Retail store owners know all too well the headaches that come with handling cash. Spending hours counting, sorting, and reconciling cash at the end of the day can get pretty tedious. And storing and driving large volumes of cash to the bank can make even the most experienced manager feel uneasy and unsafe.
Thankfully, business owners now have a better way to handle cash. By implementing two cash management solutions—smart safes and cash recyclers—retailers can enjoy increased efficiencies, productivity, and security while saving on costs, too.
Smart Safes 101
Technology is reshaping the way we can handle cash today. First, there were cash counters and sorters, and now, automated retail cash management has gone one step further with the introduction of smart safes and cash recyclers. These tech tools are taking the retail world by storm.
The smart safe is unlike your traditional floor safe that just ends up taking up space under the counter. It uses smart technology to become an active part of your cash management process. It connects to the internet, allowing your deposits to be immediately tallied and recorded, which benefits you, your financial institutions, and your cash-in-transit provider. This is called provisional credit and is offered by most banks in the United States. In Canada there are only a few banks offering this service. The deposits are then credited to you before the physical cash even gets transported to the bank, increasing your cash flow and reducing the frequency of your armoured car pick-ups.
If that wasn’t handy enough, the smart safe also comes equipped with unique usernames and passwords for all employees with access, so you can track cash activities to increase accountability, easily find errors, and reduce internal theft. The smart safe also quickly generates a wide variety of reports so you can gain insights into your cash whenever you need to, while saving time from creating them manually. Smart safes even come equipped with counterfeit detection technology, and can be stored at the point of sale to help your employees as they handle cash.
Cash Recyclers 101
Cash recyclers can help retailers save time, improve productivity, enhance accuracy, and reduce the risk of internal theft and robbery. They can automatically dispense and accept floats, process transactions, count, sort, verify, and balance cash, and more. All withdrawals and deposits are tracked for easy reference. And cash recyclers do just what their name implies—they recycle cash from one day to the next. This will reduce your vault holdings, increase cash flow, and save you on the costs of cash deposits to the bank and pick-ups by your CIT provider.
With smart safes and cash recyclers, retailers can now handle cash more efficiency, which will lead to a boost in productivity and a solid ROI. Automating previously manual cash handling activities allows for a reduction in labour, the redeployment of back-office employees, a lower retail shrink rate, and better customer service in a lean market.
Financial Institutions and Retailers Are Teaming Up for Better End-to-End Cash Management
Financial institutions understand the benefits of smart safes and cash recyclers for business owners, and they’re increasing the size of these services to gain more business from retailers. They know that consumers aren’t giving up cash any time soon and that business owners are looking for a solution as the cost of handling cash continues to rise.
More and more financial institutions are connecting these devices so clients can have a daily deposit of sales automatically uploaded into their account. The most popular industries that have gotten on board with smart safes and cash recyclers as of now including gas stations, restaurants and quick-serve restaurants, and big box stores.
Retailers looking to improve simplicity, affordability, and efficiency in the way they handle cash should discuss cash recyclers and smart safes with their financial institutions.
