Book a demo
Solink new logo
Book a demo
INSIGHTS

Guide to loss prevention going into 2026 and beyond

May 30, 2025
Learn more

Table of Contents

Loss prevention (LP) has evolved from a very specific operational task to a central business strategy that has the opportunity to both mitigate the risk of loss and significantly improve your company’s operational processes and profitability. 

In a landscape where profit margins are razor-thin and threats are increasingly complex, retail, restaurant, and multi-location operators are under pressure to do more than just react to theft and loss – they need to proactively protect against it.

From external theft and organized retail crime (ORC) to internal fraud, vendor discrepancies, and procedural missteps, the spectrum of risk has never been broader. 

The most recent comprehensive figure from the National Retail Federation (NRF) indicates that US retailers experienced $112.1 billion in shrink in 2022, representing 1.6% of total retail sales. 

While the NRF has not yet released a full shrink total for 2023, their 2024 report highlights a 93% increase in the average number of shoplifting incidents per year in 2023 compared to 2019, and a 90% increase in dollar loss due to shoplifting over the same period.

Loss prevention is no longer just about stopping theft. It’s about aligning security with operations, enhancing accountability across departments, and leveraging technology to unlock both protection and business performance. 

This page explores what modern loss prevention looks like, why video and POS integration is at its core, and how platforms like Solink are redefining what’s possible for LP leaders.

Learn how loss prevention AI helps reduce loss and protect profits.

Cover of the "AI Readiness Guide for LP Leaders" by Solink, featuring a digital hand holding the letters "AI" with a data stream graphic in the background.

Get your business AI‑ready today

Turn AI from a buzzword into a business advantage

Our free AI Readiness Guide walks you through what it takes to successfully adopt AI—from evaluating current systems to building a roadmap for implementation. Learn how to prepare your operations, people, and processes for AI-powered results.
Download the AI readiness guide
Download the AI readiness guide

What is loss prevention and why it matters now more than ever

Loss prevention refers to the policies, processes, and technologies designed to reduce preventable loss in a business. While the term traditionally referred to reducing theft, it now encompasses a wide range of risk-related factors, including:

  • External theft, such as shoplifting and organized retail crime. 
  • Internal fraud, such as employee theft or refund abuse.
  • Operational errors, such as miscounts and compliance violations.
  • Vendor fraud, like delivery discrepancies or invoicing errors.
  • Safety and liability issues, such as slip and fall claims or improper access.

In today’s economy, effective LP is not just about minimizing loss – it’s about maximizing profitability. A modern LP program can: 

  • Reduce investigation time and labor costs.
  • Improve safety, compliance, and legal defensibility.
  • Provide insights that improve training and operations.
  • Identify and eliminate systemic inefficiencies.

The result of a successful loss prevention strategy is a stronger business, one that protects its assets while enabling teams to focus on delivering customer value and operational excellence.

For more hints and tricks on enhancing your loss prevention strategy, check out our blog 60 loss prevention tips to follow in your business.
Elevate your loss prevention strategy with video and POS integration
Learn how combining video surveillance and POS data can reduce losses and boost security.
Book a demo

What industries rely on loss prevention?

Loss prevention isn’t limited to retail theft. As threats grow more sophisticated and margins get tighter, businesses across every sector are investing in smarter tools to reduce shrink, protect assets, and ensure compliance.

From high-traffic restaurants to multi-site logistics operations, loss prevention is no longer a siloed function – it’s an operational advantage. Below are the industries where LP plays a vital role in protecting people, processes, and profits:

Retail

From big box stores to boutiques, retail faces constant threats from ORC, internal fraud, and margin erosion. LP helps reduce shrink and improve profitability across every store.

These are the best retail loss prevention procedures to follow

Restaurants & QSR

Fast food and full-service restaurants face refund fraud, time theft, cash handling issues, and delivery disputes. Video + POS integration enables managers to validate transactions and enforce procedures at scale.

