Smart safes are becoming increasingly popular among big box retailers, convenience stores, gas stations, restaurants, and other cash-heavy establishments. All of these retailers understand the benefits of using smart safes, including increased efficiency and productivity, accuracy, accountability, and security along with the reduction of the cost and time commitment associated with manual cash management. However, there is one factor that retailers aren’t in agreement about: whether to integrate the smart safes in the front with their POS or to place them in the back room.
Are you having trouble deciding where to place your smart safe? Keep reading for some pros and cons.
Pro: Help Enforce Cash Drawer Limits
Employees are taught to drop cash in the vault when cash drawer limits have been reached. However, due to long lines and busy days, many employees fail to do so. When you integrate your smart safe with your POS, you no longer need to worry about limits because all cash will go directly into the smart safe. And this has the safety and security advantage of reducing the financial risk of robbery.
Pro: Counterfeit Detection
Smart safes are equipped with multiple sophisticated counterfeit detection technologies that can help you reduce the risk of accepting counterfeit bank notes. If you were to place your safe in the back, you’d only be alerted to counterfeit long after you’ve accepted the fake bills and the customer has walked away. When you integrated it with your POS, you can reject fake bills before they become your problem and your liability. This will help you get paid for what you sell.
Pro: Electronic Cash Tracking
When your smart safes are integrated with your POS all of your cash activities can be easily tracked and recorded. This has several advantages. It can significantly reduce internal theft by enhancing accountability—your employees know that if they steal, there will be a strong likelihood of them being caught, so they won’t risk it. It can also make finding and fixing discrepancies quicker and easier, reducing the cost and time associated with errors. And it can dramatically speed up the process of end-of-day reconciliation. Managers will only have to spend minutes on reconciliations and employees will be able to wrap up their day quicker.
You can also review the entire cash handling process in your store, collect records of all transactions by value or even by cashier, and generate a multitude of reports as you see fit. If you only have your smart safe in the back room, then you cannot gain access to this valuable transaction intelligence in the front.
Con: Multiple Points of Sale
When your POS locations are grouped closely together, then it’s a no-brainer to add a smart safe right in the middle of the group. However, when a retail environment has multiple POS locations that are scattered across the store or even on different floors, it can be too costly to invest in multiple smart safes for all locations. In this case, purchasing one smart safe to use in the back room might be more cost-effective.
