The True Costs of Manual Cash Management

How a Cash Management Solution Saves Businesses Time and Money

There are certain recurring expenses that every business owner or manager expects, like the costs associated with inventory, payroll, and utility bills. But hidden costs can negatively impact businesses’ cash flows and bottom lines. The costs of managing cash manually, for example, can quickly add up. Here’s a breakdown of just how much cash management costs businesses without an automated solution, and how much those costs could change with a solution like Brink’s Complete.

What is the cost of cash management?

That depends on several factors, like the size of a business and how much cash it takes in. But due to costs associated with time and labor, businesses of all sizes that rely on their employees to count cash, bundle it, drop it off at the bank, and later reconcile it spend more time and money than they might realize. For example, data compiled by Brink’s shows that on average, businesses that take in low volumes of cash ($10,000 a month or lower) and don’t use a cash pickup service spends nearly 6% of their monthly cash intake on costs of managing and handling cash. For businesses with medium volumes of cash ($20,000 a month), that number is 3.09%, and for businesses with high cash volumes of cash, ($30,000 a month) it’s 3.26%.¹

Is there a way to lower the costs of cash management?

Savings can begin with Brink’s Complete, a single, end-to-end solution that includes the hardware, software, and service merchants need to reduce the hassles and costs of managing cash. It allows employees to drop cash into an in-store smart safe instead of having to deposit cash at the bank. Once the cash is secured inside the device, the business gets next-business-day advance credit to the bank account of their choice without spending additional money on traditional bank deposit fees. Brink’s Complete reduces the time employees spend handling cash and provides detailed insights into the business’s cash activity (via a customer portal called 24SEVEN). Additionally, businesses can order change with this solution and have it delivered right to their stores.  

While these benefits are great, it’s the numbers that say it all and bring the true value of Brink’s Complete into focus. With this solution, a business with low volumes of cash can lower its monthly spend on cash management and handling by as much as 22%.² For businesses with medium and large cash intakes, that number increases to as much as 29% and 49%, respectively.³

A look at labor costs

Counting cash, bundling it, and hauling it to the bank to be deposited requires a lot of labor. Those costs add up, especially given the fact that labor costs are on the rise: in the U.S., for example, labor costs increased 5.1% from June 2021 to June 2022,⁴ and in the European Union, hourly wages and salaries went up by 4.5% from 2021 to 2022.⁵ In Canada, hourly wages rose 5.3% from the second quarter of 2021 to 2022.⁶

Merchants that don’t use an automated cash management solution and transport cash deposits to the bank on their own are spending quite a bit on labor. For these merchants that take in low volumes of cash, an estimated 5.37% of their monthly cash intake, on average, is spent on labor associated with preparing and taking deposits to the bank.⁷ For businesses with medium volumes of cash, that number is an estimated 2.67%, and for businesses with high cash volumes of cash, it’s 1.87%.⁸

With Brink’s Complete, however, merchants with low volumes of cash can lower the labor costs involved with cash management and handling by as much as 16% so that cash-related labor costs make up just 2.11% of cash taken in each month.⁹ For merchants that take in medium amounts of cash, these costs can be reduced by as much as 31%, on average, so that cash-related labor costs are 0.66% of cash taken in per month. And for merchants that take in large amounts of cash, these costs can be cut by as much as 52%, meaning cash-related labor costs represent 0.35% of monthly cash intake.¹⁰

True costs of cash: hours spent

No matter what kind of business they work for, employees are usually in charge of multiple tasks during any given shift. These may include ringing up customers, stocking shelves, ordering inventory, serving customers, and fielding customer questions and complaints. Duties like these are important and time-consuming, but so is handling cash, which eats into employees’ valuable time on the clock when done manually.

For businesses that take in low amounts of cash and manage it manually, employees spend an average of 15 hours on cash management and cash-related tasks.¹¹ For businesses with medium and high cash volumes, employees spend about 30 hours and 48 hours on cash-related tasks, respectively.¹² Brink’s Complete can help reduce those hours by as much as 61% for businesses with low cash volumes, 75% for businesses with medium cash volumes, and 85% with high cash volumes.¹³ By reducing the amount of time spent on cash, employees could spend time prioritizing their other responsibilities.

How do you manage cash?

If your business is currently managing cash without an automated solution, consider Brink’s Complete and how much time and money it could help you save. It doesn’t get better than eliminating unnecessary bank trips and possibly reducing traditional bank deposit fees, dropping cash into an in-store smart safe, getting next-day advance credit for that cash, and getting valuable cash insights to help you make business decisions.

Interested in learning more about how Brink’s Complete works? Let’s chat.

[1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13] All calculations are estimates based on Brink’s research and customer data and may vary.

[4] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/eci.nr0.htm   

[5] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/14698153/3-15092022-BP-EN.pdf/d5da5db3-aca7-a087-07ba-4393501ccd22

[6] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220920/dq220920b-eng.htm?CMP=mstatcan

[11, 12] Brink’s-compiled data