Hospitality

Hotels, casinos, and entertainment venues rely on LP to manage guest safety, prevent theft, and monitor staff conduct in real time.

Warehousing & logistics

Inventory loss, misdelivery, and procedural non-compliance are common pain points. LP tools help validate shipping/receiving, monitor restricted areas, and enforce SOPs.

Convenience & fuel

C-stores experience high foot traffic, late-night operations, and limited staffing, making them prime targets for theft and fraud. Loss prevention ensures better coverage and faster response.

No matter the industry, Solink’s cloud video security and analytics platform helps businesses reduce risk, streamline investigations, and transform video from a passive system into an active business tool.

The pitfalls of legacy LP systems

Traditional LP systems – whether DVR-based setups, disconnected POS data logs, or isolated incident reporting workflows – aren’t built for today’s challenges. These systems suffer from several limitations:

  • Fragmented tools: Video is stored separately from POS data or access logs, forcing teams to manually cross-reference systems.
  • Manual investigations: Scrubbing hours of footage to find a single incident wastes time and invites error.
  • Delayed response: Without real-time alerting or AI detection, problems are often discovered days or weeks later.
  • Limited oversight: Multi-location operators struggle to maintain consistency and visibility across every site.

In short, traditional LP systems are reactive, labor-intensive, and often blind to critical context. As threats grow more sophisticated and dispersed, your business needs technology that empowers speed, scale, and clarity if you are to reduce risks and increase profitably. 

To learn about the latest technologies in loss prevention and security, check out our blog – What’s new in loss prevention security?

Checklist: How do I know if my current LP setup is outdated or underperforming?

If your loss prevention system feels more reactive than proactive, it may be holding your business back. Here’s a quick checklist to help you determine if your business meets some of the common signs of an underperforming LP setup:
  • Frequent missed incidents due to lack of real-time alerts or post-event discovery.
  • Slow, manual investigations that require hours of video scrubbing or paper receipt matching.
  • No integration between video and POS data, making it difficult to verify the context behind transactions.
  • Lack of centralized oversight across multiple locations or stores.
  • Inability to automate reporting, generate incident logs, or track system health.
Modern LP and security platforms like Solink eliminate these pain points by linking video directly to transactional events, automating alerts, and providing a unified dashboard that works across all your locations.

If you’re spending more time chasing data than preventing loss, it’s time to upgrade.
Protect your business with video and POS integration
See how integrated systems can help you prevent losses and improve operational efficiency.
Book a demo

Why video and POS integration is the modern LP foundation

The most effective LP systems today combine two critical data sources: video footage and POS transaction data. Individually, each provides value. Together, they offer unmatched visibility and context for your business.

Why video alone isn’t enough

While your video feed shows you what happened, it rarely explains why. Without connecting footage to transactions, employee actions, or system triggers, investigations rely too heavily on manual review and assumptions. And it may show you what happened, but only if you actually see it. 

With so much footage coming through your business, especially when you operate multiple sites, the vast majority of losses are going to go unnoticed if you aren’t using a proactive, integrated solution. 

Why POS alone misses the full picture

POS data shows transactional events – such as refunds, discounts and voids – but without the accompanying video, it’s difficult to verify legitimacy or detect the behavioral red flags that cost your business money.

Integration = intelligence

Platforms like Solink, which integrate with your POS and other technologies, link every transaction to its corresponding video event. This allows your LP team to:

  • Instantly pull up footage for any suspicious refund, discount, or void.
  • Search by employee, transaction type, amount, or time.
  • Set alerts for behavioral anomalies (such as multiple no-sales or high-value refunds).
  • Share evidence across departments to streamline compliance and investigation workflows.

This fusion of video and data transforms your LP program from a reactive cost center into a proactive, revenue-generating intelligence engine.

What KPIs or metrics can video-integrated LP systems help track?

