Making Cash Drawer Integration Easier

There's good news for VARs when it comes to selling cash drawers. Interfaces and standards are making it easier to integrate cash drawers in PC-based point of sale (POS) systems. The benefits to VARs include added flexibility in configuring POS systems and more options in choosing POS peripherals.

Built-in Interface Eases Integration
"The cash drawer plays an important role in connecting POS peripherals to one another," says Richard Koll, manager of technical support for Logic Controls (New Hyde Park, NY). Koll says cash drawers designed with multiple interfaces (serial, parallel, and printer-driven) offer VARs the ability to add more peripheral devices than the standard PC has ports. The privately-held company manufactures POS hardware, including cash drawers, pole displays, magnetic stripe readers and keyboards.

"The last thing you want to do is open a PC to add extra equipment," says Koll. Using a cash drawer with multiple built-in interfaces eliminates opening the PC. "Many people think of the cash drawer as a dead-end device," says Koll. "But, because a VAR uses a drawer with pass-through capabilities, that's simply not the case." He points out that peripherals from several vendors can be daisy chained to the cash drawer. This solves the problem of not having enough available ports for all the retail peripherals, says Koll.

Plug-and-Play With USB And OPOS
"Standards are making it easier for VARs to select the right POS peripherals for their customers," says Andrew Lamb, marketing manager for M-S Cash Drawer Co. USB (universal serial bus) and OPOS (object linking and embedding for retail POS) are two types of standards affecting VARs, according to Lamb.

The USB interface allows up to 128 peripheral devices from different vendors to be daisy chained together off the PC. Many PCs now come standard with the USB interface. "The USB interface makes peripherals more plug-and-play," says Lamb. He predicts that more POS peripherals will be manufactured with a USB interface early next year. M-S Cash Drawer Co., a privately-held cash drawer manufacturer, has 25 employees at two locations (Pasadena, CA and Bellingham, WA.)

Similar to hardware, software is becoming more easily integrated and plug-and-play. OPOS is a Windows-based interface that enables POS peripherals from different vendors to be connected to application software with minimal programming changes. Software developers are writing code to the OPOS standard, Lamb says. Ideally, with the OPOS standard, any hardware device can work with any POS software. Both OPOS and USB help eliminate integration headaches for VARs, says Lamb.

Moving To A Cashless Society And New Markets
Both Lamb and Koll agree that the increased number of debit and credit card transactions is affecting cash drawer design. Media, including credit and debit card transaction slips as well as checks, is typically stored under the money tray. Drawers must be able to accommodate more paper without necessarily being larger in size.

The number of people shopping online, using the Internet, is also on the rise. Will this affect the cash drawer market? Lamb says probably not. "There are still a significant number of retail stores and restaurants, despite the increase in online ordering," says Lamb. Many markets will continue to rely on cash drawers – either in new applications or as replacements for older drawers. "There isn't a "death knell" for cash drawers. The demand is still there," says Lamb.

Koll says new markets for cash drawers are emerging. "Think about where payments are being collected. Is it a potential cash drawer application?" he says. For example, H&R Block, which offers tax preparation services, uses cash drawers for collecting fees, says Koll. The cash drawers, integrated to the office computers, help protect against theft, he says.