Guides
Stocking an ATM route business: inventory and suppliers
A stock and cash custody checklist for ATM route owners on four clocks: every load, weekly reconciliation, monthly supply, quarterly custody and records.
What to take away
- Stocking an ATM route is custody control before it is inventory control. The question is never only how much, it is who touched it and what proves it.
- Run the checks on four clocksevery load, every week, every month, every quarter. Mixing them is how differences go unnoticed.
- A difference is investigated on the day it appears. A difference carried forward is a difference you will never explain.
- One person doing every step from bank to cassette to reconciliation is the arrangement every review will criticize, and rightly.
- Consumables and parts get the same discipline, at lower intensity, because their failure costs downtime rather than money.
Stocking an ATM route business means running two inventories: cash, and everything that touches it. Paper, seals, rollers, keypads and cleaning cards run out on their own clocks.
The checklist below is written to be worked through, not read. Print it or keep it in whatever app your team uses.
Where a cash-in-transit partner does the load, the same checks still apply. You are checking their record against yours.
Before you leave: the load preparation check
Load preparation check
- Load calculated from machine's dispense record
- Authorization written down with date
- Cash counted and recorded before sealing
- Tamper-evident bags and seals logged
- Consumables loaded for the visit
- Someone knows route and return time
- Cash was ordered in the denominations the cassette dispenses, usually $20 bills on a retail machine, through your bank or the FedCash order your bank places.
- Each load sat in a numbered tamper-evident bag, sealed in front of a second person, with the seal number written on the load ticket.
- Cassette keys, spare receipt rolls, cleaning cards and the seal log went on the van before the vault door closed.
At the machine: the load and count check
- The seal on the bag matched the number logged before it was opened.
- The machine's own totals were read and recorded before anything was changed.
- Residual cash in the cassette was counted, not estimated.
- The new load was counted into the cassette, and the count was recorded on the spot.
- The receipt paper, card reader and dispenser were checked while the machine was open.
- Anything unusual about the machine or its surroundings was written down, including things you were not sure about.
Weekly: the reconciliation check
Weekly reconciliation check
- Machine totals compared to processor report
- Dispensed figure compared to settlement received
- Every difference listed with machine, date, amount
- Each difference assigned to a person with date
- Previous week's differences closed or explained
- Machines that ran empty noted with days early
- Machine totals from every site were tied to the processor's settlement report.
- Cash in the vault, cash in the machines and cash with the armored carrier were added up and compared to the bank balance.
- Every difference was assigned to a cause and a name on the day it appeared.
Switch Commerce, Columbus Data Services and Payment Alliance International, part of Corpay, drive independent ATM portfolios and issue the settlement file you reconcile against. NCR Atleos, which absorbed Cardtronics, does the same for larger routes.
Monthly: the stock and supply check
Monthly stock and supply check
- Consumable holdings counted against reorder points
- Reorder points compared to current route size
- Spare parts checked against last three months' faults
- Obsolete or unusable stock written off
- Supplier lead times compared to actual performance
- Total cash committed recalculated against working capital
- Receipt and journal paper counted3 1/8 inch thermal rolls, with a two-month buffer on hand.
- Card reader cleaning cards restocked. KICTeam Waffletechnology cards typically cost $30 to $60 for a box of 25.
- Pick rollers, dispenser belts and shutters checked against the error log. Single parts run $15 to $60; a rebuilt dispenser runs into four figures.
- Numbered bag seals reordered. Seals from TydenBrooks and similar makers typically cost $0.30 to $1 each in boxes of 1,000.
- The currency counter cleaned and checked. Glory Global Solutions machines misread a load when the sensors are dusty, and a misread is a difference you have to explain.
- Supplier lead times were compared against what actually happened, using the supplier review method.
Parts come from the maker first. Diebold Nixdorf, NCR Atleos, Hyosung Innovue, Genmega and Triton Systems each sell cassettes, rollers, belts and keypads for their own machines.
Cennox supplies parts and field service across several brands. The National ATM Council and the ATM Industry Association publish operator guidance and member directories, worth checking before a new supplier gets a load schedule.
A Genmega G2500 or Hyosung Halo II lobby machine typically sells for $2,000 to $3,500 new. A Diebold Nixdorf DN Series or NCR SelfServ through-the-wall unit typically runs $8,000 to $20,000 before installation.
Vault cash and currency orders run through your bank. Armored delivery comes from Brink's, Loomis or GardaWorld, and a scheduled cash-in-transit stop typically costs $25 to $60 per visit.
Quarterly: the custody and records check
Quarterly custody and records check
- Keyholder and load authorizer list current
- No single person prepares, transports, loads and reconciles
- Load and count records complete and stored
- Records match IRS retention expectations
- Reporting duties to processor, bank or regulator met
- Bank has what it needs for due diligence
- Records match the retention expectations set out in the IRS guidance on what a business should keep.
- Any reporting duty owed to your processor, your sponsoring bank or a regulator was met, checked against the compliance overview rather than from memory.
- The bank has what it needs to keep assessing the relationship sensibly, which is the process described in the FinCEN statement on due diligence for independent ATM operators.
- Every seal number issued in the quarter was matched to a bag that was opened, logged and accounted for.
How to read a difference
Not every difference is theft, and treating each one as an accusation is how a route loses good people. Work through the ordinary causes first.
Those causes are plain: a miscount at preparation, a note stuck in the cassette, a partial dispense the customer never received, a retract, or a timing mismatch between the machine's day and the processor's.
What matters is the pattern. A scattered difference across machines and people is usually process, and one that follows a single machine is usually hardware. A difference that follows one person is a conversation you hold immediately and document. You prepare for that conversation by never letting the arrangement depend on trust alone.
When the checklist stops fitting
These intervals suit a route one person can service. As the count rises, the weekly reconciliation becomes daily for the busiest sites and the quarterly custody check needs a second pair of eyes. The material on growing a route covers what else changes at that point.
If you find yourself skipping the load preparation check because the route is too busy, the route has outgrown the process rather than the process being too fussy.
Common questions
How much cash should be in each machine?
That is a calculation per machine rather than a rule, and it is worked through in the guide to sizing a cash load. The stock control question is whether the amount you loaded matches the amount you authorized.
What difference is small enough to ignore?
None, as a matter of record. You may decide not to spend an afternoon on a small one, but it still gets logged, because the value of the log is the pattern, not the individual entry.
Do I need software for this?
No. A route of a few machines runs on a well-kept sheet. Software helps when the number of reconciliations per week exceeds what you will reliably do by hand.
QuickBooks Online Simple Start runs about $35 to $40 a month, and small inventory apps such as Sortly start around $50 a month. The classes of stock a system should track are set out in the inventory and sourcing guide.