When you use a video solution as part of your loss prevention strategy, your team gains access to rich data that can be leveraged to drive ROI for your business. This data allows you to move beyond just traditional shrink reporting, adding KPIs to your LP strategy, such as: 

  • Shrink rate by location or region.
  • Refund and void volume per employee or register.
  • Investigation resolution time from alert to closure.
  • Video-to-transaction match rate – how often incidents can be validated with synced footage.
  • Access violations, such as after-hours entries or unauthorized area access.
  • Policy compliance rates, such as SOP adherence or safety protocol breaches.
  • Trend analysis over time to identify repeat offenders or systemic issues.

These insights allow leadership to quantify risk, measure LP performance, and tie prevention efforts to real business ROI.

Building a modern loss prevention strategy

Implementing a modern LP strategy can be incredibly complex, especially when taking into account the vast number of technologies and processes that are now available to you. To get started, here’s a framework that can help kick things off. 

1. Conduct a shrink audit

Identify where losses are happening – it could be at your POS, during deliveries, in storage, or at the door. Using existing data and incident reports to establish risk zones can help you mitigate these risks.

2. Define key metrics

Trackable KPIs might include:

  • Shrink as a percentage of sales
  • Incident resolution time
  • High-risk transaction volumes 
  • Employee-specific trends
  • Heatmap of locations or shifts with repeat violations

3. Integrate video with transactional data

Use a software like Solink to connect your video feeds with POS, access control, and sensor data. This creates a searchable, event-driven video record that eliminates hours of manual review for your team.

4. Set smart alerts

Create rules that notify LP or Ops teams of high-risk behavior, such as:

  • Refunds over $200
  • Repeated drawer openings
  • Access to restricted areas after hours

5. Train across departments

Loss prevention touches security, operations, HR, and finance. Ensure all teams know how to access, investigate, and respond using shared tools.

6. Analyze, adjust, and improve

Use dashboards and regular reports to identify new risks, measure ROI, and refine your protocols. LP is no longer just about mitigating risk, it should be part of your organization’s ongoing business intelligence loop.
Strengthen your loss prevention with integrated video and POS solutions
Discover the power of video and POS system integration to safeguard your business.
Book a demo

Key benefits of video + POS-driven loss prevention

When businesses integrate video security with transactional data, loss prevention becomes smarter, faster, and more cost-effective. Let’s take a deeper look at the tangible benefits this approach offers.

1. Accelerated investigations

Video intelligence tools like Solink allow your LP teams to instantly search video by transaction event – such as refunds, voids, or high-risk cash handling events. This means you no longer need to manually scan hours of footage just to investigate a single incident.

By automating the process of aligning video with transaction data, technologies like Solink dramatically reduce investigation time from hours to minutes. Whether you’re verifying a suspicious return or reviewing an after-hours drawer open, the relevant video is available in a few clicks and can be saved to your cloud vendor management system (VMS) for future reference.

2. Real-time risk detection

When it comes to modern video technology, AI-powered alerting can monitor for suspicious patterns that would otherwise go unnoticed. For example:

  • A high volume of refunds from the same employee
  • Repeated drawer openings with no sale
  • Unusual access to restricted areas during off-hours

These anomalies trigger immediate notifications, allowing your LP team to act before minor fraud becomes systemic loss. 

3. Consistent documentation and compliance

Whether it’s preparing for an audit, resolving a legal dispute, or responding to an HR complaint, having reliable, time-stamped video linked to key events provides defensible evidence. The tight video solution ensures you have a secure, searchable archive that simplifies compliance with internal policies, industry regulations, and insurance requirements.

4. Reduction in shrink and fraud

The visibility that comes with integrated video and POS data doesn’t just help resolve incidents, it prevents them. Employees are more accountable when they know systems are smart and connected. Fraud is detected earlier. Patterns are easier to correct.

The role of AI in modern loss prevention

Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a futuristic concept in your loss prevention strategy. While implementing it can feel overwhelming, it’s rapidly becoming a necessary tool for keeping up with the pace and complexity of threats.

