Cash Box

A cash box is a small, portable, lockable container used to hold banknotes, coins and related paperwork. It is the simplest tool of physical cash management: offices use one for petty cash, market traders and event organisers use one as a makeshift till, and a cashier may keep working cash in one during a shift.

The term also covers sturdier, purpose-built containers, such as the cash cassettes inside a cash machine and the security cases carried by cash-in-transit crews. A cash box is a storage tool, not a financial product: it holds physical cash but earns no interest and carries no deposit protection, which is the key difference from money kept in a bank account.

A cash box is a lunchbox for money. It keeps notes flat, coins sorted and receipts together in one place, and it locks so that not everyone who walks past can dip into it. Most have a lift-out tray with compartments for each coin and note size and a space underneath for larger notes and slips of paper.

It does not make money safe in the way a bank does. Someone can carry the whole box away, and if it is stolen or burned the money is simply gone. That is why a cash box is meant for small, short-term amounts, the float a shop needs for change or the few hundred pounds an office keeps for postage and milk, with the rest paid into the bank.

The best-known office use is petty cash, a small fund for minor expenses that are not worth a card payment or invoice. Many organisations run it on the imprest system:

1. The fund is set at a fixed amount, for example 200 units of currency, and placed in the cash box.
2. Each payment out is matched by a voucher or receipt, so cash plus receipts always add up to the fixed amount.
3. When the cash runs low, the receipts are totalled, recorded in the ledger, and the box is topped back up to the fixed amount.

This makes a regular reconciliation easy: count the cash, add the receipts, and any gap shows a mistake or a loss. Good practice is to keep the box locked, limit who holds the key, and have a second person check the count, the same idea as the four-eyes principle used in banks.

Small traders often use a cash box instead of an electronic till. At the start of the day it holds a float of small denominations for giving change; at the end, takings are counted, the float is set aside for the next day, and the surplus is taken to the bank with a paying-in slip. Charity events, school fairs and car-boot sales work the same way.

In bank branches, cashiers traditionally work from a locked drawer or cash box that is issued and counted at the start and end of each shift. Branch reserves are kept in the vault, and some banks also rent out a safe deposit box to customers, which is a different service: a locked box inside the bank's vault for the customer's own valuables.

When cash moves between banks, cash centres, shops and ATMs, it travels in secure boxes or cassettes carried by specialist cash-in-transit firms. Many of these containers use an intelligent banknote neutralisation system, which stains the notes with ink if the box is forced open or moved off its planned route. Stained notes are hard to spend, which takes away the reward for robbery. Central banks, including the European Central Bank, publish rules on how damaged or stained notes may be exchanged.

Moving large sums of cash also brings anti-money-laundering rules into play. Bulk movements across borders are covered on the cash courier page, and general risks of cash on the move under money in transit.

• Theft and fire. A cash box offers little protection against a determined thief or a fire, and its contents are usually not insured unless a business policy says so.
• Errors and fraud. Without receipts and regular counts, small losses go unnoticed, and an unchecked cash box is a common setting for internal fraud.
• Idle money. Cash sitting in a box earns nothing, so businesses keep only what they need and pay the rest in as a deposit.

• European Central Bank: Euro banknotes