3 MONTHS WITH CHECKD: CONFIDENT ENOUGH TO SHOW OTHER CLUBS
It’s 1 am on a Saturday. A patron has had some good luck on the pokies, and a large payout needs processing. The duty manager on tonight last handled one about three weeks ago.
For most venues, that’s the moment the process is really tested. Not the AML program sitting in the folder. The person on shift.
Inverell RSM Club moved its gaming payout process onto Checkd in June. It’s a single-site community club in northern NSW with 64 EGMs and a management team who cover everything a club needs. We’ve just finished the full write-up on how the first few months have gone, and a few things are worth sharing now.
The Problem Wasn’t the AML Program. It Was the Variation.
AUSTRAC’s updated AML/CTF framework applies a $5,000 threshold to gaming payouts, so more payouts now require full identification, screening and record-keeping than before.
But the harder part of that change wasn’t volume. It was consistency. A venue now needs its process to produce the same outcome every time, whoever is on shift, no matter how long it’s been since they last did one.
That’s hard to guarantee when a large payout comes through every few days and lands with whichever manager happens to be rostered. Inverell had a solid process. It just relied on each manager executing it correctly, from memory, under pressure, on a task most of them performed fewer than twice a month.
“Large payouts are handled by our authorised management team. Floor staff may escalate or start the process, but a manager completes the payout, which keeps the process consistent across shifts.”
Kaitie Boney, Business Administration Manager, Inverell RSM Club
Seven Managers, Twelve Payouts, One Process
The numbers from Inverell’s first 30 days on Checkd make the point better than we can:
- 7 different members of the management team completed a payout across 12 payouts, nearly every one handled by a different person
- Fewer than 2 payouts per manager per month; nobody at the club does this often enough to get fluent at it, and they don’t need to
- 1 in 4 payouts created between midnight and 3 am
- Every payout started was completed; none were abandoned partway
The steps now sit inside a digital workflow that opens at the start of every payout. ID is scanned and verified. AML and PEP screening runs automatically. The manager reviews and approves. Accounts are notified. A timestamped record is created and stored.
From starting the payout to submitting it for review takes about five minutes, and it has since go-live. Staff members don’t need to remember the sequence. They follow it.
“The first payout was much easier than expected. Checkd walks you through each step, so it felt almost foolproof. The part we used to worry about was missing something in the AML requirements or not completing the records properly.”
Kaitie Boney, Business Administration Manager, Inverell RSM Club
Confident Enough to Show Other Clubs
A few weeks ago, one of Inverell’s managers demonstrated Checkd to other clubs at a club managers’ meeting. Nobody asked him to. He just wanted to show them how it had helped.
That’s not a metric we can put on a chart, but it’s the one we paid the most attention to.
“It’s the kind of system other clubs can benefit from, especially if they’re still relying on paper-based processes.”
Tim Palmer, General Manager, Inverell RSM Club
Get the Full Case Study
The full 5-page write-up goes deeper than what we’ve covered here. Inside it:
- The full 30-day data set, including how payouts were distributed across shifts and staff
- How the five-step workflow splits across floor staff, managers and accounts
- What changed in the club’s record-keeping, and what that means if a payout from June needs to be produced
- More from Kaitie Boney and Tim Palmer on what they’d tell a similar club
Every venue processing large payouts faces the same AML/CTF obligations, and they share the same problem: the process has to hold up regardless of who is on shift when the payout comes through. If that’s a question you’ve asked about your own venue, this one is worth the read.
Get your copy of the full case study
As always, Checkd supports your venue’s gaming AML/CTF processes; it doesn’t replace your program or constitute compliance advice. What it does is digitise and ensure the process you’ve already signed off on is followed the same way, every time.
