Cut Your Losses!

Ann Turner is the financial and budget manager of the University of
British Columbia Library.

In addition to being the natural prey of professional thieves and fraud
artists, retail businesses are especially vulnerable to inventory
shrinkage and cash losses through theft by their own customers,
employees, and suppliers. Employee errors in pricing goods, recording
sales, bookkeeping, inventory counting, and shipping and receiving also
create losses, whose dimensions may not even be known. The prevention
and control of these problems can deliver real bottom-line benefits to
the business, but managers may not know where to start.

Keith O’Brien, who has qualifications in management accounting,
security, and fraud examination, gives seminars in retail loss
prevention. In Cut Your Losses! he adopts a pragmatic approach, using
real-life crime scenarios to describe the method of loss, the control
weakness that made it possible, and the preventive measures that should
be put in place. His self-help guide for the active business proprietor
or manager includes sample reports, worksheets, forms and checklists,
along with step-by-step procedures for using them.