Total sales summing device for a vending machine

Abstract

An up-down counter of a vending machine performs upcounting and downcounting in accordance with deposition and pay-out of coins and collection of a vend price, thereby producing a balance of an amount of deposited coins. The count of this up-down counter is indicated by a money amount indicator. A total sales summing device introduces, through a connector, money amount indication data provided from the up-down counter to the money amount indicator and performs a sales amount summing processing in accordance with this money amount indication data. This summing device detects the increment and decrement of the money amount indication data, performs upcounting and downcounting in response to this increment and decrement and prohibits downcounting of the decrement in the money amount indication data when the decrement has been caused by collection of the vend price. By virtue of the count prohibition control the difference between the amount of the deposited coins and the paid out coins, i.e., the price of the vended article, is left whereby summing of the sales amount is made possible. In a case where the vending machine has a plurality of article dispensing columns, a sales amount may be summed up for each column by receiving a vend mode signal representing one of the columns which has entered a vend mode.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.