With platforms like Solink, getting started is often as simple as turning on your subscription. Managing the organizational change, team alignment, and cultural shifts needed to fully realize the value of AI, however, isn’t as easy.

As losses rise across various industries and threats grow more complex, AI-powered platforms help LP leaders move from reactive to proactive control. But no matter how advanced the software, success depends on how well your people and processes adapt to use it. 

Here’s how AI-enhanced software delivers that transformation:

Operational efficiency AI automates time-consuming tasks like video review, exception-based reporting, and log analysis inside the software you already use, freeing LP professionals to focus on strategy and investigations.

Early detection of threats  AI-enhanced systems analyze live data (including POS feeds) to flag anomalies before human teams can – dramatically reducing response times.

Reduction in shrink and financial loss With timely alerts and investigation tools, AI helps detect fraud, theft, and suspicious patterns across locations, reducing shrink at the source.

Scalability across multiple locations AI software ensures consistent, scalable oversight across dozens or hundreds of sites, providing centralized visibility and standardized processes.

Real-Time visibility and response AI-integrated tools instantly connect video and POS data, so LP teams can move from delayed, manual reviews to real-time action.

Smarter, data-driven business decisions AI surfaces patterns that help guide staffing, training, store layouts, and even customer behavior strategies, far beyond security alone.

Stronger, cross-functional collaboration When AI insights are embedded in accessible software, they become useful to operations, IT, legal, and finance – turning LP into a valuable intelligence partner.

Enhanced safety and compliance Automated AI alerts help enforce policies and reduce liability by flagging unsafe behaviors or compliance lapses in real time.

Faster adaptation to evolving threats AI systems evolve as fraud techniques and risks change, helping LP teams stay one step ahead of emerging challenges.

Cross-functional impact of loss prevention video intelligence

The loss prevention insights your organization can gain from a video intelligence solution don’t just help your security and LP teams, they support your entire business. Here’s how: 

Operations

  • Validate open/close times
  • Monitor staff coverage during peak hours
  • Identify process failures and workflow gaps

HR

  • Investigate harassment, misconduct, or time theft
  • Provide objective, timestamped evidence
  • Resolve disputes faster and more fairly

Finance

  • Track fraud losses and recovery
  • Support ROI calculations for LP investments
  • Identify underperforming locations

Legal and compliance

  • Archive and present video for liability claims
  • Ensure regulatory protocols (like restricted access) are followed
  • Strengthen internal investigations
Optimize your loss prevention efforts with video and POS integration
Find out how to maximize security and minimize losses with integrated systems.
Book a demo

How Solink helps: The LP platform for modern businesses

Solink is built for multi-location businesses that need a flexible, scalable, and intelligent loss prevention solution that leverages the power of video, without replacing their current camera infrastructure.

Here’s how Solink stands out:

  • Works with your existing cameras and POS.
  • Links video to every transaction, access event, or sensor trigger.
  • Uses AI to detect anomalies in behavior – not just movement.
  • Provides real-time alerts and automated reports.
  • Scales across 1 location or 1,000+ with centralized control and visibility.
  • Supports NDAA compliance, encrypted access, and role-based permissions.

With Solink, your LP team is no longer stuck in manual review. They’re empowered with real-time data, AI-enhanced insights, and a proactive platform that reduces shrink, streamlines workflows, and supports your broader business goals.

Real-world results: Huck’s convenience stores

Logo of Huck's Market, established in 1974, featuring bold, distressed lettering within a hexagonal border.
Huck’s, a major US convenience chain, uses Solink to monitor operations, validate POS activity, and support LP across 100+ locations. By connecting their existing cameras with their POS systems via Solink, they’ve:

  • Reduced shrink across multiple regions
  • Significantly shortened investigation times
  • Empowered store managers to access relevant data instantly

Explore the full case study >>

Book a demo today and discover how Solink can help you reduce shrink, empower your LP team, and turn your video data into business intelligence.