Corporate vaults: How to buy commercial corporate safes or vaults for your retail business

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Upgrading our business's safe / vault was daunting. We spent many months researching and trying various products because we wanted to reduce our insurance costs and save our managers time in managing the safe and safe access. Hopefully, this article will provide you with some lessons learned from our safe buying experience.

First, estimate about how much cash you intend to store in the safe during business hours and during non business hours. Then, check with your insurance company regarding the type of safe they require to insurance the contents of the safe. For example, if you intend to store over $10,000 in cash, your insurance company require a safe with a certain rating.

Safes are rated by the thickness of steel of the safe walls, burglar resistance, and fire resistance. Some common safe standards are B rated safes, C rate safes, TL 15, TL TR 30. TL or TR means that the safe is burglar tool resistant for either 15 minutes or 30 minutes. Keep in mind that this assumes that the burglar is a pro - it would take most burglars considerably longer to break into these safe.

One major issue that we were concerned about was how to track how much cash was taken out of the safe and how much cash was put back into the safe. A safe time lock will only tell you when a safe door was open, NOT what was taken out or put into the safe. To allow us to accurately track cash going in and out of the safe, we decided to look at smart safes.

The smart safe helped us automate our cash handling, eliminate employee theft and freed our manager from being a traffic cop for the safe. At the start of a teller or cashier shift, the smart safe dispenses money to a cashier or teller based on permissions set by the manager. At the end of a shift, the smart safe counts the cash from the teller or cashier, automatically deposits the cash into the safe and reconciles the amount of cash dispensed and counted against the POS data.

Some smart safes will allow a manager to log into the safe from a remote location and dispense or count cash to tellers or cashiers at another location. Note that not all smart safes have these features, ask the provider specifically if the safe can dispense money, count money, and whether the safe can be controlled remotely.

The providers of smart safes include Alpha Cash Safe, De La Rue and Wincor Nixdorf. We choose the product from www.alphacashsafe.com because it was the only product that dispensed cash, counted cash and could be controlled remotely by our managers. It also cost a lot less than the other products which are targeted more towards banks rather than retail.

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Alex Saferan works in retail loss prevention.

Alex works in loss prevention.

Wall Safes - Why Buy One And What to Look For

If you have something you want to protect—whether it’s from burglars, fire, or curious kids—a wall safe is a great choice. Wall safes can be installed between studs in a wall, and can be more secure than freestanding safes. Here are a few reasons why you might need a wall safe, and what to look for when you buy one.

It can be concealed. Wall safes throw up an extra obstacle for burglars: before they can start breaking in, they have to find the safe. Installing one behind a big picture or tapestry is an obvious hiding place; it’s better to use a panel designed to blend into your wall. A typical burglar spends about eight minutes in the home—and if your wall safe is well concealed, chances are he won’t spend a lot of time looking for it.

Only the door is accessible. The door is the strongest part of most safes. With a wall safe, only the door is exposed—so burglars have to try and break in through the strongest side. It may be possible for burglars to dig the safe out of the wall in some cases, but this takes time—and most burglars don’t have a lot of it.

It can’t be removed easily. No safe is foolproof. Given enough time and the right tools, burglars can crack even the toughest safes. That’s why burglars prefer to remove safes and take them to a safe place instead of breaking in while they’re in your home. A freestanding safe is in danger of this if it isn’t bolted to a cement floor. Wall safes are much more difficult to remove—adding one more obstacle to break-ins.

When buying a wall safe, you’ll have a few options. Here’s a breakdown of what you’ll find on the market, and the choices you’ll have to make in picking the right wall safe for you.

Size matters. If you’re set on buying a wall safe, pick out a good location in your home before you buy. You’ll need to install the safe between wall studs, so measure the distance between studs in your chosen location. Many wall safes are designed to fit in the space between two walls, but some will extend to the anterior wall—make sure you know the measurements you need before going shopping for a wall safe.

Pick the right lock. Wall safes come with many different types of locks—and some are more effective than others. Key locks are common, but they do have some drawbacks: they can be picked by a skilled burglar, and the key can be lost.

Combination locks are a little more secure, and they come in two types: Group 1 and Group 2. Group 2 locks are most commonly found on home safes, and provide combinations up to three numbers long. Group 1 locks are much sturdier, with up to six numbers in a combination, more wheels and gears, and heavier components. They are more difficult for the average burglar to crack. While some combination locks are more secure than others, all have a drawback: they can be difficult to open even if you know the combination. A good combination lock requires the owner to stop exactly on each number, which can be difficult to do—especially during a robbery or fire, when you may want to access the items in the safe quickly.

Keypad or electronic locks are growing in popularity. Lower-end electronic locks simply allow you to enter a pin number into the pad for easy access. More expensive locks can record dates and times for each opening, time windows that allow specific users to open the lock at specific times of day, alarms that sound if the door has been left open a certain length of time, and more.

Biometric fingerprint locks are also becoming more common. Fingerprint locks will only open to a certain fingerprint, and many allow for multiple fingerprints to be programmed in. These are popular because of the added security: burglars can’t learn the pin or steal the key, and it can be accessed easily and quickly by the rightful owner.

Fireproof safes. Some wall safes are designed to protect against fire. “Fireproof” is probably a misnomer when it comes to fire safes; no safe can be fireproof indefinitely. Fire safes keep the temperature within the safe below the point at which paper chars. Most fire safes have a layer of foam or gel that transfers moisture inside the safe into steam when exposed to heat. They are rated according to the amount of time the safe can maintain the temperature, and most fall between thirty minutes and two hours.

A wall safe can be a great way to improve the security of your home or business. It’s strong, easily concealed, and comes in many different varieties—so you’re sure to find one that fits your needs.

Anthony N works for The Safe Shop, supplier of security safes and fire protection fro home and business. Visit the online store at http://www.thesafeshop.co.uk/Categories/wall_security to discover the range of wall safes currently available.