The goal of any restaurant is to improve efficiencies, boost productivity, and ultimately increase profitability. When customers pay for their meals in cash, it often adds a few extra layers of complexity—and risk.
The traditional floor safe of yesteryear has now evolved into a high-tech smart safe that comes with several benefits to help owners, managers, and employees save time by reducing many manual cash management processes that are highly prone to theft and human error.
Here are just a few of the many benefits that restaurants across the country are realizing when they invest in a smart safe:
Tracking and Accountability
Even the best cash management plans have one fatal flaw: they rely on manual processes that can lead to human error and internal theft. By implementing a smart safe into a cash management plan, it helps increase accountability —from the moment a cashier accepts a $20 bill to the second it’s safely deposited into a bank account.
Employees and managers have a unique ID that allows them to interact with the smart safe and perform their job duties. This creates a paper trail and an auditable record of the cash operations performed by every worker. If a situation does occur, it allows the owner or manager to quickly backtrack and verify who did what.
Secure Online Connectivity
Smart safes provide restaurants with the ability to securely connect online to their bank, a central dashboard at the company headquarters, and an armored courier. The secure cloud offers owners a multitude of remote management options, clear visibility to cash-on-hand, and even an app for smartphones and tablets.
This centralized management system is accessible from any internet-capable device and provides easy to use remote administration of reports and users. User-defined email alerts can be set up that adds another layer of security for exception-based management.
Smart safes, such as AMSEC Cash Wizard, also come with a robust push-based API for cash transactions that allow for seamless integration with various reconciliation software and POS systems.
Time-Saving Features
Smart safes help reduce the number of times employees and managers spend handling cash. On average, a single dollar is counted anywhere from five to six times before it reaches the bank vault. The safe will automatically count the money and reduce the manual labor aspect—which is highly prone to human error.
Managers will also spend much less time on money-counts, register closeouts, and reconciling and tracking cash management errors. When integrated with a POS system, a complete paper trail is created that ensures every single dollar is present and accounted for. Each cashier’s till balance will be automatically recorded at the end of the day, thereby freeing them up to perform other job duties.
Decreased Robbery Risk
Smart safes, such as the Cash Wizard from AMSEC, are built exceptionally tough. They include a dead-latch locking mechanism, anti-pry doors, and multi-door configuration with up to four single or bunch note bill readers. A spill-resistant keypad adds another layer of security in a hectic environment that serves up lots of liquid beverages.
When bills are deposited into the safe, it lessens the amount of cash in the till and reduces robbery exposure. Managers will no longer have to make a bank run, which can provide an easy target the second they set foot outside of the restaurant with a bag of cash in hand.
Multi-Location Visibility
Owners of multiple restaurant franchise can have remote multi-location visibility on all aspects of the safe and daily totals. Users can see the daily reconciliation numbers and are provided with complete access to such critical stats as business data, daily reports, and a robust analytics dashboard.
This allows owners to more efficiently manage their locations—instead of having to drive to each one, or spend time talking to their managers over the phone.
A smart safe also provides owners with real-time data. This allows them to respond with more speed and accuracy to managers, vendors, and employees. It helps improve overall operational efficiencies throughout the business. It can also allow users to see where the bottlenecks are occurring, where restaurant supervisors need to respond quicker, or where they need to assign a different employee to a particular job.
Real-time data also helps keep employees motivated as they have visibility on how they are performing and can compare that to management expectations. This enables them to quickly make corrections so that they can better improve their performance standards.
AMSEC Cash Wizard Smart Safes
Smart safes can help improve operational efficiencies, reduce theft and human error, and improve the overall cash management processes of your restaurant. If you’d like to learn more about the value and benefits that the AMSEC line of smart safes can bring to your restaurant, contact us on our website.