A cash drawer is in most cases a compartment located underneath a cash register in which the cash received from transactions are kept. Usually, the drawer contains a removable till which is in most cases divided into compartments which are used for storing each denomination of the bank notes as well as coins, designed for reducing the counting times. The removable till was designed in such a way that it allows the cash to be relocated from the sales floor to a much securer location for counting purposes or for creating bank deposits.



A cash drawer is in almost all situations made from very durable materials and it has a very rigid overall construction. In some cases, it is an integral part with the register or a separate piece on which the register sits atop. The cash drawer slides in and out of its lockable box and is secured by a spring-loaded catch. After a cash transaction has ended, the register will send an electrical impulse to a solenoid (the term solenoid refers to a loop of wire, often wrapped around a metallic core, which produces a magnetic field when an electric current is passed through it) in order to release the catch and open the drawer.

The cash drawer models that are integrated to a stand-alone register have a manual release catch underneath in order to open the drawer in case of a power failure situation. The more modern cash drawers have a cylinder lock that requires a key to open manually the drawer thus eliminating the manual release. This cylinder has three positions: locked, unlocked and release. No need to explain the first two positions so we will explain the third one: it is an intermittent position with a spring to push the cylinder back to the unlocked position. In the locked position, the drawer will stay latched even in the situation in which an electrical sign is sent to the solenoid.

Moving on to the cash register, it is a mechanical/electronic device designed for calculating and recording sales transactions, on which it has attached a cash drawer for storing the currency. In many cases, the cash register prints for the customer a receipt. Usually, the drawer can be accessed only after a sale with the exception for the times in which a special key is used (usually in the possession of the owner or the senior personnel). It was designed in order to reduce the risks of personnel stealing from the owner of the shop by not recording a sale and pocketing the money.

Nowadays in most cases cash registers are attached to check stands, barcode scanners, scales and/or credit/debit cards. In the future, cash registers will most likely be replaced by computers that have POS (point of sale) software. In the present, many of the cash registers are individual computers with DOS/Windows/Unix operating systems; some of them have touch screens while others can be connected to computerized POS networks using any type of protocol.

To sum up, both cash drawers and cash registers played and will continue to play an important role in the society as we can't manage our money without them. In the distant future, stores will implement self-checkout machines that will be supervised by employees.