Smart Safes and Cash Management

At the 2024 Association for Financial Professionals national conference in the US treasurers from Starbucks, Staples and Inspire Brands (who run a number of US restaurant chains) explained the benefits of using smart safes for cash management.

Less cash environments mean costs on a per-unit basis to account for and secure and transport that cash have risen. The focus of the discussion was about the contribution that smart safes can make.

Advantages of smart safes

Smart safes are now frequently used in concert with ‘provisional credit’, which uses electronic reporting of automated and reconciled local cash counts at each location to give temporary credit for deposited funds even before they’ve been picked up and verified at banks’ cash vaults. The liability for that cash moves from the retailer to the bank or cash in transit company.