Guides
Daily operating checklist for an ATM route business
A daily operating checklist for an ATM route business covers load prep, seal logging, the machine visit, incident call order, and closing the day's books.
What to take away
- The day runs in one sequenceload preparation, the road, the machine, the exception path, the close.
- Seal numbers are written down before the bag leaves the room, not after the load.
- Every visit ends with a test transaction completed at the terminal, not a balance check from the office.
- An incident follows a call order you wrote on a calm day, not a decision you make at the machine.
- Nothing is closed until machine totals, your counts and the processor report agree or the difference has a name and a date against it.
Below is the day in order, written to be worked through rather than read. Cross out the steps your model does not use on your own paper copy. Do not skip one silently, because the step you skip is the one nobody can reconstruct later.
Before the vehicle moves
- Read the monitoring queue. Write down three listsmachines under their reorder level, machines reporting a fault, and machines whose transaction count moved in a way you cannot explain.
- Build the run from those lists, then add any site you have not stood in front of inside your own inspection interval.
- Set the load for each machine from its own dispense rate and the days until you return. Get the amount authorized by a second signature where your operation allows one.
- Count the cash, seal it, and write the seal numbers into the log before the bag leaves the room. A seal number recorded after the fact proves nothing.
- Check the vehiclefuel, receipt paper, the spares the day might need, and that nothing on the outside says what is inside.
- Give one named person your route and your expected finish time. Do this on the days it feels pointless, because those are the days it is not.
On the road
On-site safety decision
Does anything at the site feel wrong?
Leave, do not assess from doorway
Park visible, carry only what stop needs
- Change your timing and your stop order from the last run at the sites where you are most exposed.
- Park where the vehicle stays in sight and you are not blocked in.
- Carry only what the stop needs. Everything else stays secured and out of view.
- If a site feels wrong, leave. Do not talk yourself into it from the doorway, and do not return alone.
At the machine
At the machine sequence
- Look at site before machine
- Inspect fascia and card reader
- Read and record totals before changes
- Open, count residual, load, record
- Check paper, dispenser, screen, keypad
- Test transaction end to end
- Speak to counter, log visit
- Read the site before the machinelighting, obstructions, anything stacked against the fascia, anything that moved since your last visit.
- Check the card reader and the fascia for anything that does not belong. You need to know what your terminals look like well enough to spot a difference in a few seconds.
- Pull the machine totals and record them before you change anything.
- Open the machine, count the residual cash, load, and write both numbers down at the terminal. Numbers reconstructed from memory at the end of the day are guesses.
- While it is open, check receipt paper, the dispenser, the screen and the keypad.
- Run a transaction end to end at the terminal before you drive away. Insert a card, take cash, confirm the receipt prints and the balance updates.
- Spend thirty seconds with whoever is behind the counter. Ask whether the machine was out, whether anyone complained, and whether anything about the site changed.
- Log the visitarrival, departure, faults found, parts used, and what the venue told you.
When something is wrong
- A fault you can fix, you fix, and you record what you did and which part went in.
- A fault you cannot fix gets a ticket, an estimated return date, and a message to the host before the host calls you.
- A suspected skimming device, a tamper or an attack ends the routine. Work your incident call order instead of deciding in the moment, and preserve everything, including the machine's own records. What that order should contain, and who to notify, is set out in the compliance overview.
- An unexplained cash difference is logged the same day with the machine, the date and the amount, and assigned to a person with a due date.
Closing the day
- Reconcile the same day. Machine totals against your counts against the processor report.
- Close or explain every difference from the previous day before you open today's.
- Update the monitoring notes so tomorrow's list starts from something true.
- File the visit logs and the seal records where someone other than you can find them.
- Write down what made the day slower than it should have been. Read that list monthly; it is where the real fixes come from.
Weekly, on top of the day
Make one host call that is not about a problem. A location that hears from you only when something breaks starts treating you as a cost, and the fix is covered in the material on keeping locations.
Check that the systems holding your monitoring, reports and records are patched and backed up. The NIST small business quick-start guides are a workable starting point for an operation your size.
Banking and reporting sit around the day rather than inside it. The account relationship is reviewed in the risk-based way described in the FinCEN statement on independent ATM operators.
Keeping the procedure current
Date the document and keep one version. When a step changes, change it here and tell anyone else who works the route. A procedure that lives only in your head cannot cover for you on a bad morning.
Review the whole sequence whenever the route changes size. The pressures at six machines are not the pressures at twenty, and the material on growing a route sets out where those change. The wider rhythm this day sits inside is in the operations and workflow guide.
Common questions
Is this too much for a one-person route?
The list reads longer than it works. Most of it is what a careful operator already does, written down so it still happens on the day you are tired or short-staffed. The parts that feel excessive are the parts that protect you.
Which steps can be dropped when time is short?
None of steps 3 through 6, and none of 21 through 24. Those cover the cash, the seal record, the incident path and the reconciliation, which are the four things that make a bad day explainable. Drop a site from the run instead.
Who signs this off?
You do, by name and date. Anyone else who works the route signs the sections they perform. If a step is signed by nobody, assume it is not happening.
What if my processor report does not match my count?
Log the difference the same day with the machine, the date and the amount, and give it to a named person with a due date. Do not carry an unexplained gap into the next day's close, because two open gaps are far harder to trace than one.
