Vending Operator Tools Money Handling Tips and tools to get your money from the vending machine to the bank:

• Inventory money from each machine using money bags
• Money goes into the truck
• Decide on a truck security plan
• Count money by purchasing a counter for coins and bills
• Talk to your bank about moving money from your counter to the bank about their requirements

 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Tom Shivers: It’s Tom with the Vending Business Show and I’m here again with Larry Towner a vending business consultant with Service Group International and we’re continuing this series on vending business tools. So which tool are we talking about today Larry?

Larry Towner,: Let’s talk about Vending Operator Tools money handling and how you handle your money and what you’re gonna need to actually get your money from the machine to the bank.

Tom Shivers: Okay.

Larry Towner,: So of course we all know that money just magically, they put the money in and the best part of the vending business is actually counting the money, at least that’s what I was always led to believe. But you do find that counting money tends to be not all that much fun when you do large quantities of it and it starts to actually become kinda drudgery in a job.

Larry Towner,: So what we’re gonna give you are some tips here onVending Operator Tools Handling Money and how to handle your money and make it efficient and make it fast. From the machines we always like to, and we found in our research around and talking to vendors around the company, that it’s best to inventory money from each machine so you’re going to need to have some kind of a system where you pick up money from each machine which means you’re gonna need a container to carry money from each machine. There’s a variety of money bags that are available out there. There are zippered bags, there are canvas bags, there are all kinds of different containers. I know one guy that uses paper bags and uses them very effectively, buys lunch bags and that’s what he uses. He writes the account on the outside, the machine number on the outside of the bag, puts the money in it, sticks it in his box. Works great for him, everybody’s got a different system but you’re gonna need a individual way to handle money from each machine that you get out there in the world.

Larry Towner,: So with that again, there’s all kinds of different bags, zipper bags and things like that. Money needs to go into the truck. There’s a couple of different things, money of course is a very, what do we wanna say, a highly desired item and some of the bad guys might try to steal it from you so from a security standpoint you’re gonna have to have some kind of system where you can make your money somewhat secure or make it completely secure. There’s safes available, there’s all kinds of things that you can do. There’s Deceit, we placed our money all around the trucks in different locations so that if somebody did break into a truck and wanted to steal the money from us, they would get some of it but not all of it.

Larry Towner,: How you handle that is your business, but I want you to be cognizant of the fact that that kind of thing happens out there. So you get your money and you get it back into your office or your warehouse or wherever it is that you handle your money. Where do you go from there? A couple of things, you’re gonna need some kind of a mechanical counter for both coin and for bills.

Larry Towner,: There’s many many different kinds of coin counters that are available. Anything from hand rail counter systems that you crank by hand to fully electronic visions where you just poor the bag in and it sorts and separates and gives you a total, knows exactly what you’ve got in every different denomination. These are fantastic tools. You’re going to have to have one.

Larry Towner,: Plenty different manufactures of this equipment out there, do a little research on the internet and expect to spend some money. The least expensive ones you’re gonna find are gonna be about $500, and that’s in a used situation for a rail sorter, you’re gonna find something in about the $500 range that’s worth having I wanna say.

Larry Towner,: And the most expensive side you can spend into the $20,000 range to get a really really good, new coin counter that’ll do six, 7,000 coins a minute and sort and separate and give you very low rates. Starting off obviously, gonna start on the lower end of that but eventually you’ll find you’re gonna need to move up into better things. Great problems to have.

Larry Towner,: Same thing with bill counters. You can go down to the local warehouse club and you can buy yourself a bill counter that will work. It will count all of your bills and all it does is what they call piece counting, it does no counterfeit detection and it will not pick up anything that has to do with if you’ve got a $5 bill in there it does not sort and separate out the five’s. That’s about 200 bucks. You can go up to almost an unlimited amount of money depending on speed and how much counterfeit detection they have and also how much sort and separates because there’s bill counters out there that’ll separate your fives off into a different bin, your 10s, your 20s, your 50s, all of that exists out there. Most vendors usually only handle fives and ones but if you’re dealing with a lot of fives you’re gonna wanna have something that’ll automatically sort out the fives or you’re gonna have to do it by hand. Because you really don’t wanna count a five dollar bill as a one dollar bill. It’s a pretty big loss.

Larry Towner,: Really important, lots of research to do on that kind of stuff and many many different manufactures of this kind of equipment but you’re gonna have to have one. Getting money from your coin counters to the bank. How do you move your money from the counter to the bank? Coin is very very heavy. You’re gonna need … You need to talk to your bank. You need to see what their requirements are. My bank would take money in federal reserve bags so we took a $1,000 worth of quarters at one time and that weighed 52 pounds. Our bags actually came from the bank, they supplied us with the bags, our coin counter loaded bulk into those bags and we took whole bags down to the bank.

Larry Towner,: There’s other systems that are available. They’re starting to do partial bags now because of your bank. It depends on how you wanna do it but all of these are issues that you’re gonna have to worry about and going to the bank with a hand truck having to carry several thousands dollars is always a very fun and exciting experience. Remember folks keep it safe, make sure your people are aware they become a target. Don’t go at the same time. We’ll do a show on security, on basic security measures coming up in the future.

Larry Towner,: Tom do you have any questions on Vending Operator Tools Money Handling?

Tom Shivers: Did your equipment help you sort these out beforehand or no?

Larry Towner,: Yes, you’re gonna want a machine that does what’s called sort and separate. Meaning it takes the various different coins, if you dump a bag of mixed coin in there it splits it out in to each individual bag. There’s a couple of different designs that do that. One’s called a rail sorter where the coin runs down a rail and it falls in by size because coins are all different sizes and that works really well. The other is an actual spinning system and that does the same thing only it does it on a [inaudible 00:06:39] and it’s a lot faster.

Larry Towner,: But again, your research on the internet will show you the different kinds. There’s a big variation on cost on all of these different programs so it all depends on your budget also.

Tom Shivers: All right, great. Thanks Larry. If you want more good vending business tips like these then be sure to subscribe. And you’ve been watching Vending Operator Tools Handling Money at  the Vending Business Show, a publication of A&M equipment sales.