US 5,695,038 AGranted

Drop safe

AssigneeBrink's Incorporated

InventorsJasper Newton Keith, III, William L. Gunn, William D. Heath, Jr., John F. G. Angove

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Abstract

A drop safe for receiving and temporarily storing currency or other valuables from a cash register or point-of-sale terminal. The drop safe uses bill acceptors to transfer cash into sealed cassettes within the safe. An envelope drop assembly allows transferring into the safe currency or non-cash items not accepted by the acceptor. The drop safe door has a door control assembly including a gas spring to counterbalance the weight of the door for controlled movement during opening. The door is locked by a pair of door bolts linked to a lock cam, which is secured by a dead bolt against movement. An electronic control unlocks the dead bolt in response to entry of correct numbers, allowing a rotary dial of the outside of the safe to move the lock cam and release the door bolts. The drop safe includes a processor programmed to control the unlocking operation and to maintain and produce various reports of deposits into the safe, enabling easy correlation of those deposits with business-day operation of the drop safe.

Claims7

Dependent claims

A drop safe for receiving funds deposited into the safe at various times throughout collection periods that may include parts of at least one predefined business day not coincident with any collection period, comprising:

a housing defining an interior region;
apparatus associated with the housing and operative to receive funds tendered outside the housing and transfer the tendered funds into the interior region;
means associated with the safe for storing signals identifying the date and the amount of each deposit into the safe;
means operative to access the interior region for removing the funds deposited into the safe;
and
means responsive to the identifying signals and operative upon removal of the deposits at the end of a collection period to sum, for each partial business day and complete business day during the collection period, the amounts deposited into the safe for each such business day during the collection period and produce a closing content report of said sums, so that the aggregate of the partial and complete business day sums equals the total amount deposited in the safe during the collection period,
whereby the total amount deposited for a business day covering portions of plural collection periods is determinable from the sums for the portions of that business day on the closing content reports for the plural collection periods.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.