Cash Control for Vending and Coffee Machines

With contactless payments, life is easy – log into Vendon Cloud, watch sales roll in, and receive a daily payout. But that's still quite far from today's reality. The majority of vending and coffee machines still accept cash payments, which makes a robust cash control solution an absolute necessity. For many operators, this is the top priority, as handling cash does not stop at making sure that the coin changer has enough change.

Luckily, Vendon IoT, telemetry, and payment solutions can help you track the cash flow of your machines to the last cent and take care of all of your cash control needs.

Track cash levels in each machine

In most cases, it's enough to know that the machine is doing fine. But in case you need to drill into the cash situation in each machine, Vendon makes it very easy.

• For each machine account, you get a complete picture of how much money the machine has at the moment. We're not talking just total values, but the number and type of bills in the stacker, and the value of coins in the cashbox, split by the nominal value.
• To make the coin changer smarter, you can easily set up reference values – what's the maximum number of coins the tube can have, and what's your critical level. In case the critical level is reached, an alert will be triggered. In essence, this nifty feature can help you make sure your machines never run out of change.

Optimize the encashment process

The encashment can turn out to be a whole ordeal since there are multiple steps involved – visit the machine, empty the cashbox and the bill stacker, return to the office, count the money and note the difference. 

Vendon is here to assist you every step of the way.

• When you collect cash from the machine, just press one button to register the cash collection. This, in turn, will create an encashment report automatically, easily accessible on Vendon Cloud. The encashment report contains audit values registered between two cash collections.

• Using the Vendon Mobile app, you can scan the money bag number that now stores cash from the cashbox and the bill stacker. We will take care of mapping the number to the particular cash collection. That way, you can always know which money bag came from which machine.

• When the money is actually counted at the office, open the Encashment report and input the actual values – the system will calculate the difference and highlight any discrepancies. That way, everything is accounted for.

Operate cash control routes

With each sale, the worth of your vending or coffee machine increases, as it can generate hundreds of euros in revenue within a single week. Therefore, leaving the coins and bills out there to brew for long might not be the best decision.

Our route planning tool can help you with this as well – create routes based on the cashbox value to visit machines where the total cash value exceeds a certain amount. If you collect cash at regular intervals regardless of the total value, simply tack on an encashment task to your refill route. For an even more efficient visit, get a list of machines with low tube levels and prepare refill coins in the right amount before the refiller is on his or her way.

Monitor all payment devices

One of the main questions on any operator's mind is: Are my machines able to sell? If the coin changer is full of change but out of order, expect to see a zero in your sales reports. With  Vendon telemetry solutions, you're automatically in a better position.

Head to Machine monitoring, and you'll see if there's any problem with the coin changer or the bill validator, as their statuses are reported in real-time. Even better, set up notifications to get an alert in case there's something wrong, and dispatch a technician to the location immediately.

You'll be in the know about any temporary issues as well, for instance, a coin jam, or a double arrival, or an interruption in the communication between the machine and the payment device. Noticing this happening frequently? Perhaps it's worth taking a closer look at the device itself.

Generate detailed reports

For a daily overview of the cash situation, turn to Cash log – this report will give you the essential numbers for each machine since the previous cash collection. A quick look will tell you that if there's an empty cashbox or an issue with the available change.

When it comes to cash collection reports, they tell you everything about the cash going in and cash going out: from the number and value of sales to the cash dispensed as change, cashless recharge, the value of tubes, coin refill values, and more. You can always download these reports and submit them to the tax office or the accounting department, or use our APIs to create a direct integration with your ERP system. The report can be automatically sent to a dedicated e-mail address right after encashment is registered as well.

Combine this with a sales report that covers all transactions between two cash collections, and you have a complete cash control solution. And that can only mean one thing – you are well on your way to success.

Start optimizing your vending or coffee business today and boost your revenue – get in touch with us at  grow@vendon.net or your local distributor.