Smart safes offer a retailer several features and advantages, one of which is automated note deposit. As we’ve articulated in a previous article, when a smart safe is placed near the point of sale in a store, note deposit and validation enables store cashiers to deposit notes into the safe during their shift. Real-time depositing of notes has several advantages:

  • Keeps till balances to a minimum
  • Negates the need for till sweeps or envelope drops
  • Provides a means to deposit large denomination notes directly into the safe
  • Checks for counterfeit notes

With a smart safe, all deposits are recorded on a per-transaction and per-employee basis, so cash accountability and traceability are maximized.

Another key advantage of a smart safe is advanced reporting capability. Since smart safes can connect to a network, a retailer – from a remote location – can view a myriad of reports to understand cash usage dynamics for each store, and perform data analytics, such as predictive modeling, to adapt their cash usage model as their needs change.

Seasonality can play a role in cash usage dynamics, particularly for peaks. For an office supply retailer it’s back to school season. For a big box retailer it’s the “Black Friday” and holiday season. The list goes on.

For a retailer that faces an upcoming change in its cash deposits, what options are available to maintain security and integrity of its deposits even during peak seasonal times? One option is to increase the frequency of armored car pickups. This is done frequently, particularly for stores with a predictive increase in cash purchases (e.g., a big box retailer during the holiday season). This option is relatively easy to do. At the request of the retailer, the armored car service will add a pickup (or two) to their weekly route to the store and transport the deposits to the cash processing center. The disadvantage of this approach is the store’s armored fees will increase with each addition of a pickup service. Also, more armored car pickups mean store employees need to spend more time preparing deposits in anticipation of the pickup. Both costs directly impact the store’s bottom line during these peak times.

What other options are available to a retailer outside of additional armored car pickups? The answer is a system that offers note deposit scalability.  At Tidel, there are three options: a smart safe that can accept extra-long cassettes, a secondary system that can pair up with the smart safe and accept deposited notes, or a system that does both.

Smart Safe with Extra-Long Cassettes

The Tidel Series 4 and 4e smart safe offers two cassettes that support the deposit of up to 1,200 notes per cassette, or 2,400 total. As an option, the Series 4 can be outfitted with two extra-long cassettes that support up to 2,250 notes per cassette, or 4,500 total. This represents an 88% increase in note deposit scalability with only a marginal increase (5” in depth) to the system footprint.

Secondary Note Deposit System

As another option, the Tidel Series 4e can be paired with a secondary system that offers note validation and deposit capability. We call this system the “Sidecar,” and it offers twice the note deposit capability as a Series 4e system. For stores with high cash volumes, the pairing of a Series 4e and Sidecar is advantageous as it offers note deposit capability of up to 180 notes per minute with 4,800 aggregate note storage capacity.

Smart Safe and Sidecar with Extra-Long Cassettes

A third option offers the highest degree of note deposit scalability. This involves the pairing of a Series 4e with extra-long cassettes with a Sidecar with extra-long cassettes. This solution enables the deposit of up to 9,000 notes, which represents a 375% increase in note deposit scalability above a standard Series 4e system.

Summary

A retailer’s cash business is rarely static. Oftentimes, a retailer is faced with the challenge of needing to adapt to either an unplanned or predicted increase in cash volume in a store. To address this challenge, a retailer must consider several options that enable it to scale as its needs change. Key to this scalable approach is to minimize added variable costs, such as increased labor, misappropriated employee time, and third party expenses.

A smart safe that offers a note deposit solution that maintains security of the store’s funds, accountability of all transactions, and can scale without a change to the store’s processes, labor usage, and third party fees is one worth considering.

If you are a retailer facing dynamic cash volumes requiring an easy to implement and scalable solution, and would like to learn more about Tidel’s solutions that address this, please email [email protected] or call 1-800-678-7577.