Smart safes are supposed to come with a laundry list of benefits such as increased security, reduced cash handling risks, and better cash visibility and control. However, one of the key selling points of smart safes is the promise of saving time and labor costs through more efficient cash management.
But the reality is that not all smart safes deliver significant time savings. The extent to which a smart safe can reduce cash management workload depends on several factors, including the specific features and capabilities of the safe itself.
So how much time can a standard smart safe really save your store or business? Let's take a closer look.
The biggest time waste for cash management
Cash management is a significant time drain for the average convenience store, grocery store, or other retail operation. Here's a breakdown of the key cash-related tasks and how long they typically take:
- Register preparation and reconciliation: Around 441 minutes (7.35 hours) per week per register. This includes the time spent counting the starting cash drawer, recording cash-in and cash-out, and reconciling the register at the end of each shift.
- Store reconciliation and reporting: Around 15 minutes per week. Store managers must review the cash reports from each register, reconcile the overall store cash, and prepare reports for corporate or accounting.
- Deposit preparation: Around 280 minutes (4.67 hours) per week. Employees must gather the store's cash receipts, count the total, and prepare the bank deposit slip and tamper-evident bags.
- Bank trips for deposits: Around 280 minutes (4.67 hours) per week. Employees must drive to the bank, wait in line, and make the deposit. This is a significant time commitment, especially for stores located further from a bank branch.
The average store spends approximately 16.36 hours per week in total, just on everyday cash management tasks. That’s over 2 full business days of work. This represents a major drain on labor productivity and operational efficiency.
How do smart safes save time?
Smart safes can significantly reduce the time spent on cash management in a few key ways:
- Cutting out bank trips. Rather than spending hours running to the bank, smart safe programs use armored courier services to securely pick up deposits. This reduces bank trip time from an average of 280 minutes to around 72 minutes per week.
- Streamlining deposit preparation. Instead of hand-counting and bagging the weekly store funds to head to the bank, the smart safe has everything counted, stored, and ready for pickup by the armored courier. The average deposit preparation for a smart safe is around 56 minutes per week, saving over 220 minutes.
- Automating reconciliation and reporting. Store and register reconciliation and reporting are additional tasks where smart safes save time. Smart safes help count, store, and report cash profits down to the individual register, saving around 110 minutes per week per register and another 12 for store-specific activities.
Do smart safes save ENOUGH time?
The total average savings for a typical smart safe is 554 minutes per week or about 36 hours per month. Translated into dollars at $20/hour plus benefits, that's about $277 a week in labor savings.
However, it's possible to save even more with smart safes. Less expensive smart safes, for instance, will not reduce labor time as much as the more expensive multi-note accepting machines. With a single-note acceptor, 300 notes would take around 7-10 seconds per note, or around 35 minutes. A multi-note acceptor, on the other hand, would only take about 1.5 seconds per note, or around 8 minutes to process the full 300 bills. Systems like Cash Depot's BANK IN A BOX can even process notes even faster, boasting a surprising 300 notes in 30 seconds or less!
This difference in cash counting speed can quickly add up. For instance, if a store has 10 registers, each with 300 notes per shift. With single-note acceptors, that's 5.8 hours per day spent inserting cash into the smart safe. With multi-note acceptors, it's only 1.3 hours - a savings of over 4.5 hours per day, or nearly 32 hours per week.
Smart safes don't sort out your store operating cash from your store deposit, either. That has to be pulled out before the money is inserted into the smart safe. Cash recyclers handle this automatically, providing a comprehensive cash management solution.
Adding cash recycling technology to your smart safe can save even more money in the long term. While smart safes prepare bank deposits, they don't help with other register preparation needs such as start-of-shift register cash or other funds throughout the day.
A cash recycler like BANK IN A BOX, however, can account for all of the counting, sorting, and storage of deposits while also providing for and recording the rest of the store's cash needs. These systems can automatically count out opening register funds, break large bills, and provide additional register funding throughout the day – all while keeping by-register records of each transaction. On average, these additional features can save another 316 minutes per week.
In total, the most advanced smart safes with cash recycling technology can save around 870 minutes per week - that's nearly 60 hours per month and over $460 in weekly labor savings.
So, do smart safes really save time?
Yes, smart safes can provide significant time and cost savings for stores and businesses struggling with the burden of manual cash management. However, the extent of those savings depends on the specific features and capabilities of the cash management system.
Investing in smart safes with multi-note acceptors and cash recycling capabilities can maximize time and cost savings, freeing up your staff to focus on more important tasks and boosting your bottom line. Just be sure to do your research and select a cash management solution that truly meets your needs.
Interested to know how much money the BANK IN A BOX smart safe and cash recycling system could save you? Check out our savings estimator here!
TLDR: Smart safes boast a big game when it comes to saving labor hours and costs on cash management. But how much time and money you save depends heavily on the products and features you choose.
