Pro Cash Drawer

A petty cash drawer is essentially a small money drawer that functions as both a safe and a storage tin for storing receipts, cash, and other items accumulated during a day of trade. It allows you quick access to help you process sales, while being secure enough to be left without risk of theft.

A smart cash drawer box is an electronic safe that connects to your cashier's till to speed up sales and store your physical currency and receipts.

This may come in the form of a USB cash drawer with a cash drawer cable, or even a WiFi-enabled cash drawer (though here at Epos Now, we think USB is the safest way to go!).

Most of the time, these devices will be referred to as cash drawers, but you may also here them called cash trays, cash tills, cash register till or cash till drawer (or any variation of these words). But they're all referring to the same thing: the safety box used in transactions to stock cash, details of withdrawals and receipts.

The right amount of cash to be stored in your cash drawer during and after trading is an important consideration in any business. For instance, businesses with a lower cash-to-card ratio can consider having a lower float (opening/default amount) than cash heavy businesses that may risk running out of notes or change during sales.

People who trade more on card may maintain a small cash drawer without accumulating too much cash, but that won't work for other businesses. That's why it's worth considering returning your register to the float level during the day if there's too much cash behind the bar, moving the money to a safe or even going straight to the bank.

Large amounts of cash remain one of the bigger security risks to businesses, making it important for retailers, restaurants and all businesses to adapt and learn from these situations to reduce risk.

The first order of trade for any business is to setup an efficient point of sale system. Cash drawers have many of the key features businesses are looking for:

• Placing money or receipts in a cash tray provides a quick method of finishing a transaction, keeping queues short and boosting efficiency. Think: process the cart, take payment, open and close the cash drawer, "next customer please!"

• Businesses using cash drawers massively boost security by storing cash, receipts, and important data in a locked safe.

• Cash drawers provide a practical way not only of storing money, but of communicating key financial transactions from the sales clerk to management. For instance, petty cash drawers or notes about, say, sales tax don't just need to be processed through the POS terminal (which will document this). They can be physically evidenced by placing a receipt in the media slot (the slot in the cash drawer at the back that isn't reserved for notes)