register or the store’s performance totals.

4. Risks related to discounts and how to eliminate them

There is a common fraud scheme called «discount into pocket»: the seller takes the full amount from the customer, but records the sale in the software with a discount and keeps the difference.

• Prohibition of manual entry of a discount card. In the access settings, you can prohibit the seller from entering the discount card number from the keyboard (scanner only). This prevents the seller from using the card numbers of acquaintances or memorized numbers to grant unauthorized discounts.

• Cancellation of manual discounts. It is recommended to limit the seller’s right to grant manual discounts or to «adjust the amount» without valid reasons.

• Discount card verification via SMS. An additional Torgsoft option that requires entering a code received by the customer in an SMS message to confirm the discount card.

5. Control through equipment

• Bank terminal. Integration of the terminal with Torgsoft eliminates errors (or deliberate actions) when entering the amount on the terminal manually. The amount payable is transferred automatically, which prevents situations where the customer paid less, or the seller processed the payment «outside the checkout».

• Barcode scanner. Minimizes product mix-ups (accidental or deliberate sale of one product instead of another, for example, a cheaper one instead of an expensive one).

6. Logging and analysis

If preventive measures did not work, Torgsoft allows you to detect violations after the fact:

• Registration of product deletion. If deletion of goods from the receipt is allowed, you can configure mandatory entry of the reason for deletion. These actions are recorded in the report «Cancelled goods from sales».

• User action log. Records changes in documents, settings, and customer cards.

• Document change log. Allows you to see who edited financial or warehouse documents and when.

Recommendation: for maximum security, use a role-based access policy, prohibit negative stock sales and sales below cost price, and regularly review reports on cancelled goods and user actions.