GB2305901A - Money handling system - Google Patents

Abstract

A money handling system comprising a tube conveyor system (14) for conveying carriers between money sources (11) and a secure, money storage area (16), and including a sending station (12) including means for reading a unique identification code of a carrier inserted at the sending station and for sending to a control system (13) a signal indicative of dispatch of that carrier from that sending station, the conveyor further including a receiving station (15) having means for extracting the content of a carrier, means (17) at the receiving station for reading the identification of the carrier and for transmitting to said control system a signal indicative of receipt of that, carrier at the receiving station, the system further including a sorting and counting mechanism (18), positioned within said secure storage area, into which the content of said carrier is deposited, and sorting the carrier content and producing at least a total of the value of the money deposited therein.

Description

HANDLING SYSTEM This invention relates to a money handling system primarily, but not exclusively, for use in supermarkets.

The term 'money' is used herein to denote the means of payment which may be accepted by a supermarket cashier, and includes bank notes, cheques, vouchers, credit card slips, and coins.

It is known to link a check-out station of a supermarket with the secure cash office of the supermarket by means of a pneumatic tube conveyor system. Periodically a cashier at a check-out station will manually transfer money from that station's till into a carrier, together with a written or printed note identifying the cashier, and will then dispatch that carrier by way of the pneumatic tube conveyor system to the cash office where it will be received, manually opened, counted, and stored for transport to a bank or other financial institution.The cashier in the secure cash office will separate currency from vouchers and the like, will produce app--opUiate totals, ai-id will key in ihuse totals and the identity of the source check-out station, at her computer terminal for storage in the supermarket's computer system.

It is an object of the present invention to automate, and improve the security of, the known system.

A money handling system in accordance with the present invention comprises a tube conveyor system for conveying carriers between a money source and a remote, secure, money storage area, the conveyor including a sending station adjacent said source and including means for reading a unique identification code of a carrier inserted at the sending station and for sending to a computer control system a signal indicative of dispatch of that uniquely identified carrier from that sending station, the conveyor further including a receiving station in the secure storage area and means associated with the receiving station for extracting the content of a carrier, means at the receiving station for reading the unique identification of the carrier and for transmitting to said computer control system a signal indicative of receipt of that uniquely identified carrier at the receiving station, the system further including, within the secure storage area, a sorting and counting mechanism into which the content of said carrier is deposited, said mechanism sorting the carrier content and producing at least a total of the value of the bank notes deposited therein.

Preferably the counting and sorting mechanism is intended to deal only with paper items, and thus the person charged with the responsibility of loading the carrier at the sending station does not load coinage into the carrier.

Desirably the counting and sorting mechanism produces a total of the bank note value, an analysis of the individual bank note types and a total of the number of non-bank note items.

Preferably said totals produced by the counting and sorting mechanism are supplied thereby to the computer control system accompanied by the unique identification of the relevant carrier.

One example of the invention is illustrated diagrammatically in the accompanying drawing.

Although the invention is not restricted in its use to a supermarket environment, it is convenient to describe an example of the invention in relation to such an environment. Thus in the accompanying drawing reference numeral 11 denotes a supermarket check-out station having a till, and equipped with a pneumatic tube conveyor system sending station 12. The cashier at the station 11 may have a stock of carriers for transmission through the conveyor system or alternatively may signal a central dispatch unit to send a carrier when needed. At intervals which may be fixed times during the working day, but which are more preferably times determined by the amount of money taken by the respective till reaching a predetermined total, the cashier is required to extract money from the till and put it into a carrier of the conveyor system.There will be rules as to the amount of money the cashier will leave in the till to accommodate subsequent transactions. The cashier closes the carrier and introduces it into the send station 12 where a reader forming part of the station 12 reads a unique identification code provided on the carrier. The send station 12 sends a signal to the supermarket central control computer 1 3 including the identification of the carrier being despatched, and the identificatior of ihe standing station 12 from which despatch is taking place. In addition the signal may include the current time and date, and also an identification of the cashier currently working at the station 11.

In a preferred version of the system the cashier will not put coinage into the carrier, although it is contemplated that coin handling could be accommodated in the system if necessary.

The carrier is transported along the tube 14 of the tube conveyor by a flow of air in known manner, and is routed again in known manner to a receiving station 15 which is housed within a secure room, for example a vault, which serves as a cash office 16. The receiving station 15 may be a buffer station which can accept a plurality of carriers arriving, for example, from different check-out stations. When a carrier is received at the station 15 a reader reads its unique identification and transmits a signal indicative of receipt of that particular carrier to the computer 13.

Thus the control computer 13 can correlate the despatch of a particular carrier with the subsequent receipt of the carrier and in the event that the uniquely identified carrier is not received within a predetermined time period can generate an alarm signal.

The carrier identification can be by any one of a number of known means, including a passive semiconductor device embedded within the material of the carrier and energised to produce a signal by the reader, one or more permanent magnet elements embedded in a particular sequence or pattern within the material of the carrier, or a coding capable of optical recognition, for example a bar code engraved in the carrier, painted on the carrier, or printed on a label or plate fixed to the LQllltl.

Within the vault 16 and associated with the receiving station 15 is a mechanism 1 7 for opening a carrier and depositing the content of the carrier into a counting and sorting machine 18 of known form.

The nature of the mechanism 1 7 will be determined by the type of carrier which is chosen. However, a convenient arrangement would be to provide tubular carriers one end region of which is openable to gain access to the interior of the carrier by pivoting the end region relative to the remainder of the carrier about an axis parallel to and offset from the longitudinal axis of the carrier. Such a carrier would be provided internally with a clip for receiving bank notes and other paper money items such as credit card slips, cheques, promotional vouchers and the like. The receiving station 15 would be able to identify for example by an index mark or formation on the carrier whether the carrier is received with its openable end uppermost.The station will include means for rotating the carrier through 1800 (end for end) in the event that the carrier was not received with its openable end uppermost. The mechanism 1 7 will then swing the openable end to its open position for extraction of the carrier contents.

