Every day, millions of dollars in cash makes its way through casinos around the country. Cash registers, dining and retail areas, and of course the casino floor itself all cycle cash, often 24 hours per day. Managing high volumes of cash over multiple points of exchange in a large, high traffic environment is fraught with challenges. As a result, a casino’s cash management costs can be substantial, and involve a myriad of managerial and accounting challenges that range from human errors to inaccurate reporting, to security.

Automating the cash management processes in casinos is paramount to fostering a safe, efficient, and highly accurate method of handling and protecting the casino’s cash. This level of automation also frees up casino employees to handle more productive activities, such as customer service. In many cases, customer service is what sets one casino apart from its competition, and what keeps its high rolling clientele coming back.

Even though other areas of retail have seen growth in card and electronic payment methods, inside the gaming world cash is still very much king. Without an automated management system, however, casinos face what many retailers face, albeit on a smaller scale – the challenges with managing cash using traditional methods. This legacy approach is not only inefficient, error-prone, and potentially unsafe, it takes valuable staff away from customers. Every single float in the casino needs to be frequently counted and balanced, all of which takes time. Multiply this by the number of registers a casino has checked out, and a casino will soon realize that time is, quite literally, money. Automation can reduce this cost considerably, as well as offer a casino a host of other benefits including increased security and efficiency, reduced losses, simplified reporting and management, and an uninterrupted cash flow.

Automation increases security and efficiency by removing the need for employees to physically move large quantities of cash around the casino. It also shortens the time required for tasks such as counting and balancing floats, and removes the temptation for theft by employees. Automating cash management processes also takes human error out of the equation, greatly reducing the time required to facilitate deposits and investigate discrepancies.

So how does automation occur? There are several methods and technologies that a casino can adopt to put them on the right track towards a proven and reliable cash automation system.  One such technology is a cash recycler. Automated cash recyclers help streamline the cash management process by enabling fast and accurate depositing and recycling of a casino’s cash.  By reusing the cash it takes in, cash recyclers help minimize the casino’s cash float, thereby reducing the overall cash exposure on the casino floor. This reduction in cash exposure provides a safer working environment for the casino’s employees.

Cash recyclers also provide an unparalleled level of auditability required to effectively run a casino. Since each transaction is tied to a particular user, any discrepancy investigations can be addressed in a much timelier manner. Cash recyclers can also enable a bird’s eye view of all the cash currently checked out to the floor, on a per department and per register basis.

Automated cash management systems, such as cash recyclers, can help casinos gain a better handle on the way they handle their cash and drive inefficiencies out of their process. Tidel offers unique solutions tailored to the gaming industry, such as automated cash recyclers.   If leveraged correctly, a cash recycler can have an immediate and positive impact on a casino’s operating environment. To learn more about Tidel and its cash recycling solutions, visit www.tidel.com today.