Allan Bacani took over operations of the Vancouver-based Lee’s Donuts in 2018 and after assessing the business he decided to go completely cashless. The benefits of this move have already been felt, he said, as it relates to time saved and an increase in business.
A recent study from Square, Inc. would seem to support this strategy. The study, which surveyed 310 Canadian business owners, found that businesses are losing 14.5 hours a week by handling cash.
The study also suggested that quite a few business owners in Canada are ready to see a change in their own business and move towards a cashless model, as 40 per cent of the respondents said they would be open to the change.
For Bacani, it was a strategy he was very open to trying.
“There’s endless ways to contribute to your business outside of just counting money. Once you get the burden of mathematics out of the way, it kind of frees you up as an operator to expand your business a lot more,” said Bacani in a phone interview with ITbusiness.ca. “Sixteen hours a week is plenty of opportunity to do stuff like that. If you’re in wholesale, you can do a lot of sales opportunities. If you’re in marketing, you can set time aside to create content and work with social media.”
According to the study, chief among the benefits is increased average transaction totals (up from $5.50 to $8.25), quicker transaction times (up from 1-2 transactions per minute to 3-4 transactions per minute), increased business (up 22 per cent), and the fact that all money is completely traceable, therefore eliminating any issues of missing money at the end of the day.
All of this, as well as eliminating dealing with the daily float and bank runs, has added up to a lot of time saved for Bacani, which he says can then be devoted to other aspects of the business that may not be getting the care they need.
Bacani did note that this strategy may not be for every business.
“My other business for example, even though a majority of our transactions is done with a card, there’s still a lot of our higher end customers that prefer to pay with cash. It really boils down to who the client is,” said Bacani. “And you got to make the call as an operator; whether or not that limitation will hurt your brand or if the difference it will make is negligible.