The clip mentioned above for retaining the paper money items within the carrier can either be an integral formation within the carrier, or a separately formed clip structure inserted into the carrier. In either case, it is anticipated that the clip will hold the paper items in a planar stack, the median plane of the stack containing the longitudinal axis of the carrier, and, where the carrier is of circular cross-section, the median plane will also be a diametric plane of the carrier.

The mechanism 1 7 includes a pair of generally parallel fingers which can be open and closed towards and away from one another on opposite sides respectively of the stack of monitory items within the carrier. Thus the fingers 19 can be lowered as a unit into the carrier so as to pass on opposite sides of the stack, can then be moved towards one another to grip the stack, and can then be withdrawn carrying the stack from the clip. However, as the orientation of the plane of the stack, about the longitudinal axis of the carrier, can vary it is necessary, when the carrier is opened, to determine the rotation orientation of the stack, and to ensure that this is matched by the orientation of the fingers 19.Thus when the carrier is opened, or earlier, a sensing device registers an index mark on the upper end of the clip or on the carrier, and compares the position of this index mark with a fixed datum to establish the orientation of the plane of the stack of monetary items. In the event that the orientation does not correspond with the positioning of the fingers 19 then either the carrier is rotated, or alternatively the finger unit 19 is rotated to achieve correlation between the fingers and the plane of the stack.

Generally it will preferred to rotate the finger unit 19 on its mounting, rather than to rotate the carrier. This will be particularly true where the carrier is not actually removed from the station 15 since the additional complexity of providing a mechanism within the station 15 to rotate the carrier about its longitudinal axis could prove to be too complex and expensive.

Having orientated the fingers 19 in relation to the plane of the stack the fingers are introduced into the open end of the carrier to grip the stack of monetary items, and thereafter to withdraw it from the carrier. The fingers 19 are then swung from the position of the station 15 to the sorting and counting mechanism 18 where the stack is released into the inlet hopper of the mechanism 18. A sensing mechanism checks that the carrier is completely empty and that no monetary items have been left behind by the fingers 19. This check could be accomplished by providing a transparent region in the wall of the container through which a light beam is passed to a sensor on the opposite side of the container.

Clearly if monetary items have been left in the container then the passage of the light beam would be obstructed and the failure to illuminate the sensor would be recognised as indicative of items having been left in the carrier. Clearly however other forms of sensor, for example mechanical probes, are possible.

Banks and other similar financial institutions frequently make use of accurate and dependable counting and sorting mechanisms, and it is anticipated that the mechanism 18 will be of the same type. Thus the mechanism 18 sorts the items into bank notes and other paper items, and produces a tally of the number of non-bank note items. This tally can be printed on paper, so as to be left with the non-bank note items for subsequent manual processing and/or can be reported to the computer 13. In addition the mechanism 18 sorts the bank notes into different denominations, and produces a tally of the denominations and an overall total of the bank note value. This data is also passed to the computer 13 in conjunction with the unique identification code of the relevant carrier.

Thus an accurate and complete audit trail exists within the system in relation to the money introduced into the carrier at the station 11.

The mechanism 18 can bundle the bank notes in any convenient manner suitable for further handling, and transport to a bank, for example, il-le notes could be loaded into cassettes of the kind used in bank note dispensing machines.

The carrier received by the station 15 can, after emptying, be closed and returned by the conveyor to the sending station 12 from which it came, or can be returned to a different sending station, or can be lifted from the station 1 5 and deposited in a collection area for manual return to the check out stations 11. It will be recognised that it does not matter which of these options is chosen since the unique carrier identification is read each time the carrier is despatched from a sending station, and at that time its identification code is linked to the identification code of the station from which it is being sent.

Although the accompanying drawing shows only a single till station 11 it is to be understood that other till stations of the supermarket will be similarly electronically and pneumatically linked to the station 15, there being a routing device in the conveyor system for routing carriers along the appropriate tubes between the inlet/outlet tube of the station 15 and the linked stations 11.

Claims (5)

1. A money handling system comprising a tube conveyor system for conveying carriers between a money source and a remote, secure, money storage area, the conveyor including a sending station adjacent said source and including means for reading a unique identification code of a carrier inserted at the sending station and for sending to a control system a signal indicative of dispatch of that uniquely identified carrier from that sending station, the conveyor further including a receiving station in the secure storage area and means associated with the receiving station for extracting the content of a carrier, means at the receiving station for reading the unique identification of the carrier and for transmitting to said computer control system a signal indicative of receipt of that uniquely identified carrier at the receiving station, the money handling system further including a sorting and counting mechanism, positioned in use within said secure storage area, into which the content of said carrier is deposited, said sorting and counting mechanism sorting the carrier content and producing at least a total of the value of the bank notes deposited therein.

2. A money handling system as claimed in Claim 1, wherein said counting and sorting mechanism is intended to deal only with paper items.

3. A money handling system as claimed in Claim 1 or Claim 2, wherein said counting and sorting mechanism produces a total of the bank note value, an analysis of the individual bank note types and a total of the number of non-bank note items.

4. A money handling system as claimed in Claim 3, wherein said totals produced by the counting and sorting mechanism are supplied thereby to the computer control system accompanied by the unique identification of the relevant carrier.

5. A money handling system substantially as hereinbefore described with reference to the accompanying drawing.