A fact of life for any business, especially brick-and-mortar chain and independent retail stores, is the importance of running a tight ship. Each must weigh constant sales revenue generation against closely monitoring necessary operating efficiency.
In addition to payroll and benefits, inventory purchasing, facility leasing, security and so many other capital outlays, there is the issue of cash management at the store level — where the money gets counted down to the last penny and prepared for bank deposit.
Until recently, banknotes and coins were processed in one of three ways:Â 1) by counting the money by hand, the old-fashioned way, 2) by using manual cash scales which are now becoming obsolete, and 3) by installing fully automated Back Office Recyclers (BOR) with every 
necessary feature wrapped in a very expensive and bulky package.
This gap between old manual methods and newer electronic devices is prompting retail store chains to seek a more efficient way to deal with the vital issue.
One of those popular brand retailers with 2,000 nationwide locations and 10,000 employees went to the industry’s largest trade show, the National Retail Federation, where it met a representative from Cassida Pro, a San Diego-based manufacturer and marketer of a wide variety of both standard and customized cash counters for banks, government, casinos and retail applications.
According to Matthew Holt, Cassida Pro’s director of North American partnerships and operations, the discount department store could not justify the approximately $150,000 investment for a BOR in all of its stores.
Holt learned the retailer had an annual average 100 percent employee turnover rate in its cash rooms where employees were spending about three hours daily on overtime, a major drain on payroll.
After hearing about the retailer’s cash-counting woes, Holt explained how Cassida Pro’s Split Recycler system could solve them all while providing 80 percent of the features contained in a Back Office Recycler at only seven percent of its cost – about $7,000.
After a 25-store year-long trial of the Cassida Pro Split Recycler, it was immediately apparent that the improvements brought on by Cassida’s solution were welcomed by the employees who adapted to the on-screen step-driven instructions and user-friendly process.
For management, the new system more than met its expectations by performing every required task, including: 
- Automatic change orders
- Automatic deposit pickup
- Data-driven cash forecasting
- Easy corporate visibility of cash operations
- Increased accuracy
- Counterfeit detection
- Reduced cash shrinkage
- Remote monitoring & full cash transparency
- Empowering the retail chain to process 10 million notes and five million coins each day
Another factor that sealed the deal for the management team was the system’s maintenance package. To minimize downtime and on-site maintenance costs, Cassida’s Depot service quickly swaps out the module needing replacement as soon as the next day.
Holt said the purchasing decision also considered cost factors surrounding store relocations or closures. Unlike Big Box stores like Costco or Walmart, for instance, where the 2,000-pound BORs are housed in specially-built permanent cash rooms and vault enclosures, his customers typically have stores in as-is leased retail space.
The Split Recycler is lightweight, can be installed in upstairs offices and does not require the costly process of equipment removal, delivery, installation and security concerns.
Following the successful 25-store trial, the retailer ordered the new Cassida solution for all its 2,000 stores.
