Black money

Though you hardly ever hear about it, black money is still common in the SMB sector. I came to realize this during my holidays in Italy, when the following happened:

After eating a very good pizza in a fine restaurant in Rome, we asked for the bill. A minute later, the waiter returned and told us that we had to pay 40 euro. The waiter did not give us a subtotal, as he obviously wanted to do a black transaction. One of our friends however, thought the waiter wanted to keep the money as a very big tip, and requested a subtotal on paper. The waiter disappeared again, and returned with a subtotal for 33 euro, telling us that he made a mistake and that we had to add the starters —7 euro each— giving a total of 47 euro. We paid and left with the receipt showing only 33 euro. What happened was that the waiter simply gave us a receipt left on the table by other guests —proven by the fact that the pizzas on the receipt were not the ones we’d eaten— and used it for us. So he effectively had transferred the previous sale worth 33 euro and our starters —14 euro— to their black bookkeeping.

As I said, black money is common, and POS systems better provide ways to deal with it. Many clients hesitate to buy a POS system because they are afraid that it will force them to handle their finances in a too strict way. Of course, most POS systems include several ways to handle black transactions, but you won’t find them by reading the specifications. Just ask your dealer about these features and for sure he will show you many ways. You probably will be able to handle your black money in a more and more transparent ways than before!

Of course, there is always a risk involved with using you POS system to handle black money: one day the tax office might decide to control all users of system X, and visit all users to show them the report behind the secret key combination…